He dived into a side pocket, and brought forth a flat velvet case. Touching the catch he showed the woman the little rope of black pearls that reposed on their satin bed.
“For me?”
The German nodded and his piggy eyes narrowed a trifle.
“Collected by myself. Took five years to match. Worth a few dollars, eh?” he chuckled; and then taking them from her hand he fastened them round her throat.
She permitted him to kiss her once, and then she pushed him away. She did not care for Steinberger’s embraces—for any man’s embraces for that matter. Considering the fire she played with she got along very well without being burnt. Her beauty was such as to rather awe men.
“My sister?” she observed, as she patted the pearls into place. “Is she willing to marry you? Would my pleading make any difference?”
“She has a lover amongst her own people,” growled the man savagely. “Some flashy young buck working on a plantation near Apia, I fancy. I’ll break his neck if I ever catch him. Last time I offered to take her away from this she refused.”
“Of course,” observed Melita dryly, and reaching over to one side she struck a little gong. Almost instantly a girl appeared from the room they had just left. It was evident to Steinberger that the girl had been stationed outside the closed door. Melita always took precautions. She turned to the waiting man.
“Tia Kua, you say, Wilhelm?”
“Tia Kua,” he muttered savagely; and, rising to his feet, picked up the smouldering cheroot from the ash tray and puffed it to life again. Melita gave a message to the waiting girl, who disappeared through some heavy curtains to one side of the room. Melita sank back on the divan, and eyed the flushed face of the man as he paced impatiently up and down.
“You are fond of women, Wilhelm,” she murmured, after a while. The man came to an abrupt halt, sensing the contempt in her tone. He scowled and chewed on his cheroot before replying.
“What I want I get. If I take a fancy to a girl I’m not afraid to pay. You know that!”—with a meaning glance at the necklace that hung from her throat. Melita made a little grimace behind her fan, and her laugh was very soft.
“You have not got me, Wilhelm.”
The man’s eyes narrowed. He even laughed a trifle curtly.
“It is because I do not want you, yet. Some day I may come for you, instead of your sister.”
The half-caste’s eyes flashed in sudden anger, but she made no reply. The callous certitude of the man disgusted her. But he was one of the hotel’s best customers, and it would not do to check him. It was rather amusing, anyway, to hear him wallowing in his own conceit.
The heavy curtains rustled, and a girl stepped into the room, a girl over whom, had she been white, artists would have raved and sculptors sworn away their souls. She was not very tall, but her slender form was perfect, as was every little feature. She was dressed differently than the rest of the hotel girls, in a sort of yellow silk sarong, caught under the left armpit by a large silver brooch. Her tiny feet were bare, flickering to view under the sarong’s hem as she walked.
Her hair was strongly scented and adorned with flowers. The only thing to mar her was the faint blue tattooing that ran from the finger tips to the wrists, and from the soft breasts upward to the base of the throat, but barely visible against the golden-brown skin. Tia Kua was a full-blooded native girl, dark, passionate, lithe and young. Soon, in six or seven years, she would begin to wither and fade. But at the moment she was in the full glory of her seventeen years, a treasure of her sex. Though Melita was her half-sister—they both claimed the same mother—the difference between them was greater and deeper than mere lightness of color.
Steinberger went to meet the girl eagerly, his fat hands trembling and outstretched, a leer distorting his somewhat stubby features. Coolly the girl evaded him and approached Melita. For a moment the two women spoke together in the native tongue, Melita questioning and the other replying and shaking her head. Then the half-caste turned to the waiting German.
“No good, Wilhelm. She does not want you even if you marry her in the white man fashion. She is to be married to her lover the week after next, and they are both returning to their own country. Too bad. But you have a dozen prettier girls on your own island. Why bother about Tia Kua?”
The German swore harshly. He had conceived for the native girl, during his frequent visits to the hotel, one of those inexplicable passions that sometimes sweep men to the oblivion of everything else. As Melita said, there were many prettier native girls who would be only too glad of the chance to marry Steinberger. But perhaps that is why he did not want them, and did want the unobtainable. He continued to swear.
“So she refuses, eh? I’ll take her, anyway!”
“Don’t get angry, Wilhelm. This is apparently one of the things you don’t get. Take your beating with good grace,” laughed Melita, with a touch of mockery in her tone.
With a snort Steinberger turned to the girl and commenced offering her bribes. The gifts he promised would have turned the head of any girl—would have turned the head of Tia Kua under ordinary circumstances. But just then she was in love with a pair of languorous dark eyes and a broad-shouldered, muscular body that worked on the plantations outside Apia. She shook her head repeatedly. Steinberger ended up by cursing her in German and English and bêche-de-mer, until Melita interfered with a flash of spirit.
“Get out!” she snapped. “If you can’t speak decently here, get out! And you’d better stay out. This is not your poop deck!”
With a snarl the German turned to go, but a sudden thought struck him. His eyes sought the black pearls dangling from Melita’s throat, and he held out his hand meaningly. Calmly Melita unsnapped the little gold clasp, and placed the trinket in the fat hand waiting to receive it.
“So,” she sneered, and her voice cut like a whip, “that was a bribe. You must be mad over Tia Kua. Women will be your death, Wilhelm.”
Swearing beneath his breath the German stamped out of the room, and getting his cap made his way down the Point path to the beach, while the assembled schooner captains and mates in the big room nodded to one another and smiled significantly.
CHAPTER III
THE MAN-HUNTER
The next morning Tia Kua was missing from the hotel, and Steinberger’s brig was missing from the anchorage. He had come out of Apia the previous day, and was bound for some unknown destination. Not one of the schooner captains could or would say where.
A grinning Samoan delivered a note at the hotel about two hours after dawn. With quick, nervous fingers Melita ripped open the envelope, and drew out the single sheet of paper it contained, a leaf from a notebook. In Steinberger’s sprawling hand was written:
“What I want I get! This time your sister; next time you!”
Melita’s face went white with passion. There were still four men in the big room who had not yet rejoined their ships, and she read the note to them. They laughed uproariously, until their eyes were wet and their sides ached. That was Steinberger’s way, they explained.
Melita eyed them with disgust. Had it been a white woman who had been abducted she knew that the captains would in all probability have hastened into Apia to inform the authorities. But a native woman! A common native woman! Why, such could be picked up off a thousand and one islands all over the Pacific, and the majority of them were only too anxious to become associated with one of the all-powerful white men. Most likely the kidnapped girl had been half willing to go.
The schooner men were a little puzzled, when they came to talk it over, why Steinberger should have gone to the trouble of abducting the girl at all. He must have been crazy over her. Then they shrugged their shoulders, and told each other that it was none of their business, but that it was a good joke anyway.
And they left Melita to her anger, while they went on board their ships to explain to grinning mates and supercargoes Steinberger’s latest folly.
Melita was nearly speechless with rage. She pa
ced her room fiercely, her lips white and her eyes glowing. She refused to be calmed for a long time. That Steinberger—fat, greasy Steinberger—had defied her, treated her like a plaything that waited on his purposes, was intolerable. She who swayed the affairs of all the Pacific treated like a common native, her sister abducted to be Steinberger’s mistress!
But she could not move hand or foot to checkmate the German. There were admirers of hers, of course, who would at her word attempt to restore her her sister, but there were only two or three actually powerful enough in the islands to attempt it with any hope of success, and none were handy. Melita could only wait and hope that Tia Kua was not being treated too badly.
* * * *
TWO weeks later a strange ship beat up to the anchorage off the Point and hove to. Melita was frankly puzzled as she watched the beautiful streaming lines and the swan-like grace of the anchoring barque. The tide was yet high, and there was plenty of time to make Apia before it fell. The ship, too, was not a regular caller at the hotel. Melita did not remember ever having seen it before. Whoever was coming to see her was coming for that purpose alone, and not making just a casual call.
A boat dropped from the barque’s near side and sped across the intervening water to the shore. Presently a man came up the winding pathway. Even Melita, who was used to all sorts of men, caught her breath sharply. For this man was not the usual shipmaster. He was not gray and a little bent, with the flesh of the neck lightly grooved into squares and lines. He did not lag in his step, nor did the long climb seem to affect his breath very much. He was young and tall, and well worth looking on. Unlike the usual island shipmaster, he was dressed in a thin uniform of blue serge, with the gold braid of his rank on the cuffs, and a gold ship badge in the center of his blue peaked cap. The cap itself was perched far back on his head, exposing a thick crop of wavy gold-brown hair, and a face as tanned as that of any kanaka. A pair of laughing blue eyes held Melita’s for a moment, and then hardened a little. The man rested one hand on his hip, and with the other removed his cap from his head. He bowed a trifle.
“Is this the house where Melita lives?” he asked pleasantly enough, though there was that in his voice—a suppressed hardness—that showed he was a man used to command.
Melita was curious. The stranger interested her. She had never seen him before, and she thought she had seen every shipmaster in the Pacific. He looked clean, too, which was more than most of the men she knew did. He was more of a man to like the sea and the sun and the stars at night than the perfumed rooms of the hotel, or some easy amour with native girls in their own villages. He glowed with health, and his lips were firm, which showed that drink had not got him under control. Yes, Melita was curious.
“I am Melita,” she said. The man raised his head and smiled, replacing his cap. He came forward a pace.
“May I speak with you alone? My name is James Travers—Captain James Travers. I command and own the barque Wanderer, laying out there in the roadstead.”
Melita waved away her attendant women, more curious than ever, and motioned the stranger to sit in the swing chair on the veranda beside her. The man nodded and came forward, seated himself carelessly and, crossing one leg over the other, held his knee with clasped hands, rocking to and fro the while. He eyed the woman seriously, and with not a little interest. He had heard her spoken of from China to Australia. She was a character.
“I am looking for a man,” he commenced abruptly. “His name is, or was, Brietmann, and he is, or was, half owner of the brig Hamburg, registered at Cape Town. Except that he’s big built and inclined to be fat I can give no description of him. Two years ago in Fu Chow the port captain of one of the big lines informed me that a man named Brietmann had been fined the year before for dangerous sailing while anchoring near other ships. From Fu Chow Brietmann took papers for Apia with the intention, it was said, of going on the island trade. I was told you were acquainted with every shipmaster and trader in the Pacific. Can you help me?”
Melita withdrew her eyes with an effort from the man’s face, and conned over in her mind a list of the men she knew. She was silent for so long that the man sneered and, reaching in his pocket, drew forth a piece of wash leather. Unwrapping it he held before the woman’s gaze a magnificent ruby that sent blood fires dancing and leaping in reflection in her eyes.
“I’ll give this to know,” he said, thinking she was reckoning what the information would be worth. Melita looked at the ruby, and put out a hesitating hand. Then her eyes grew hard. The sailor, watching keenly, laughed a little, guessing what she was thinking.
“You can take it. No condition attached, except that you give me the information I need. I just want to know where Brietmann hangs out. No one knew in Suva, no one knew in Papeete. Do you know? I shall not say who gave me the information, if that is what’s worrying you.”
Melita slipped the stone inside her bodice with sudden decision. It was a princely reward.
“I can’t think of anything or anyone right now,” she said frankly. “I may later on. There are several big, fleshy men who own brigs in the islands.… But come inside and try my tea. I had it shipped from Yokohama.… Unless you’d prefer whisky?”
The sailor hesitated. He looked down the slope to where the barque lay at anchor, rising and falling to the swell. He looked to the sky away to windward.
“Good wind blowing, and I hate to lose any of it,” he muttered to himself. “I’m sailing for Calloa light, to pick up a cargo there,” he said aloud. “Nitrates for England. I can’t waste much time.” Then he looked at Melita, and his decision faltered and died. She was beautiful, and even a man who does not care for women cannot but admire beauty.
Besides, she was the famous Melita, and the sailor was more than half curious to probe into her mentality a bit to see how she came to be so. He stood up from the swing chair abruptly, removing his cap.
“I’ll take tea,” he said, his voice a little more mellow than it had been.
The experienced Melita smiled a little to herself. She could see the sailor was growing interested in her. She was a new type to him. He, who had sailed far and wide, had battled with wind and water and men, was naturally inclined to be carelessly at ease with all women. He had them classified into two great classes—the thoroughly lost and the thoroughly saved—and each class was as bad as the other.
But Melita defied classification. He remembered that men had told him that she had never been any man’s since the break-up of her girlhood romance with that early French adventurer. He grew frank as they sat cross-legged in the now deserted big room and drank tea together from tiny fragile cups, with the fumes of the incense wreathing about their heads.
CHAPTER IV
VENGEANCE TRAIL
“I never met a woman quite like you, Melita. Most women who enter this—this sort of thing”—he waved an expressive arm around—“are apt to become coarse. You dress with taste, you talk with an accent that was learned in London, if I am not mistaken, and you have the manners of a wise old society matron. I conclude you have traveled and mixed with good people.”
She nodded absently, her eyes on his corded throat, wondering what it would feel like to the touch, warm and throbbing with life, probably rippling as it moved with the muscle-life beneath the clear skin. She had forgotten to be languid and indifferent.
“Then what are you doing here? You can’t be broke and unable to get away. If you are, that ruby will put you on your feet.”
Melita roused herself with an effort, and tapped him on the lips with her fan. “My friend, you are encroaching on the secret places of the heart. And why should I worry you with my story? It is the usual and the sordid. A young girl, something of a fool, her head turned by flattery, and a man who had no honor. What men have?” she sighed, and was silent for a while. “Rest assured I have reasons for staying here and playing with the fools who come.… Take care, my friend, it is not good to know Melita too much.” She finished with a light laugh and looked at him.
He nodded seriously, and then grinned. “The fruits of vengeance, eh? Well, I’ll tell you. I believe I’m immune from heart-break, and I don’t believe I have a soul to wreck.”
Again Melita knew a sudden desire to touch the corded throat and run her fingers through the wavy hair. So strong was the impulse she leaned forward a little, and then caught at her lower lip with her teeth. Travers was busy lighting a battered briar pipe, and when he looked up, noticing nothing, the woman had recovered herself. But she was shaken inwardly. She had never met a man who affected her so.
“Perhaps you would like to look around,” suggested the woman, “while I write you a list of the brig owners and captains I know of. The name Brietmann is unknown to me, but—”
“It is possible my man has changed his name. He had cause to,” put in the sailor grimly.
Melita nodded. “That was what I was thinking. Perhaps one of the brig captains I know may be your man. The name Brietmann sounds German. There are five Germans who own their own ships. But I’ll give you a list. You can make further inquiries as to the length of time each has been in the islands. That’s something I’m not acquainted with. Pardon me!”
The sailor nodded, while the woman went off to find a pencil and paper. Left alone in the big room, Captain James Travers whistled softly to himself. He grinned as he wandered round, inspecting the braziers, quaintly moulded, and the pictures that hung here and there on the walls.
Presently he came to a sort of sideboard set in a corner farthest from the veranda, which could be seen through the curtains that served as a house front, and were tied back in the day time. The sideboard was a long affair of mahogany, richly inlaid and carved, with drawers below the serving shelf and a large square of beveled looking-glass above. There were whale’s teeth, purple with age; shark’s backbones, polished and varnished and worked into the form of walking sticks; a small whale’s vertebra; pearl shells, and other shells of all sorts and colors; a piece of fossilized wood from far-off Guinea; native spears and other weapons; necklaces of babies’ skulls, and many other curios the admirers of Melita had brought from the Shining Paths to swell her collection.
The Adventure Megapack Page 8
