Think Fast, Mr. Moto

by John P. Marquand

  “Good morning, sir,” said Wilson. “My uncle said there was no need to cable.”

  Mr. Wilkie was standing up in the cool shady room. He was a thin iron-gray-haired man, dressed in tropical white. His face was deeply tanned; his eyes were brown. Something about him indicated an emphasis on dress that came of a preoccupation with personal appearance. There seemed to be a fussiness in his manner, the rather provincial fussiness of a man conscious of his position. There was an effort at façade that went with his clothes and with William Hitchings’ account of Mr. Wilkie’s cruising boat. It seemed to Wilson that the older man was making a distinct effort to conceal an emotion of annoyance, but annoyance was written in the curve of his close-cut gray mustache. He seemed to be saying silently: “I’m an important man, in an important position. You had no right to come here without telling me. This upsets me very much.”

  It was largely that annoyance which Wilson noticed, combined with surprise, but there might have been something else.

  “It’s a great pleasure to see you, of course,” Mr. Wilkie said, “the very greatest pleasure. There’s nothing like a surprise, is there? A pleasant surprise? How are your uncle and your father? You look like them, Mr. Hitchings. If I had known that you were coming, I should have arranged to have you stay at my house, of course. You’ll excuse my not asking you now, won’t you? I can’t imagine why no one sent me word.”

  “They thought it wasn’t necessary,” said Wilson smoothly, and he saw Mr. Wilkie raise his eyebrows. “My uncle asked me to give you this letter. He said it would explain everything.”

  Mr. Wilkie read the letter attentively, holding it between his carefully tended fingers, while Wilson sat and watched him. As Mr. Wilkie read, his lips tightened, as though repressing an exclamation, and Wilson heard him catch his breath. Then Mr. Wilkie glanced at him curiously and smiled.

  “So they’re still worried about poor Eva’s plantation,” he remarked. “I hoped I had made my position clear about it, but I’m afraid I didn’t. This has been embarrassing for me, Mr. Hitchings. I can hardly tell you how embarrassing. It hurts to be considered so inefficient in a negotiation that a younger man is sent out; but perhaps it’s the best way. I’m very glad to wash my hands of it, Mr. Hitchings, and leave it all to you.”

  “I’m sure no one meant to offend you,” Wilson said. He was thinking even as he spoke that there was something devious in Mr. Wilkie’s glance. His intuition was telling him something. It was like his uncle’s thought that something was not right. “I didn’t ask for this job myself. The whole thing is new to me.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Wilkie, “I suppose it is. I’ll be glad to discuss your plans with you. I’m here to do anything I can to help. I suppose you’ll want to see Eva this afternoon.”

  Wilson sat impassively while Mr. Wilkie spoke. When he answered, he was still trying to read what was in Mr. Wilkie’s mind. Although he could put his finger on nothing definite, there was something strange in the air. It occurred to him that no one was natural when Hitchings Plantation was mentioned. Mr. Wilkie was smiling faintly.

  “You’ll know her better when you’re through,” he added.

  “I’m sure I will,” said Wilson slowly.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Wilkie with the same faint smile, “I’m sure you will.”

  There was a pause, and then Wilson spoke deliberately.

  “It sounds as though you’d like a ringside seat when I see her. Would you, Mr. Wilkie?”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Wilkie. “You’ll excuse me. It’s not personal; but, frankly, I should rather enjoy it.”

  Wilson sat impassively, because he found that impassiveness helped in any interview, and he watched Mr. Wilkie carefully.

  “I think I should rather see the Plantation first,” he said. “I suppose it will be running to-night? Could you arrange that I get a card? I should rather go there without anyone’s knowing who I am.”

  Mr. Wilkie smiled again, and his smile was polite but not reassuring.

  “Nothing is easier than a card, Mr. Wilson,” he said, “though I am afraid that Eva will know exactly who you are.”

  “Why?” asked Wilson. “Unless someone tells her?”

  “No one will need to tell her,” Mr. Wilkie said. “She will only need to look at you. You are the image of her own father when he first came to the Islands. You have the same narrow face, the same eyes, the same build, the same hands. Anyone would know you for a Hitchings.”

  “Thanks,” said Wilson. He kept his glance concentrated steadily, rather disconcertingly, on Mr. Wilkie’s face. “Now you’d better tell me something else.”

  “Certainly,” said Mr. Wilkie, “anything I can.”

  Wilson leaned forward in his chair. His Uncle William had been a good teacher and he endeavored to imitate his Uncle William’s urbanity.

  “Mr. Wilkie,” he said, “since I have been here you have made me feel conscious of a certain reserve on your part. It surprises me a little. Your manner is not entirely friendly. I think you had better tell me why.”

  Mr. Wilkie’s face grew red; for a moment he looked almost astonished.

  “You are speaking rather frankly, aren’t you?” he said. “I haven’t the slightest intention to offend you.”

  Wilson paused a moment before he answered, and he had the satisfaction of believing that Mr. Wilkie no longer looked upon him as wholly incompetent.

  “I did not say you offended me,” he answered. “I said it seemed to me that your manner was unfriendly and then I asked you why. It still seems to me a fair question. We are both employed by Hitchings Brothers, Mr. Wilkie.”

  Mr. Wilkie’s face grew redder.

  “You Hitchingses think you own the earth, don’t you?” he inquired. The irritability was surprising to Wilson, but it told him what he wished to know—that Mr. Wilkie did not like the family. He felt himself growing cooler in the face of Mr. Wilkie’s anger.

  “Not the earth, Mr. Wilkie,” he said, “but we do control the stock of Hitchings Brothers. That’s why you can’t blame me for being somewhat surprised.”

  Mr. Wilkie shrugged his shoulders. Now that he no longer had to conceal his animosity, Mr. Wilkie seemed almost relieved. The lines in his tanned face relaxed as he leaned across the desk.

  “You’ve never been, here before, have you?” he asked. “Or you wouldn’t be surprised. I’ve lived here for thirty years, and Ned Hitchings was one of my best friends. I’ve always known Eva Hitchings, everyone has always known her, and everyone knows what his family did when Ned Hitchings lost his money. He was a fine man—everyone loved Ned; and you can get me fired if you want for saying it.”

  Wilson Hitchings rose. “If you’d told me that in the first place, I wouldn’t have taken so much of your time,” he said. “You have a perfect right to your own views, Mr. Wilkie. If you had told my father he would not have held it up against you. But, under the circumstances, I think it would be better if I arranged matters by myself.” Mr. Wilkie arose also and his manner had changed.

  “That’s very fair of you,” he said.

  “Thank you,” said Wilson. “I hope you have always found us fair; at any rate that’s all I mean to be here. I mean to be fair to Eva Hitchings, too. You can tell her so if you want to.”

  Mr. Wilkie cleared his throat.

  “There’s one thing that you ought to know,” he said. “We’ve a rather small society here, and, being so far away, we are a rather close corporation. Ned Hitchings was very popular. You’ll find that everyone takes his side here, and his daughter’s side. You will find the Hitchings Plantation is rather universally accepted if only because everyone feels that your family has been unfair.”

  “I am glad to have you tell me so,” said Wilson. “You mean I won’t be very welcome?”

  “I’m afraid not,” said Mr. Wilkie, “and Eva won’t close the Plantation because the Hitchingses want her to.”

  “Well,” said Wilson, “don’t think of it further, Mr. Wilkie, and I’ll
say nothing about it.”

  Mr. Wilkie looked incredulous.

  “You won’t?” he said.

  “No,” said Wilson, “why should I? You have a perfect right to your own opinion.”

  Mr. Wilkie looked at him hard.

  “I guess,” he said, “they’ve sent a clever man out.”

  “Don’t say that, Mr. Wilkie,” Wilson answered. “I only say what I think, that’s all.”

  “Wait!” said Mr. Wilkie. “Don’t go. Won’t you stay for lunch at the Club?” Wilson Hitchings shook his head.

  “No,” he answered, “thank you just as much. I’d better stand by my side of the family. That’s all that is worrying us—the family. I’ll settle this without troubling you again. Good-by, Mr. Wilkie.”

  Wilson walked out into the bright street, but the sun no longer seemed warm or pleasant. He was not angry, but he was surprised—surprised because he was used to being treated cordially, yet here in one of the branches of the family’s office he had met with a curious reception. He had been told that he would not be liked because his family had been unkind to a girl named Eva Hitchings, and he, as a symbol of the family, was to take the blame for this unkindness. He walked back toward the pier where he had left his bags—solitary, puzzled. The sights on the street registered on his mind half mechanically; the faces he saw bespoke of a mixture of races from all sides of the Pacific Ocean; the flowers in the park by the waterfront, like the people on the streets, had been gathered from the ends of the earth to bask in that springlike air. There was nothing which he saw that was not pleasant. Another time he might have enjoyed it more, but just then there seemed to be something sinister in the brilliance of the flowering trees, in the softness of the wind, in the scent even there in the city, of sea spray and of flowers.

  “There is something that isn’t right,” Wilson was saying to himself. He was not thinking of the city, because the city was beautiful; he was thinking rather of something in his own mind. There was an intuitive uneasiness in his thought, a sense not exactly of danger, but of impending difficulties.

  Nevertheless he always remembered a good deal of that day with pleasure, although his thoughts kept obtruding themselves on what he saw. There was an automobile at the pier waiting to be hired, and he selected it because it was an open car. It was driven by a coffee-colored boy in his shirt sleeves, who wore a wreath of flowers around the band of his felt hat.

  “I want to hire you for the day,” Wilson said. “I shall want to see the Island, but first I’ll go to the hotel.”

  He went to one of the largest hotels on Waikiki Beach, whose name he had often heard travelers mention—a huge building, in a grove of ancient coconut palms, whose leaves rattled hollowly in the trade breeze. The clerk read his name carefully while he registered but he made no comment. It occurred to Wilson that after all the name of Hitchings was not necessarily peculiar.

  “If there is anything we can do to help you enjoy yourself, sir,” the clerk said, “be sure to let us know, because that’s a part of our business. There’s the beach, of course, outside, and we can arrange to get you a car from the Golf Club. If there is anything else you want to do be sure to let us know.”

  Wilson hesitated, looked at the clerk and smiled.

  “I’ve heard there is another club, here,” he said, “called ‘Hitchings Plantation.’ If it isn’t asking too much, could you get me a card for that this evening?”

  The clerk smiled back at him. “Certainly,” he said. “There will be a card waiting for you by dinnertime. Don’t mention it, the pleasure is all ours.”

  Wilson motored through the city that afternoon and out into the hills, as thousands of other tourists have done before him. He was familiar enough with the Hitchings Brothers’ history to know something of the history of the city, and he had enough imagination to see the past as it mingled with the present. It amused him as it had in Shanghai to realize that a Hitchings had been there in the beginning even before the wooden mission house had been set up on the spot where it still stood, close to the old coral stone church. That white clapboarded prim New England house had been carried in sections around Cape Horn in the hold of a sailing vessel. It had been, to all intents and purposes, the first house on the Islands, standing among the thatched huts of the natives. The huts were gone, but the mission house still stood and the palace of the Hawaiian kings faced it across the street, and there was the courthouse and the statue of King Kamehameha, with his spear and his feathered cloak, and then the buildings of a modern city with shaded streets of bungalows beyond them. The city was like its history, partly peaceful, partly exotic, partly tolerant, partly strange.

  Wilson leaned forward and touched the driver on the shoulder.

  “I should like to see Hitchings Plantation,” he said. “Will you drive past it, please?” The boy nodded and smiled. He had been talking, describing the sights as they moved by them, and Wilson listened idly to his words.

  “King Street.… Post Office.… Library.… Chinese temple.… Alexandra Park.… Banyan trees.… Monkey-pod trees.… Shinto Temple.… Punch Bowl.… High School.… King’s graveyard.… Kukui trees.…”

  The words moved by dreamily like the sights of the city. The road was leading into the hills and then into a valley bordered by high mountain peaks where rich green vegetation grew on black lava cliffs and ended above them in a mist of low hanging clouds. The valley itself was as rich and green as the Elysian Fields. The driver turned to him and smiled.

  “Lovely place,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Wilson, “lovely place.”

  They were evidently passing through a rich residential section where houses stood on wide lawns behind hibiscus hedges. The car turned to the right down a narrow road and then the sun was gone. There was a light sprinkle of rain.

  “Liquid sunshine,” the driver said. “We call it liquid sunshine. You see it stops so soon.” The car was slowing down. They had reached the end of the branch of the road and he was pointing straight ahead.

  “Hitchings Plantation,” the driver said.

  It was late afternoon by then, an hour which was very close to sunset. The driver was right for the flurry of rain in the valley had been over in a moment leaving the air moist, soft and clean and full of the scent of flowers. Now that the car had slowed down, he was aware of a sense of solitude such as he had not felt all day. They had left the complexities of the city which formed one of the crossroads of the world and were stopping in a cleft between high, dark, green hills whose peaks rose mistily into a sky that was growing reddish with the sunset. Except for the house which was standing where the road ended he could believe that this part of the valley had hardly ever changed. The wildness and isolation of older days hung over it mistily. Wilson Hitchings remembered feeling cold, not entirely because the sun was going down or because of that touch of rain. The Island had changed from a distant, pagan paradise of gods and drums to an outpost of a nation that was half a fortress, half a garden. The missionaries had come to bring the word of God to a childlike trusting people, and the traders had come, and the whaling fleet and the French, and the Russians and the English. The fields had been planted with sugar cane, riches such as no one had ever dreamed of had flowed in. The beaches had become a playground. The city had become a carpet of twinkling lights, but the valley had not changed. It was growing sad and shadowy, a tropical island valley brooding over a simple past. The steep hills seemed to Wilson Hitchings to be waiting, waiting for a time when the vanity of man was gone and when the strong trees and vines would march from down the mountains again into the clearings.

  “Hitchings Plantation,” the driver said politely, “a lovely place.”

  “Yes,” Wilson said, “a lovely place.” He was thinking of the ironies of life. He had reached the spot toward which he had traveled a good many thousand miles and now he gazed at it somberly. The road had ended in a valley stopping at a driveway, flanked by two tall posts that bore the name newly painted, “Hitchings Pl
antation.” The house stood on a lawn that was dotted with fantastic branching trees—a rambling wooden house that had been built in the style of the South at home. He could understand its name as soon as he saw the house—there was a high pillared portico, there were wings and verandas. When he saw it he could understand what Ned Hitchings had done with his money. He had sunk it all prodigally into one estate; it was simple enough to see what had happened afterwards, because the house and the grounds above it gave an impression of desuetude and of disrepair. Ned Hitchings’ money had gone into the house and now there was no more money. A building could not last long in that genial climate without upkeep. The grass about it was unkempt, shrubbery was growing wildly against the white wall, the paint was growing dingy, the shutters were sagging.

  “They play roulette every night,” the driver said. “You want to go inside?”

  “No,” said Wilson, “not now. I’ll go back to the hotel.”

  He did not say what was in his thoughts, that the loneliness of the hills was in that house and vanished hopes. Something caught at his throat, because it must have been a gallant place once. Then another thought was running through his mind.

  “Anything might happen there,” Wilson said to himself, “anything might happen.”

  Then they were going through the outskirts of the city back to the hotel on the beach where music was playing. They were passing along a street which might have been in the Orient. There were open-front Chinese shops where dried fish and parasols and cloth were out for sale. There was a rich smell of cooking and of bean oil—there were rice cakes on the counters, the streets echoed with the notes of Oriental voices, and someone was singing in high falsetto notes. The dark was coming down quickly like a curtain, blotting out the contradictions of that city that was neither East nor West.