The island of Lassou lies in the Caribbean Sea, a long hundred miles off the coast of that South American state whose inland capital is San Hieronimo. Its people, the Lassoux, are—as everyone knows—negroes with a sprinkling of mulattoes; these also form its rival political parties. Geographically, it is like many of the smaller West Indian islands—a jumble of limestone mountains and ravaged forests. Its history has resembled that of Haiti; it was once French—and still clings to the French language; in 1813 it freed itself by its historic rising under the Liberator Boufallon, and it has succeeded by some miracle in remaining under its own native administra- tion ever since. It is an anachronism and an oddity and a madhouse. It is not easily found in the atlas; indeed, I know of only one that shows it—and I had to mark it into that one myself.
Of this Caribbean island of Lassou, hear first one of its children, M. André Bonsaucin, a mulatto poet, for some time Minister of Arts in the Government of the Consul (deposed) Leon Bras and Minister of the Interior in that of the Consul (assassinated) Sam Goulou. He writes, of course, in that French which is spoken with almost Parisian exactitude by such of the islanders as pretend to any education.
“Lassou!” (says M. Bonsaucin) “Perle de l’océan! Perle des Iles Caraïbes! Eternel énigme! toi qui réunis dans l’ombre de ton mystère les splendeurs d’une beauté voluptueuse et l’inhumanité d’une race paresseuse, cruelle, Satanique! Vers quel but voyages-tu, île bien-aimée et séduisante?—vers le crépuscule sinistre de l’Amérique du Sud avec ses richesses, ses douleurs—et ses griffes? ou vers la grande lumière, échauffante et fécondante, des Etats Unis? Ou peut-être resteras-tu seule, belle, méchante et mystérieuse jusqu’à la fin des siècles?”
There is much to be said for the Gallic luxuriance of M. Bonsaucin’s picture, and his rhetorical questions—as we shall see—have vexed his compatriots not a little. There is, however, another way of looking at the place—that, for instance, of the American journalist Don Greisler who wrote an article about it in the New York Travelogue. It was an amusing—though by no means a foolish article; and he headed it, quite simply—“Asylum Island.”
On the evening of the 3rd of February 1949—as on every other evening—the sun went down on Larcadie, the single township of Lassou, as if—as Mrs. Bosomworth was fond of saying to her husband—“someone had pulled it with a string.” It sank suddenly and with a parting glare of dislike behind the low toothy ridge of mountains called—God alone knew why—Les Myosotes. Here and there on Les Myosotes were moribund patches of banana and maize but the most of them—like the rest of Lassou—was rough spiky grass, nubbly flint and chalk, and lacerating thorn scrub. In his energetic days Mr. Bosomworth—who was the British Consul at Larcadie—had tried bright, early-morning walks on Les Myosotes; now he had more sense.
In Larcadie, as the sun set, it was as if—once more to quote the graphic Mrs. Bosomworth—“someone had switched off a light.” The little baking white-red-and-yellow-ochre town turned first blue, then grey; the alleged grass in the Place de la Liberté lost such pretence of colour as it ever had, the cabbage-palms in the Jardin d’Acclimatation took on the hues of night, the Avenue Boufallon became a tunnel. The Palace of the Consul—the Dictator of Lassou, to put it plainly—lost its blinding white and assumed the hodden grey of despair. For a few minutes everything was sombre; then the red guiding-light at the airfield began its nocturnal revolutions, someone switched on in the verandahs of the Hotel Zirque, a festoon of coloured globes sprang up at the Café Miramar. Larcadie adjusted itself tonight.
At the British Consulate, near the harbour, the Union Jack also came down “as if someone had pulled it with a string,” and for the good reason that someone did so pull it—a tatterdemalion private of the Garde in khaki shorts and an unbuttoned khaki shirt. The Union Jack was upside down, and had been for some weeks, but nobody had noticed that; so many things were upside down in Lassou. Just below it, in his upstairs room, sat Bosomworth, the British Consul, as he religiously did every afternoon from four to six-thirty. He was in fact waiting for his wife to call for him in the car—as he also did daily; if there was little actual business, he could always read the literature abundantly supplied him by the Foreign Office, whereof not one item in a thousand was in any sense applicable to Lassou. Bosomworth tried to believe that there were such places as the Foreign Office, Whitehall, London, England; but sometimes he found it hard. From time to time he put a fresh cigarette—cheap and locally made, one of old Poutin’s—into his very beautifully carved ivory holder. Bosomworth had made up a great many stories about that holder; his favourite one was that it had been given him by the Consul Leon Bras whom he had assisted in his—sudden—departure from the island. “Here is my life,” had said Leon Bras (as per Bosomworth), “I place it in your loyal hands.” In another version it had been presented by a beautiful American lady; also in similar circumstances; also bolting from Lassou.
Everybody bolts from Lassou, thought Bosomworth, morosely—except me; and for the ten thousandth time he wondered—“How the devil did I get here?” Bosomworth was not an old—not even an elderly—man, but he had been British Consul in Larcadie for sixteen years. Why, he thought again, why is there a British Consul in Lassou? Well, why not? The island was an independent sovereign state and had remained so for over a century—though, again, God only knew how. It was becoming strategically important because it made such a good halt for air services between North and South America. And, after all, there were some British in the place. There was that fellow Strathdee who was tutor at the Palace; not a good type; some kind of Aberdonian Scot; Bosomworth didn’t approve of him. Un-English. There was an agent at the Latin-American Bank; but the agents there changed so often that you couldn’t keep track of them. There were the two Protestant missionaries, male and female—and about as much use, thought Bosomworth, as I am. True, the reigning Negro Consular dynasty at the Palace—Hippolyte and his family—were Protestants, and Mission Protestants at that; but as a whole, Protestants cut no ice in Lassou, which believed in a comfortable blend of voodoo and the Roman Catholic Church. Still—Strathdee, the banker, the missionaries, the Bosomworths; oh, yes, there were British in Lassou.
Bosomworth put his cigarette-holder back on the table. Actually it was no more than a piece of surplus stock; for Bosomworth, in his working hours, kept a miscellaneous curio, dry goods, liquor and rubbish store in the Grande Rue—so called because it was the only Rue. There, and no higher, lay the answer to that question, “How the devil did I get here?” A young man with a little capital; a Caribbean Holiday Cruise (“See those Isles of Magic and Mystery”); a sudden infatuation for Lassou; a newly-married husband with a young wife waiting back in Buckinghamshire to come out—somewhere, anywhere; the Magazin for sale. Good God, thought Bosomworth, I must have had ideas in those days. He took another of Poutin’s abominable cigarettes.
Bosomworth had three classes of customer in his shop—all of them ephemeral as the tourist ships that brought them into the Bay of Larcadie. First the North Americans, who bought some trifle and then, working him into a corner, asked him in a sheepish whisper how and where they could see the Lassoux eating one another. “Back home we were told . . . ree-ligious ceremonies . . .” Sighing, Bosomworth had to tell them that the Lassoux did almost everything to each other—and could be seen, at a price, doing an astonishing lot of it—but not just that; it was the one thing they didn’t do. . . . Then there were the British tourists—few and far between, and always hard up—who wanted to buy a nice little wickerwork shopping-basket and grumbled at being asked five shillings for an article which would have cost them twenty-five in Oxford Street. . . . Lastly there were the Latin-Americans who swaggered into his shop, stared with swarthy contempt at himself and all his goods, practically spat on them and then, as they were swaggering out again, were tickled by some object for which, with gales of happy laughter, they paid three times the proper price. . . . Thank God, then, for the Latin-Americans. And yet——
Bosomworth had never read the works of M. André Bonsaucin, but the questions posed by that author were often in his mind. Where was Lassou going? You had the United States on one side, curious, interested, go-ahead; on the other those laughing, unshaven Latins, all on the up-and-up. “The damn place must go some way,” thought Bosomworth. “Something must happen to it.” Pan-American Airways wanted to build a slap-up hotel for the tourist trade, and a proper airfield; the Latin-Americans wanted to grow bananas and look for oil—or that was what they said. “World forces,” thought Bosomworth, “they’ll swallow this up. Pity, of course . . . Independent island . . . negro self-government . . . picturesque . . . unique . . . pity to see it go.” He looked at his watch; Rosa was overdue. “The hell with all that,” he thought, “if I could sell my bloody store I’d quit. Yes; tomorrow.”
The tatterdemalion private of the Garde thrust in his woolly head and announced with a flourish of French that Madame presented her compliments. Bosomworth rose, locked his safe—which contained nothing—and went downstairs. His Austin—which was the only British car in the island—stood outside, and in it sat his wife. Although it happened every night of the week, Bosomworth could never resist a thrill at the sight of Rosa, sitting there in the car as it might be outside the Bull at Aylesbury or the Spread Eagle at Thame. Once again he had the same sense of reassurance; this maniacal island wasn’t everywhere; there were such places as Aylesbury and Thame and Swan and Edgars. Mrs. Bosomworth was neither beautiful nor ugly; but in her very ordinariness she was the most amazing comfort. The sight of her sitting there with her hands in her lap meant that in a few minutes he would be removed to his very charming house on the slopes of Les Myosotes where there would be English magazines—the Tatler, Lilliput, Picture Post—and a tankard of English beer—not the rotten South American stuff he sold in the shop. And sitting there, with the English beer and the English pictures, he would get rid of this dreadful delusion that Lassou was a real place.
He got into the car, acknowledging the salute of the Garde private who was now at the door of the Consulate, and they drove off. As usual, Mrs. Bosomworth began to talk at once about her garden. She was a completely placid, completely unimaginative woman; she had managed to pass nearly twenty years in Lassou without ever going further than the streets of Larcadie or learning the name of a single voodoo deity. For Mrs. Bosomworth, Lassou—the Consul in his Palace, the boungan in his temple; the Garde and the Ministers and the Legislature and the Cercle Lettre, they just didn’t exist. The Bosomworths had no children, but then—the garden.
“My zinnias are going to be nice, Tubby.”
Bosomworth said absently that that was fine.
“But I’m disappointed with the cannas. Where did you get that seed?”
“Usual place. Jean Sordou. What’s wrong with them?”
“Well, I wanted them yellow. But I think half of them are going to be pink.”
Bosomworth looked with disfavour at an immense Nègress in brilliant blue who passed them riding sidesaddle on a donkey half her size.
“What the hell can you expect in this place? You ought to be thankful they don’t come out magenta with green stripes.”
His wife glanced at him. “Poor old Tubby! You’re getting depressed again. . . . D’you think we ought to have another cocktail party?”
“Who the hell can we have to a cocktail party?”
“Oh—everybody. . . . Well, Mr. Marks at the Bank. And Mr. Strathdee.”
“I don’t like Strathdee.”
“No. But we couldn’t very well leave him out. And of course we could ask the Ministers. And that Editor man—what’s-his-name? And Mr. Poutin——”
“And Old Uncle Tom Cobley,” said Bosomworth, “and all.” He sighed deeply. “We’ll get round to it. Not just yet.”
Mrs. Bosomworth said, “Very well, dear.” They drove past the Market—a yelling inferno by day but now quiescent. A great many Nègresses squatted by baskets of chickens, bananas, gourds, oranges, papaws; a great many negroes in loose cotton jackets and heavily patched trousers lounged about doing nothing; all—male and female—were smoking clay pipes. Inside, a gang of men were sluicing down the slabs while another gang threw fresh dirt on them. Bosomworth said,
“There’s one thing—this place is a damn sight cleaner since the Revolution. Hippolyte’s done something.”
His wife said wonderingly, “And him a negro, too.”
Bosomworth sighed; Rosa’s fundamental misconceptions . . .
“It isn’t a question of negro or mulatto. It isn’t a question of anything except graft. That’s all it ever is in this damned place. Graft, God help it. That’s all. Hippolyte’s honest—comparatively.”
They emerged from the crowded streets into the dusty spaces of the Place de la Liberté. On one side a crowd was surging round the door of the cinema which advertised—as usual—Laurel and Hardy. It was always Laurel and Hardy—when it wasn’t Abbott and Costello. On the opposite side of the desert was a brilliant illumination; festoons of red, blue and yellow; one gigantic unshaded bulb blazing mercilessly. Mrs. Bosomworth said,
“What is happening at the Café Miramar?”
Bosomworth said, “Good God! I’d forgotten. Tonight’s the Fraternal Reunion. Hippolyte and Le Zouz.”
“Le—who?”
There were times when Mrs. Bosomworth’s divine detachment from the panorama of Lassou came near annoying her husband. He said almost snappishly,
“Our late Consul. Before the Revolution. Last year.”
Mrs. Bosomworth said, “Oh!” If she had ever heard of Le Zouz, she had evidently forgotten him. “What a funny name.”
“It wasn’t his name. His name was Malmaison.”
“Then why——”
“I don’t know.” He did, but—it wasn’t suitable for Rosa. Le Zouz was a purely Lassou epithet into whose inner meanings it was better not to probe. Mrs. Bosomworth said vaguely:
“How funny. Is he a negro too, dear?”
“Of course he isn’t. He’s a mulatto. And Hippolyte’s negro. And the two of them and their two little lots are having a get-together. And it’s tonight. That’s all.”
“But, Tubby, weren’t you invited?”
“Of course I was. And of course I’m not going.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? Rum and speeches and a lot of sweat and stink and bloody lies. Good God, no!”
“Isn’t anybody going?”
“Nobody I know. . . . Oh, well, I suppose the Ministers will be there. And the General. And the Air Marshal. And so on. But not me.”
Mrs. Bosomworth asked one of her maddening questions. “Which did you like best, dear—Hippolyte or Le what-is-it?” She was always asking questions like that: Which do you like best, oranges or mangoes? Or Wells or Priestley? Or jam or butter? Usually Bosomworth simply did not reply, but this time he said:
“It isn’t a question of liking. Le Zouz was a scoundrel, but he was clever. Hippolyte’s honest—well, fairly honest—but he’s a fool. So’s his son—bigger. What can you expect with that fellow Strathdee as tutor.”
The car swung into an uphill lane; the arid waste of the Place and the brilliance of the Café Miramar fell out of sight behind. Instead there came a clearing of the air, a little wandering caressing breeze, a scent of flowers. Bosomworth thought with relief, “We’re nearly home.” He said—as he said at this same place on four nights out of six:
“You know, Rosa, driving along this bit, I sometimes feel—I sometimes feel we might be in England.”
His wife said—as she always said—”Yes, dear.” She took his hand and squeezed it.
The Bosomworths had left Lassou behind.
The banquet for the grand Fraternal Reunion had been laid for seventy-five, and most of these had survived the initial trays of apéritifs sufficiently well to be able to sit down to it. The tables had been spread in the little discreet flower-smothered garden at the back, which was the Café Miramar’s pride. Its proprietor, Madame Habatron, was one of the few really French people in the island; besides providing the most exquisite pâtisseries and a spécialité de la maison based on kingfish, she kept up appearances. Her husband, the late Habatron, had been dead for years; which was just as well, for he was a Lassoux of the Lassoux and had no appearances whatever. Madame Habatron looked confidently to the Fraternal Reunion to provide her livelihood for several months to come.
An enormous quantity of food had been set forth, but this was as nothing to the ocean of assorted drink. The first hour or so had been passed in relays of pretty potent cocktails; there was then an interval of bad wine and worse brandy. Rum was not seriously opened till about ten-thirty, when it continued in an unfailing flow. The rum was supplied by Poutin, a stoutish, enormously wealthy and politically impartial quadroon who had contrived, by the simple process of paying the right people, to collar the vend and manufacture of spirits and tobacco in the island. It was very good rum—much better than his cigarettes.
So far, the proceedings had gone as smoothly as the more nervous among the festival’s promoters had dared to hope. The two principals, of course—Consul Hippolyte and ex-Consul Le Zouz—could be depended upon to play ball; otherwise they would not have attended the function at all; while everybody on either side who was likely to cause any trouble was present and under careful surveillance. But you never knew on these occasions. There had been a brief fracas between two politically-minded chauffeurs, but these the Police had hastily removed; at least they had removed them round the corner and then, after extracting from them the equivalent of one shilling each, they had beaten them lightly and sent them back chastened to the revels. At one stage, too, the Air Marshal had beed insulted by the General, but as nobody was clear as to the grounds of offence—least of all the parties—it had come to nothing. On the whole it could be said that the Reunion had been Fraternal beyond all hope.
True, there had been one awkward moment—about eleven o’clock; when Le Zouz himself, lying back in his chair, had suddenly whipped a formidable revolver from some hidden place in his garments, and with the rapidity of a machine-gun had shot out that enormous unshaded electric light that blazed over the company. But as Le Zouz, especially in his cups, had always been regarded as a fellow of infinite jest, and as he showed no disposition to lower the muzzle of his weapon, this was taken as a harmless pleasantry, a whimsical mood that passed as swiftly as it came. And apart from this lapse, his behaviour had been exemplary. He had proposed the health of Hippolyte in the most generous manner; he had dwelt upon the domestic bliss of the Consul’s household in glowing terms. “A son, a daughter; ah, my fortunate friend! And such a son, so studious, so good; and such a daughter, so beautiful, so modest. Alas! my friends, how much less fortunate am I, a saddened widower with but one child. It is true my boy, my Florian, is handsome as a god; it is true he is a genius; but it is also true that he lives in South America and I never see him. Does he despise, then, the poor old father, broken and cast out? How well he might!” Le Zouz had wept effectively; the company were impressed. But Hippolyte, responding and already, perhaps, a little affected by the rum, had assured the broken and rejected parent of a friendship so warm and so undying, had so gracefully deprecated his own undistinguished offspring, had spoken so lavishly of that brilliant student, away yonder in the University of San Hieronimo, that he was felt to have squared the match. Quite certainly the two principals on the occasion had played up; nothing more Fraternal could possibly have been imagined.
Yes, the Fraternal Reunion had been an unqualified success; the more apprehensive among the audience—the Chief of Police, for example, and the Editor of Le Quotidien—had gone home breathing more freely than they could have believed possible. Le Zouz had clearly decided to take his beating handsomely; Le Zouz had been a sportsman. And Hippolyte, with his charm and his friendliness and his beaming smile, had been an inspiration—no less. Just possibly there might be peace now in Lassou for quite a while; Just possibly one might now get something done—or go to sleep and do nothing, according to one’s bent.
By half-past one in the morning, the company in the Miramar’s garden had thinned down to a mere dozen, of whom the central figure was still Le Zouz. Le Zouz was a very pale mulatto on whose long, greenish, faintly pockmarked face there sat an expression of dissoluteness so abysmal that no man on earth could possibly have lived up to it. To do him justice, Le Zouz had never tried; he drank, bien entendu, but not to what Lassou would call excess; he had his mistresses, but merely to the extent called convenable—that is to say, he had never made a nuisance of them politically. If he had been at times a terror, he had also acquired a wide reputation for sardonic jest. His pose of cynicism had always been greatly assisted by a mysterious explosion in the distant past which had blown off both his eyebrows; these had grown in again, for some reason, in the form of inverted V’s, which gave to his long, loose, amiably degraded face a genuine touch of Hell. His purple lips were set in a lax perpetual smile—though nobody had ever heard him laugh. No stranger, meeting him, could possibly have trusted him a yard.
The amount of assorted liquor which Le Zouz had drunk in the course of the evening would defy a mathematician to compute; and as usual, even his friends and partisans had difficulty in deciding just how far it had affected him. He was talking now volubly and a little at random, but with perfect clearness; he seemed to be in a mood of almost idiot amiability. But you never knew with Le Zouz—as his Ministers and subordinates had learned to their cost; he was always at least three people under these conditions, and he could change from one to the other with bewildering rapidity. For the moment, however, he seemed set fair; he would talk till daybreak or till the rum gave out, whichever was sooner.
He had been dilating for some time on the spiritual effects of coloured electric lights, when he checked suddenly and said:
“But my Hippolyte! Where, then, is my Hippolyte?”
They informed him tactfully that his Hippolyte had been taken upstairs to bed; the Consul was tired, he wished to sleep. Le Zouz beamed.
“But he is comfortable? Everything has been arranged?”
They assured him that Hippolyte was thoroughly comfortable and at ease.
“He sleeps!” said Le Zouz, his maroon lips parted in maudlin delight. “It is like a child, like a little child. I should like to see.” He rose somewhat unsteadily:—or at least carefully—to his feet.
“I love him,” said Le Zouz. “He is my brother. I shall kiss him a good-night.”
He wandered unsteadily in the direction of the Café; the company fell to re-discussing the spiritual effects of coloured lights, on which there was still much to say; a certain Colonel Bouc, a negro, who had been asleep for some time, woke up and went out.
Full of love and kindness, Le Zouz, with his crooked smile, groped his way up the stairs of the Miramar. He knew quite well where Hippolyte must be; there was only one habitable bedroom in the Miramar apart from that occupied by Madame Habatron—into which that lady had prudently locked herself some time ago. Le Zouz knew that bedroom well; he groped his way to it. He loved his Hippolyte at that moment as only those can love who have drunk as much as had Le Zouz; the world was not big enough to contain his desire to see the dear fellow in his childlike sleep. He reached the open door and switched on the light.
The Consul Hippolyte was certainly comfortable in the extreme. He lay on his back, tucked up nicely in an enormous mahogany bed, his head in the exact middle of the pillow. Only the head appeared; the rest of him was an irregular oblong under the bedclothes. He breathed easily and gently, and there was a smile on his large expansive face.
Le Zouz, his hand on the bedpost, gazed down on this pleasant picture in a perfect transport of fraternal love. He thought, “How beautiful he is! I will kiss him.” Then it struck him that the mosquito nets had not been let down; his mood changed to annoyance. That was negligent, that; it was careless, bad! The mosquitoes could bite one; one could contract the fever. “First I will kiss him,” thought Le Zouz, “and then I will adjust the curtains.” He took a step forward; and with that step, like lightning, he was struck by one of those changes of personality his followers had so often deplored. With a saddened smile he drew the formidable revolver and, leaning forward, shot Hippolyte neatly between the eyes.
The appalling din of the explosion in that narrow space brought him back to reality; with an agility very remarkable in one in his condition, he slid to the doorway; his hand fell on the electric switch; it snapped over. From bright illumination there was instant darkness. And then, from just in front of him, there came the light to end all lights and the noise to end all noises. The shot hit Le Zouz in the middle of his biggest pockmark, just below the right eye; the force of it blew him a couple of yards along the landing, where he fell flat on his back. The face he upturned to the ceiling could no longer be described as particularly dissolute; in fact, it could no longer be described even as a face.
Some four hours later, Colin Strathdee, asleep in his pleasant bedroom at the Hotel Zirque, was roused by an insistent knocking at the door. With a hasty movement he swept a bottle of rum from the bedside table into the open wardrobe behind him; it was not that Strathdee drank an inordinate quantity of rum, but he liked a drop last thing at night, and rum by one’s bedside looks bad; it is unsuitable in the tutor of a decidedly Puritanical palace. Drawing up the sheet—for it had been a hot night and Strathdee was averse to pyjamas—he called:
“Entrez!”
The hotel boy, whose name was Louis Philippe, came in cautiously; he had known slippers flung at his head before now, and Strathdee’s aim was good.
“It is the Editor of Le Quotidien. He desires to see you.” Strathdee was one of those eupeptic people who wake up completely and at once, and in full command of their faculties. His little black eyes twinkled.
“And what does Monsieur desire?”
“He did not say.”
Strathdee stared up at the ceiling. He was accustomed to visits from odder folk than the Editor of Le Quotidien, but not often quite so early in the day.—or late in the night.
“What time is it?”
“It is five minutes to six.”
Strathdee—it was a habit of his—drew his lower lip over the upper till the edges of his crisp little black moustache tickled the inside of it; he considered.
“All, right. I’ll come down. Ask Monsieur to do me the pleasure of having some coffee.”
“Monsieur is already having a brandy.”
The hell he is, thought Strathdee, pulling on a short-sleeved shirt and a pair of drill trousers; then something is up. He took time to wash, and brush his teeth, then he went leisurely downstairs to the little bar behind the dining-room.
The Editor of Le Quotidien was one Soutey—a name which correctly, if unflatteringly, described his appearance. He was a negro and a strong supporter of Hippolyte and the Nègre Party—as Le Quotidien always had been. It was one of two newspapers published in Larcadie; the other—a gossipy rag called Le Mardi, entirely pro-Mulâtre—was run by the ubiquitous Poutin. Le Quotidien was much the better paper, perhaps because Soutey had served his journalistic apprenticeship in Baltimore, Maryland. Soutey spoke what he believed to be English—a translated French with Baltimore, Maryland, often creeping in. Strathdee said, with his eye on the brandy glass:
“Hello, Soutey! Making a night of it?”
But Soutey was in poor case; he had had practically no sleep and was feeling awful. He was in no mood for diversions.
“Ah, mon Dieu, Sadille”—“Sadille” was about as near as most Lassoux could get to Strathdee’s name—“do not jest. It is very, very serious. Boy, it’s hell.”
Strathdee saw that it was. He said kindly, “Well, well; cough it up.”
“It is the Consul. Our Hippolyte. He is morder.”
Strathdee’s black eyebrows went up. “That’s what comes of Fraternal Reunions. What did I tell you? Who did it? Le Zouz?”
“Yes. But Le Zouz is morder also.”
“Glory be!” said Strathdee. “What a holocaust. Well, it’s cleared the air, anyway. And who did that?”
“It is not known.” But Soutey’s eyes shifted to the floor. “I think likely it will never be known.”
Strathdee thought, So—o! He said teasingly:
“But the Police?”
“The Police, they are making every exertion. The Police, they are reticent. Perhaps they have a clue.”
“Is that what the Quotidien’s going to say?”
“Yes. The Chief of Police, he is most anxious——”
“I’ll bet he is. Well—the chap can’t get out of the island.”
Soutey said unguardedly, “He must get out of the island sometime. Or the Mulâtres they gonna morder him too.”
Strathdee thought, So-o! again, but he said only: “Is the Quotidien going to say that as well?”
“Ah, no! . . . But, Sadille——”
“Uh?”
“Where we go from here? Hell, Sadille, what gonna happen?”
“What do you think?”
“Search me! Ah, mon Dieu, it is grave. I’ll say.”
Strathdee produced a packet of Poutin’s cigarettes, offered it, lit one himself. The political situation was certainly delicate and complicated; almost too delicate and complicated for that ungodly hour of the morning. The only thing he could see clearly was the vision of a solemn young negro with thick-lensed glasses and thicker-lensed inhibitions to whom in a few hours time he should have been imparting instruction in English literature. His pupil; Telemaque, the son of Hippolyte. He said with a false air of certainty:
“It’s quite simple. Telemaque succeeds.”
Soutey said immediately, “Without doubt. Oh, sure!”
And we both believe that, thought Strathdee; like hell we do! Aloud he said:
“Well, that’s all right. What do you want me to do?”
Soutey became urgent. “You must go to Les Fleuris. We have there the poor widow, hein? And the orphans—ah, the poor orphans: the boy, the girl; Telemaque, Celeste. Say, Sadille, you gotta fix it.”
Strathdee said, “Fix what?”
Soutey leaned over the table so excitedly that he knocked over his brandy-glass; fortunately it had long been empty.
“Say, Sadille! . . . It is our Telemaque. He is a good young man, oh he is wonnerful. But—what to do? He will not know. How he will know? Sadille, he trus’ you. You—you have the influence. You—you must help.”
Strathdee’s eyes half closed, but they remained very bright.
“What’s all this about help? Telemaque’s all right. He’s Consul from now on. That’s all.”
“Without doubt,” said Soutey, wriggling. “Without doubt. Oh hell, sure; sure! Telemaque’s O.K. Veritably.”
“You mean,” said Strathdee, taking pity, “there’s going to be trouble?”
“There is always trouble.”
“But special, particular trouble.”
“Yes.”
“Such as?”
“Such as the son of Le Zouz. Florian. Ah, mon Dieu, that Florian! Oh, boy!”
Strathdee said—with truth—that he saw.
It took Strathdee some time to get rid of Soutey without committing himself to anything; he had no intention at the moment of going beyond a shave, a bath, and the excellent fruit-and-coffee breakfast for which the Hotel Zirque could always be trusted. This accomplished, he had a brief telephone conversation with Les Fleuris; that is to say, the conversation was brief once the connection was established but, as usual in Larcadie, this involved a twenty-minutes’ battle. Les Fleuris was Hippolyte’s house, high on the slopes of Les Myosotes; no Consul had lived in the Palace since two in succession had been blown up there; it was too big and dark and sprawling a place to guard with any certainty. Neither the house of Les Fleuris nor anything in it belonged to Hippolyte, who had been a poor farmer and had not enjoyed the Consulate long enough to make himself otherwise; like so much else in Lassou, the place was Poutin’s—who liked, where possible and profitable, to be friends with both camps. As he had expected, Strathdee had been able to make contact only with a servant and one half-imbecile with terror and excitement; to this person he intimated that he presumed M. Telemaque would not be studying that morning. Without much hope that his message would be understood or transmitted, he presented his condolences to the family—and his felicitations to Telemaque on his accession to power. He said he would give himself the pleasure of calling in the evening. Then he rang off.
The question then arose—what to do next? Strathdee thought there was no immediate hurry: if there had been a prepared coup, events would have moved by now. Quite evidently there had been no prepared coup; everyone in Larcadie was as stunned by surprise as Soutey, and in that condition they would remain for at least twenty-four hours.
Drawing up his lip and feeling on it the bristling ends of his moustache, Strathdee thought he would have a word with Bosomworth. Privately, he considered Bosomworth a slow mover and much too English-minded ever to do any good in Lassou; but on the Law and the Constitution—for what these things were worth—he was knowledgeable. Strathdee got out his car and drove through a town where everything seemed to be much as usual.
He succeeded in pinning down Bosomworth in the little office behind his Magazin in the Rue Grande. It was a stifling den, little aerated by the table fan that buzzed and swung in a corner. The fan wafted about the hot air from the shop with its reek of incense; Bosomworth believed in incense—it was du mystère, du sinistre, je ne sais quoi, all the things tourists were looking for in Larcadie. Strathdee said:
“Well? What happens now?”
Bosomworth looked at him sourly. He disliked Strathdee for several reasons. First, he was unquestionably British, but from a part of Britain so alien and remote from Buckinghamshire that he might as well—indeed, better—have been Dutch or Norse; second, because he knew Strathdee laughed at him; but really—though this he did not admit—because Strathdee, having lived in Lassou a bare two years, was far deeper in the island’s affairs—political, social, salvation, damnation—than he was or ever would be. He said:
“You know as well as I do.”
Strathdee said, with that annoying Scots accent, that disquieting Scots twinkle:
“But how well’s that? Instruct me.”
Bosomworth put a cigarette in the celebrated holder; he thought, I’m smoking far too many cigarettes; what else is there to do? Aloud he said, a little pontifically:
“The law’s clear enough. It’s all provided for. Under the Constitution, if anything happens to the Consul, the Legislature’s dissolved. The Council of Affairs meets—they’ve all been nominated—and elects a new Consul. It’s perfectly simple.”
“You’re forgetting the Law of Succession. Le Zouz’s law.”
Le Zouz had held the Consulship for the almost unprecedented period of twelve years; only one incumbent had held it longer since the life-tenure of the Liberator Boufallon a hundred and thirty years earlier. And in the last year of his office he had managed to get through a law making the Consulship—hitherto, in theory at least, purely elective—hereditary. If someone had shot Le Zouz eighteen months ago, son Florian would have become Consul. Because Le Zouz, who liked to dot his ‘t’s’ and cross his ‘i’s,’ had made the law specifically mention Florian. This had not been so difficult as one might suppose—nothing in Lassou was difficult for a Consul who was a Consul; and Florian certainly was, by universal consent, a magnificent young man—handsome, brave, talented, a genius. On the other hand, it may have been his Law of Succession that brought Le Zouz down; or it may only have been time and the ever-changing moods of the Lassoux.
Bosomworth thought—Le Zouz is down, anyway; and now he’s out. He said, blowing smoke:
“In my opinion the Law of Succession doesn’t stand.”
“Why not?”
“Well, you know as well as I do, there was a Bill before the Legislature repealing it.”
There was, thought Strathdee; Hippolyte was ass enough for that. Or perhaps Telemaque as heir-apparent disheartened him; I wouldn’t blame him. He said:
“It wasn’t passed. And on your own showing the Legislature’s dissolved. Le Zouz’s Act’s in the Code.”
“Yes, maybe. But—it was a personal law to Le Zouz. It was all for his blasted Florian. If Le Zouz had died as Consul—ah, then! But he didn’t: he was outed over a year ago.” He gave Strathdee a curious look. “I should forget about the Law of Succession if I were you.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. Because if it operates at all, it brings in Florian. Specifically.”
Strathdee smoked for a while in silence; then:
“I don’t see it. The Law stands, it hasn’t been repealed. It said any male heir, including Florian—not only Florian. Consul Hippolyte’s dead. His son succeeds. Telemaque.”
Bosomworth said, nastily, “You’ll have a job to make them take on Telemaque. Even the Nègres won’t back him. They wouldn’t back Hippolyte. I don’t know why, but they didn’t.”
Strathdee reflected; it was true enough; the Nègre Party had never really supported Hippolyte—not as they should have done. It was one of the mysteries even he had never solved. Bosomworth said:
“Telemaque! Oh, lord. If it came to a choice between Telemaque and Florian——”
Strathdee bit his lip. “Maybe. But that’s no reason why the poor little bastard shouldn’t have his chance. Right’s right.”
“Not in Lassou it isn’t.” He said through a yawn, “You’ll see; the Law of Succession will be forgotten. The Council will meet and elect a successor. God knows who it’ll be—probably Poutin. Damn it, man, there’s no money in hereditary successions. Can’t you see that?”
“Yes there is—if they’re contested. If Florian——”
“Florian’s far away. He’s busy.”
“Florian’s at the University in San Hieronimo. It’s an hour’s flying time from here to the South American mainland. Well, say an hour and a half to San Hieronimo. If they sent him a wire this morning——”
Bosomworth sat up. The word “Revolution” had long ceased to alarm him, he had seen too many of them;still, they were a damned nuisance. Endless cipher telegrams; the Foreign Office waking up and pestering . . .
“How d’you know they sent him a wire?”
“I don’t know. They could have.”
“You think he’d come?”
“I don’t see why he shouldn’t.”
“Oh, nonsense! Florian doesn’t want the place.”
“He’s got friends who do. Down in San Hieronimo.”
Bosomworth felt scared and the feeling annoyed him; he decided to end the interview. He threw the ivory holder on the table.
“Oh, rubbish! You’re just making up ideas. It’ll all pan out as I said just now. They’ll have an election. We’ll have a new Consul. Plus ça change——”
Strathdee’s mouth shut like a trap. He stood up.
“Yes—a new Consul. It’s going to be Telemaque.”
Said Bosomworth, “You haven’t got a hope!” And Strathdee, maddeningly Scots:
“I’m no’ so sure about that!”
Strathdee slept in the afternoon, and after tea—a meal on which the ideas of Aberdeenshire and the Hotel Zirque clashed violently—he carried out his visit to Les Fleuris. He was in truth detesting this duty and was feeling—for Strathdee—uncommonly nervous; but nobody would have suspected this from his appearance and manner. Neat and dapper, his short, slim, muscular little body was encased in a wholly immaculate silk suit; the battleship grey of it showed off his dark moustache and his thick black wavy hair, and those little black eyes that could look like a girl’s or a devil’s or just like a pair of boot-buttons. There was something dynamic about his alert figure as he strode up the long flight of steps to the verandah. Les Fleuris was an almost too beautiful house; it had been designed by a Lassou architect who had studied in Paris, Cincinnati and Bogota, and had introduced ideas from each. Inside, it was crammed with heavy French furniture; Poutin had bought up the contents of a chateau on one of his periodical visits to France, each of which was said to cost him in the nature of ten thousand pounds; he had dumped these antiques in Les Fleuris, which he was then taking over as a bad debt from a certain Minister of Public Works who (like so many others) was leaving Lassou hurriedly. That the house was ecstatically modern and the furniture a century out of date was just one of those incongruities which gave Lassou its charm.
Strathdee’s first interview was with Hippolyte’s widow; she was no more ridiculous and absurd than any other grief-stricken woman—though the fact that she had attired herself in the fullest French mourning (which she must have borrowed or laid in on spec) did give her rather the appearance of a chocolate hearse. Strathdee said, plunging:
“Excellence! I am desolated——”
The stout lady in front of him sighed deeply.
“Ah—then! ‘Excellence’? It is ‘Excellence’ no more.”
“But yes!” said Strathdee. “The mother of the Consul is still Excellence just as much as his wife.”
He seemed to have said the right thing: a flash of annoyance woke up Madame’s features.
“The mother of the Consul? Ah, yes, perhaps. But—that Telemaque. What good? He does not want.”
“Doesn’t want to be Consul?”
“The least in the world. Figure to yourself, he wishes to be a recluse. A hermit. He wishes to read books.”
“That’s all right,” said Strathdee, “I’ll have a word with him. Of course he’ll be Consul. That arranges itself.”
Madame’s enormous bosom heaved.
“He has enemies.”
“Good. We’ll deal with them. You let me have a talk with Telemaque.”
Celeste, Hippolyte’s daughter, came in. Le Zouz in his speech had described her as beautiful; she was hardly perhaps that, but she had the round cheeks—and other roundnesses, the eager intelligent eyes, the expectant smile of the young negress of nineteen. She was two years younger than Telemaque. Strathdee thought—and not for the first time: If only you had been your brother; I could have made something of you. In that heavily pious household Celeste carried the one spark—it was a feeble spark, but it was there—of mischief. Celeste had ambitions: whatever she wanted, it was not to be a recluse, it was not to read books. Madame said:
“Ah, my poor daughter, my little chicken! We are all in God’s hands, Monsieur; it is to Him that we must look for help. He alone——”
Strathdee hastily concurred and made his escape at the first possible moment. He had some experience of Hippolyte’s household when they assumed the mantle of the Protestant Mission. Unexceptionable sentiments no doubt—but, in Lassou, they did not get you very far.
Telemaque was said to be—and in fact was—in his work-room. This was a curious blend of the practical and the spiritual; it was furnished solely with half a dozen bookcases and a carpenter’s table with a lathe. At this last Telemaque delighted to make little wooden toys of a perfectly useless character; things like cricket-bails or eggs or cornucopias; he turned these very neatly and then painted them in glaring colours. Tiring of this art from time to time, he would take down a book from the shelves and gape at it. At the moment he was studying Shakespeare; but neither Shakespeare nor Strathdee could induce him to speak even tolerable English. His worthiness was simply extraordinary.
On this afternoon, Telemaque was at his worst. He was wearing the open-necked shirt and blue cotton trousers of the Lassou peasant; his enormous pebble-lensed glasses sat upon his nose—if you could call it a nose—so that when he raised his head his eyes stared at you like the magnified eyes of a frog. Even Strathdee, who was used to him, was momentarily dismayed. He had a brief mental vision of that reputed Prince Charming, Florian; he dismissed it hurriedly.
He said, in the careful English he kept for his pupil:
“What are you reading, Telemaque?”
Telemaque said, “Ammelt.”
“Hamlet, eh? Well, now, that’s interesting. You’re a bit like Hamlet yourself.”
Telemaque put down his book carefully and took off his spectacles; his face improved instantly by some fifty per cent.; Strathdee thought, the very first thing, we’ll have to get him a decent pair of glasses, not these atrocities. Telemaque said:
“Ammelt was eh Prins.”
“Well, so are you. In fact, you’re a king. Which is more than Hamlet ever was.”
Telemaque was not inspired. “You mean Consul . . . Sad-dee, I do not want.”
“Of course you don’t. Not yet. But you will—when the shock’s over.” He began to talk at large about responsibilities, family obligations, noblesse oblige, Hippolyte—whatnot. Telemaque stood like a bullock, goggling through his glasses which he had put on again. He looked sulky and stupid—anything on earth except the Prince of Denmark.
“Sad-dee, I do not want. I do not like. I like to learn books. I like to be Mission. Sad-dee, I tink God not want me to be Consul.”
“That’s a very presumptuous thing to say,” said Strathdee. “And you’ll live to think different. I’ll have a talk with you about that.” He tried another line. “You’re reading Hamlet. Hamlet’s father was murdered . . .”
“He was morder? Ammelt has morder?”
“Yes. No. Hamlet’s father was murdered by Hamlet’s uncle. Your father was murdered by a mulâtre called Le Zouz. Hamlet didn’t sit down under it, and neither should you. You want to get back on these people.”
Telemaque glowered. “The Book say we turn the odder check.”
“‘Cheek’” said Strathdee, correcting mechanically. “But the Book didn’t mean people like Le Zouz. I’ll explain that also to you one of these days. Meantime, there’s things to be done.”
Telemaque said—and really, you couldn’t help liking him; he was so honest and sincere about it—“I don’ want fightings. I like pipples to like. I wan’ happiness.”
Strathdee dilated for a minute or two on the meaning of happiness; the greatest good of the greatest number; power; the father-sovereign—or as it might be Consul; the contented people; Pax. But he saw it wasn’t going in. He had a sudden inspiration.
“Our Bibiothèque. Our Musée. You know—what we’ve talked about. What about them?”
A slow gleam appeared in Telemaque’s eyes like a very lazy fish rising to fly in a very stagnant pool; Strathdee saw he had struck the right line at last.
“Sad-dee! The Lib’y. The Musée. We could do? We could eddoocate?”
“Telemaque, a Consul can do anything, Anything.”
“The pipples, the Lassoux, they need . . . I could do?”
“As Consul; yes. In fact, Telemaque——”
“Uh?”
“You must do. If you don’t do it, it’ll never be done. If you don’t do it, there’ll never be any Bibliothèque, any Museée, in Lassou.”
“No Lib’y? No Musée . . . I could do?”
“Absolutely. You can make it the first thing.”
“Sad-dee! The pipples, the Lassoux, they are beast.” (You said it, thought Strathdee, but he waited patiently.) “It is because they do not know. Nothings they know. We could eddoocate?”
“We could. You could.”
“Sad-dee! They not found Jeeze.”
“No. Well—that too.”
“I want,” said Telemaque, getting it quite clear, “I want that the pipples like. I want that they know. Then they are happy, isn’t it?”
“Every time,” said Strathdee. He decided that the moment for departure had arrived. “Well, my boy, it’s in your hands. It’s up to you. Think it over.”
Telemaque’s eyes, behind the pebble-lenses, began at last to shine.
Strathdee drove home slowly, deep in thought. It was indeed impossible to drive other than slowly, for the road, like all roads in Lassou, was execrable. It was also blocked by cavalcades and caravans of robust brown-legged, brown-bosomed women toiling up Les Myosotes after market, with enormous baskets balanced on their turbaned heads. They were strong as horses: the great shining muscles in the calves beneath their kilted petticoats put the rough road behind them at a half-trot. They chattered and shrieked at one another in the incomprehensible language of the island, than which they knew no other. Among them went their males at a swinging slouch—carrying nothing; in tattered trousers and greasy hats. They were going home, all these people, to the hills; to some little hut with a clump of bananas round it and hens pecking and dogs slinking and snarling. They were going right away from civilization and the streets and lights of Larcadie, into the darkness of the bare hills, where they would forget the Holy Father and St. Joseph and St. Antony, and remember Ogoun and Erzulie and Damballa. Two miles away a plane was taking off for Miami; much nearer, the members of the Cercle Lettré were drinking cocktails and discussing politics and art. And up there, in Les Myosotes and for miles beyond them, till you hit the sea on the other side of the island—up there was the Congo.
Good God! thought Strathdee, what a place! “Asylum Island” that American journalist fellow had called it: he wasn’t far wrong. Crazy, lunatic, bats. But his heart leapt, his eyes brightened. What an island—and what a chance. I never meant to come here, he thought; but, man, I wouldn’t be anywhere else! Not just now—especially not just now.
“I want that the pipples like. I want that they know.” Telamaque the Reformer; of all the incredible figures. The solemn little owl; the decent little mutt. And these were his “pipples”—these horse-women and wolf-men, clattering back to their devil-ridden wilderness. These on the one hand; and on the other the sleek perfect mulatto gentlemen down at the Cercle Lettré, who didn’t care a curse for the “pipples” or for anything but themselves; and with them the charming, easy, sweet-tnannered, educated negroes of Hippolyte’s administration, whose ends and ambitions were precisely the same. The Chief of Police; the General; the Air Marshal; the Minister of the Interior; the Principal of the College; the doctors and lawyers; Soutey, Poutin. What an island. And what a Reformer . . . And what a hope!
Telemaque! thought Strathdee; there’s material to work with. The poor little bastard! He’ll have his Lib’y and his Musée—if I can get them for him. . . . But, O Lord, in Thine infinite wisdom and mercy, keep Florian back a bit. Give us a chance!
The military plane of the South American state took off from San Hieronimo at two p.m. precisely. At three-seventeen it was sighted from the airfield of Larcadie, though it had been in wireless contact with the control tower there for some time previously. For longer still it had been in another and more spiritual kind of contact with the intelligentsia of Lassou; quite a surprising number of people knew—it is difficult to say just how—that it was coming. Amongst others, the Chief of Police, who told his Lieutenant, who told X, who told Y, who told Soutey. Just before three o’clock, Strathdee, lying in prayerful meditation in a long chair on the verandah of the Hotel Zirque, was roused by Soutey dashing up in a huge American car and a cloud of yellow dust. Soutey, needless to say, was wildly excited.
“Yes, yes; it is Florian who comes. Ah, mon Dieu! Oh, gee!”
Strathdee swore more vigorously and more bitterly. It was less than twenty-four hours since he had implored his Maker to delay Florian’s onslaught; so much for the efficacy of prayer. He said:
“He’s not losing much time.”
“Ah, he is a Mercury, that one. He is a Pegasus. Florian’s a slick guy. I’ll say.”
“Why the devil didn’t they stop him? They could have.” Soutey’s eyes rounded. “But—Sadille! How to stop? He comes to assist at the funeral.”
“Whose funeral?” said Strathdee; but Soutey was far too wrought up to follow that. Instead he said:
“I have here my automobile. We should depart. Come on: let’s go.”
“Where to? The airfield?”
“But of course the airfield. Many will be there. Let us see. Oh, boy, get cracking.”
Soutey was right: many were at the airfield. A nondescript throng jostled at the gate, giving each other orders and wrong information. Soutey, shouting and gesticulating, managed to drive through them without homicide and to convince the Sous-officier of Police—who had known him from infancy—that he was indeed the Editor of Le Quotidien. But once inside, on the tarmac, his courage evaporated; he looked round uneasily at the row of notables who were waiting there.
“Sadille! I don’ like. I don’ see no friends.”
Strathdee said snappishly, “What the hell do you expect—a reception committee headed by Hippolyte’s ghost?. . . Well, here we come, anyway.”
The plane, like a huge bee, flew in from the ocean at a steady two hundred and fifty; it was a small monoplane, painted dark blue. Like a bee it drove straight for the airfield buildings as if it would sweep them out of existence. Soutey yelled, “He will crash. He is destroy. Attaboy!” But a hundred feet from the far edge of the airfield, the pilot pulled back his stick; with a sudden thundering roar the plane leapt upwards, skimmed the assembled heads—some of which ducked ignominiously—climbed at an impossible angle and shot away over the summits of Les Myosotes. Soutey wiped his face: “Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!” Strathdee said bitterly, “Swank!”
Whoever was in control of the plane seemed satisfied with this preliminary demonstration, for presently it reappeared at a great height, circled the airfield several times and at last swooped to what Strathdee had to admit was a singularly perfect landing. It fetched up broadside-on to the airfield buildings, a side door opened, and there leapt gracefully to the ground a very magnificent figure. Florian. Strathdee, who was morbidly self-conscious in regard to matters of height, saw that the figure was all of six feet tall, and it had added to the effect by wearing knee-high boots and black riding-breeches; it had a grey silk shirt and a black tie, and in its black leather belt was a quite uncompromising revolver. The magnificence posed for a moment, one hand on hip the other idling on the butt of this disagreeable weapon; its superb, olive young face looked contemptuously around, its black hair fluttered in the wind. For a moment—tableau! then the notables made a concerted rush.
Soutey rushed among them, and was lost. But Strathdee stood staring at the plane. For out of that door in its side was emerging—a little unsteadily—a second passenger, and this time it was a lady; and it was impossible, even at that distance, not to perceive that she was a lady of quite unusual personal attractions. She was plainly dressed in a dark brown skirt, neither long nor short, and a khaki shirt which yet contrived to be seductive; she had brown silk stockings and brown suede shoes. On her head she wore a brown hat of a fascinating tricorne shape. She stood demurely behind the magnificence, carrying a brand-new leather despatch-case in her hand.
The pilot of the plane had apparently had enough of Lassou; he threw out a couple of valises and a big leather mule-bag—all of which had the air of having been bought for the occasion—slammed his side door, revved up his engines and taxied off towards the runway. Strathdee had a glimpse of him as the plane wheeled; dark-faced, in a uniform of a peculiar light sage-green; there was gold lace on his cap. Strathdee whistled softly. Then, his upper lip drawn down very tight, he made his way forward to the noisy group on the tarmac. It was much as he had expected: the leaders of the mulatto party were presenting one another with that grace and volubility of which only they were capable; Florian the Magnificent was receiving them like royalty. To his other attractions, as viewed from a distance, he now added fine teeth and radiant smile. For a hopeless moment Strathdee tried to pose Telemaque in the shoes of this Conquering Hero; shrugging, he gave it up in despair.
The lady in brown remained meantime where she was; she still stood demurely in the background like a waiting-maid, the leather despatch-case dangling from her hand; but she looked round her quizzingly and with the greatest self-possession. Scratching his cheek, Strathdee studied her; she improved at close quarters; she was indeed magnificently worth looking at. If he had known—as he was to learn later—that she had been sick all the way across, and culminatingly so during these final antics above Les Myosotes, he would have admired her still more. She was obviously a good deal older than Florian; more my own age, thought Strathdee—which was, in point of fact, thirty-three. She was dark as he had at first thought; but he saw now that it was the tan of sunburn, not the natural golden-olive of her companion. She had a Spanish panache about her, but her face, Strathdee saw, was not a particularly Spanish face—not Latin-American-Spanish, anyway. It was unquestionably handsome as the sun. If she abode there in the attitude of a servant or a courier or a caddie, it was, one felt at once, merely because she chose to. She stood poised and upright on what Strathdee could not fail to observe as a very beautiful pair of ankles. Now, who the devil? . . . Her lips slightly parted, she gazed round her with an agreeable interest; for a moment her eyes met Strathdee’s; it seemed to him that they lingered; then they passed on. Strathdee could have done with more of them.
Through the babble of voices there burst suddenly the splitting roar of the South American plane taking off. It streaked down the runway, whizzed over the cactus hedge, and in a moment, it seemed, became a speck. And as if at a signal the brown lady stepped forward and touched Florian on the arm; it was a light touch and deferential, but he whipped round almost guiltily. He made no attempt to present her to the Reception Committee but Strathdee’s long ears caught something about “My Secretary.” There was some constrained bowing and murmuring; the brown lady smiled indulgently. Then the whole party moved off towards the waiting cars.
Soutey, caught up in their midst, moved with them. He had quite evidently forgotten Strathdee; he had even got into his car and had started the engine when Strathdee hailed him.
“Hi! Soutey! D’you expect me to walk home?”
Soutey came out of his trance. “Mon Dieu, Sadille! I am sorry. I am distrait. You must forgive. Oh, boy; what d’ya know!”
Strathdee said, half-choking in the red dust in the wake of the royal train.
“Soutey; who the hell was that?”
“Eh? Who is that? Ciel!—it is Florian.”
“Oh, Christ, I know that. But—the woman.”
“Perhaps—perhaps it is his sister.”
“Perhaps it is his grandmother’s auntie. Come off it, Soutey.”
Soutey said, very uncomfortably, “I think—I do not know, bien entendu—but I think perhaps it is La Chouie.”
“La How-much?”
“La Choucasse.”
“I see—Chouie for short, eh?”
“Yes, yes. It is what she is called when—when——”
“When what?”
“When,” said Soutey, almost writhing in his seat, “Once—long ago—she was here.”
“What? In Lassou?”
“Yes.” But his evasiveness became a perfect contortion.
“She—went away.”
“Went away? Or sent away? And why was she called the Jackdaw?”
“I do not know. I am not here then. I was Baltimore.”
Strathdee subsided, sighing; when Soutey started telling lies, it was hopeless. In any case the dust from the cars in front had become so dense that it was impossible to open one’s mouth. Presently, however, they reached the hard, pot-holed metal of the Grande Rue, and there Strathdee said, on a new tack:
“Did you notice that plane?”
“Course I notice. Nice plane.”
“Damn nice. Too nice. It wasn’t a charter. It wasn’t the Linea Aeropostale.”
“Uh?”
“It was a military plane.”
“Si. Perfectly. It was military. So what?”
“Well, I don’t like it; that’s all.”
And there’s another thing I don’t like, he thought, carefully dusting his clothes in the Hotel Zirque; another thing. There was only one of our side at that show this afternoon, and that was Soutey. And Soutey, God blast him, he’s half sold already.
It was strangely impossible, anywhere in Lassou or at least anywhere in Larcadie, to avoid Poutin. If you took a glass of rum, it was Poutin; if you lit a cigarette, it was Poutin; if you borrowed some money, it was probably Poutin again. And if you listened to the wireless, it was necessarily Poutin because Poutin held the licence for the transmitting station. Soutey had tried to buy it; a syndicate of Souteys had tried to buy it; but the transmitter was a toy for which Poutin was prepared to pay anything. So, of course, he got it.
At five that afternoon, Poutin informed Strathdee, lying smoking on his bed in the Hotel Zirque, that M. Florian Malmaison had arrived that afternoon by air from South America. “He has come,” said Poutin’s news-reader in his beautiful accents, “to assist at the sad obsequies of his lamented father the ex-Consul Baptiste Malmaison.” (Baptiste Malmaison was in fact Le Zouz’s full name.) “He is accompanied,” said Poutin’s news-reader, “by La Señora Branzada, who will be his secretary during his stay in our island. We present our condolences” . . . and so on. “We trust that our so vigilant Police will presently unveil this so dastardly assassin” . . . and so forth.
Strathdee lit another cigarette; his black eyes twinkled at the ceiling. La Señora Branzada, eh? So she was married—or at any rate she was going to say she was. Branzada—if he existed—could only be a Latin-American; no such name ever came out of Lassou. The girl—well, she had a girl’s figure, a girl’s face, a girl’s ankles; by God, yes!—the girl, then, had looked and carried herself like a Spaniard; if she was married to a man called Branzada, she probably was a Spaniard. But what became then of the lady Lassou in earlier days had called the Jackdaw: La Choucasse, or for short, La Chouie? The tone of that “La Chouie” was familiar; was it enhearment—or contempt? And why the Jackdaw? And what the hell had a Spanish girl who was now Mrs. Branzada, what the hell had she been making in this galley?
Strathdee’s quick mind had memorized every word of the broadcast, which hadn’t been informative. Of course Florian came to attend his father’s funeral; that would be the excuse till the coast cleared; if it never cleared, then it would remain the excuse and Florian would go home again with his tail between his legs. The vigilance of the Police in pursuit of the so dastardly assassin would wax or wane on like considerations. No, the broadcast hadn’t said much; yet in a sense it had said one thing too many. When you are announcing the arrival of a potentate, a visiting monarch, a Colonial Premier or a film star, you don’t usually mention his “secretary” by name. Not, that is to say, if she is no more than a “secretary.”
Strathdee looked at his watch. It was the hour when that worthy little creature of habit, Bosomworth, would be sitting in his office at the British Consulate; sitting there doing nothing. Sitting there intending to do nothing till half-past six; but what the hell! thought Strathdee, what do we pay him for? He put on a coat and tie, and drove himself down to the harbour.
Bosomworth was sitting in his office doing nothing; he received his visitor with no enthusiasm but with no more than his usual distaste. He said—for Bosomworth, handsomely—
“Well, you were right. Florian’s come.”
Strathdee said, “Fine do I know that. I was down and saw him.”
“Oh? And what did you think of him?”
Strathdee considered. “He looked too good to be true.”
Bosomworth shook his head. “He isn’t, though. He’s the complete Nonsuch. Shoots coins in the air, hunts lions——”
“Lions?”
“Well, pumas, jaguar—whatever they have in that damned place; does the hundred yards in eleven seconds; jumps his own height; speaks ten languages; writes poetry “
Strathdee said, unmoved, “Just what I said; too good to be true. You can’t judge by appearances.”
Bosomworth grinned. “I hope not—for your sake. Telemaque——”
“Never heed Telemaque,” said Strathdee, “Telemaque’s all right. . . . Who’s the woman?”
Bosomworth took a cigarette; he assumed his irritating mood of official superiority.
“What did you think of her?”
“I wouldn’t mind going to bed with her,” said Strathdee coarsely, “and that’s a fact.”
“You won’t, though,” said Bosomworth. “She’s a married woman.”
“‘La Señora Branzada,’” quoted Strathdee. “That’s true, is it?”
“Perfectly. Why shouldn’t it be?”
“Who’s Branzada?”
“Oh, nobody much. Bloke with a lot of tin who had a cocoa business in South America. They found some oil on his land and he made a pot out of that.”
“He wasn’t ever in Lassou?”
“Not that I know of.”
“But she was once. So—so I’m told, anyway.”
Bosomworth cocked his head on one side, the complete official know-all.
“Now who told you that?”
“Soutey.”
“Sooty? That black idiot? What Sooty knows. . . . As a matter of fact he’s right; she was here once. When she was quite a girl. Ages ago.”
“She can’t be very old now.”
“I should say—thirty. Thirty, thirty-one.”
“Known to the Police,” said Strathdee, “as La Choucasse. Or Chouie for short. Kicked out of the island.”
Bosomworth was annoyed, and showed it. “You seem to have found out a lot in a short time.”
“I’m a quick worker,” said Strathdee modestly. “But come on, Bozzy—what was she doing here? And why was she kicked out?”
The questions restored Bosomworth’s good humour—though he was never sure that he relished being called “Bozzy” by Strathdee. He said, importantly:
“I’ve got a file about her somewhere. There’s quite a dossier——”
“Oh, come on, Bozzy—you know all about it without the file. You must have been here at the time.”
Bosomworth rubbed his chin. “There wasn’t much, really.”
“No moral turpitude, eh?”
“No-o. It was mostly political, of course. Everything in this God-damned place is political. She was a daughter of old Don Jorge de las Vegas—bloody old scoundrel. Does that convey anything?”
Strathdee shook his head. “Never heard of him.”
“Well, he was one of those queer cards that get into Latin-America and become sort of fabulous. Cunninghame Graham sort of thing, and all that. Don Lucas Bridges.”
“D’you mean to say . . . was he English?”
“Irish. Or Irish-American. Or Irish-something. He had pots of money. He was supposed to have enormous estates in Patagonia or somewhere—hence las Vegas—but I don’t believe he had any really. That wasn’t how he made his money.”
“Well, how did he?”
“Politics, politics. It’s always politics; God’s truth, how sick of them I get! Well, about a dozen years ago Don Jorge drifted across here. It was about the time of the Leon Bras trouble”—he glanced at his cigarette-holder; no, no time for that story just now; anyway, Strathdee had heard it—“Leon Bras—you know about *that’ . . .”
“Fine.”
“Well, this old rascal, Don Jorge, said he wanted to look into the banana trade, but of course he didn’t care a damn about bananas; he was just looking for trouble. The anti-Bras crowd got tired of him and wanted him out of the island. Well, it was about the time there was all that row about the currency—that you wouldn’t know about.”
Strathdee said meekly, “No.”
“It was mostly forged notes, and so on. The old sod was in it all right, and they lay for him and they got him. So they rode him out of the island.” He yawned expansively.
“Where to?”
“God knows. Oh, back to South America. He’s dead.”
“What about the girl? Where did she come in? She couldn’t have been more than twenty.”
“About that. Oh, she helped father. Passed the fake notes, you know, and all that; brought them in from South America. That’s where they made ’em.”
“I see,” said Strathdee. “Hence the Jackdaw.”
“Exactly. Bird that pinches things and brings them home to its nest. Only this time it was stumer notes. Used to come in with her pants full of them. Both legs. Very nice legs too.” He sniggered obscenely, and ruminated for a minute. “They say she was the mistress of old General Doulay; I daresay she was.”
For some reason Strathdee found himself suddenly angry. He had a vision of that poised and confident figure on the airfield, looking round her with such superb composure—really superb, if you knew that she was regarding an island from which she had been deported once already. She had pluck, anyway. And here we sit, he thought, like a couple of old wives, taking away her character. He said crossly:
“According to you, everybody in this place’s been everybody else’s mistress some time or other.”
“Well, so they mostly have. . . . Don’t you go and fall for La Chouie. She’s dangerous.”
“I’m not falling for her. I just want to know what I’m up against. . . . Er—what we’re up against.”
Bosomworth assumed an air of portentous gravity.
“You’re up against the entire resources, civil, political and military, of a certain Latin-American state whose name I won’t mention here, but which you know as well as I do. That’s where La Chouie comes from. She’s a fervid patriot; body and soul, she’s at the disposal of La Patria. That, my good Colin, is why she’s here.”
Strathdee’s face was grave. “I wonder if Florian knows that.”
“I daresay he doesn’t,” said Bosomworth, “but he will. Oh, yes, he will.”
Strathdee said, rather shortly, “Maybe.” There was a moment’s silence during which Bosomworth yawned again enormously; then Strathdee said, coming to his point:
“Bozzy, what do you think is the relationship between those two?”
Bosomworth sniggered even more obscenely than before.
“What would it be?. . . Even if it is baby-snatching——”
The woolly head of the sentry came suddenly round the office door: the compliments of Madame; the car awaited. Bosomworth said “Thank God,” and got up, still yawning. He made a great parade of locking up his safe and packing papers into a despatch-case; then he took Strathdee by the arm and led him downstairs. “You keep out of it,” he said half-way down. “That’s my advice to you.” Strathdee said, quite absently and unhearingly, “O.K.”
In the Bosomworth Austin sat Rosa, her hands in her lap as usual. She said, “Oh, good evening, Mr. Strathdee! Are you coming with us? Can we give you a lift anywhere?” Strathdee said, no thank you, he had his car close by. He went away towards it, his eyes very bright, his upper lip quite invisible. Bosomworth climbed into his own accustomed place and relapsed into his seat with a thud.
“Thank God!” he said again. “That chap has a tongue like a tapeworm. On and on; question, question. . . . I didn’t tell him much.”
Mrs. Bosomworth said, “No, dear.” And then, as they turned into the Place de la Liberté, she asked a question of her own—one of those questions that shook him.
“Who’s that Mr. Malmaison, dear, they were talking about on the wireless? I think it said he had come from the States.”
Sighing—for there were times when Rosa was almost exasperatingly dégagée—Bosomworth proceeded to tell her.
Strathdee’s two years in Lassou had given him the entry to many unexpected places; one of these was the office of the Chief of Police. It had been disconcerting, of course, when the Le Zouz Consulate fell in the Revolution, just when Strathdee was getting everybody taped, and he had to begin all over again; but Hippolyte’s new Chief of Police had made things very easy. The former routine worked to perfection; it was understood that the Chief of Police was a great reader; every now and then Strathdee would bring him the present of a book; somewhere in the pages of that book someone—it might have been Strathdee—had carelessly left a ten-dollar bill. Ten dollars U.S.A., of course; not ten dollars Lassou. The manners of the Chief of Police were as beautiful as his French; he was always, he said, at Strathdee’s service. Strathdee thought he would try him out on his way home from Bosomworth.
The Chief of Police was at home—another of those beautiful Larcadie houses, but this time simply—and expensively—furnished, not with Poutin’s second-hand rubbish. He was delighted to see Strathdee; he was always at Strathdee’s service, he said; especially now, when so much lay in Strathdee’s hands. . . . Our Telemaque. . . .What could he do for Strathdee?
Strathdee thought, To hear some of these boys, you’d think I was the Consul. He came to the point at once: the lady who had accompanied M. Florian this afternoon; who was she? The Chief was most helpful: he produced a file from a safe and conned it over. But—he did not show the file to Strathdee—he added little really to Bosomworth. La Señora Branzada; domiciled in that certain South American state; yes, she had been the daughter of the late Don Jorge de las Vegas; yes, she had once been in Lassou; yes, there had been some little difficulties . . .
“M. le Chef! She was deported. Is it not?”
“Why, certainly, M. Sadille! But it was the father who was in truth the undesirable. Ah, he was a meddler, that; he had the bad finger. For the child herself—but a girl, my friend; but a young girl—zut! it was nothing. A little affair of the currencies, the exchange . . . .”
Forged notes to bolster M. le Consul Leon Bras, thought Strathdee; and he calls it a little affair of the currencies, the exchange. H’m! . . . He tried again.
“But surely, M. le Chef . . . you know I speak only through anxiety for our Telemaque . . .”
“Perfectly, Monsieur; it is Telemaque whom we must consider, all of us.”’
“Then surely, M. le Chef, this woman could have been kept out of the island.”
“Perhaps, Monsieur, perhaps.”
“Should have been?”
The Chef de Police merely shrugged his shoulders, spread out his hands and smiled beautifully. Strathdee thought, with a sinking heart, I see: big money here; where did that come from? As if he divined Strathdee’s thoughts, the Chef said—so kindly, so persuasively—“You see, M. Sadille, this is a very poor island.”
Strathdee said, “Of an indigence!”
“Yes; of a poverty the most afflicting. There is so much to be done. We need so much money.”
Strathdee said patiently, “Well?”
The Chef de Police took two inkpots out of his silver stand and set them at an interval on the table.
“Regard, Monsieur. Here is a South American state; here is the island of Lassou. This here is rich; that there is poor. How to bring the milk from the cow to the child? There needs a liaison. V’la!”
“I understand. And Madame La Choucasse is the liaison.”
The Chef was slightly horrified. “No, no, Monsieur; it is M. Florian who is the liaison. But M. Florian he is young, he is brave”—he strung off a perfect catalogue of complimentary adjectives—”he wishes always that Lassou should be Lassou. Toujours l’indépendence.”
Strathdee said, ”Debout les indépendents!”
“Perfectly, M. Sadille; I am of your opinion entirely. But—here it is that Madame Branzada is of help. She it is who will make M. Florian think, ‘Here is the poor child; there is the cow; I shall bring the two together; the child shall have milk.’ And so our poor island of Lassou, which we adore all of us with passion, it will be helped.”
Strathdee said, with his heart heavier than ever:
“M. le Chef! We have been friends always, we two, is it not? Then I shall speak. You know very well what the ‘help’ of the Latin Americans would be. You know very well how much milk we would get from that cow.” He had a moment of inspiration born of the heat, the Chief’s unblinking smile and his arresting metaphors. “We should get so much milk from that cow that we would drown in it.”
The Chief of Police looked at him admiringly; but once again he only spread out his hands and smiled. Strathdee thought: That is—literally—what South American ‘help’ would mean. . . . But I see quite well what it would mean to you, anyway. . . . Thoroughly dispirited, he allowed himself to be shown out.
Back at the Hotel Zirque he ordered a rum cocktail and sat long over it, brooding. A little Scots tune rang insistently in his head: “Three craws sat upon a wa’, Sat upon a wa’, Sat upon a wa’. Three craws——” Well, two of them anyway, so far: Soutey and the Chief of Police. There would be a whole row of crows sitting along that wall; sitting waiting to see what happened. Is there any loyalty anywhere, thought Strathdee desperately, in the whole of this damned island? Not among those Parisian time-servers and pocket-liners; and the common people—those men and women on the hill road with their donkeys and baskets and bundles—their only loyalty is to their stomachs. Well, some sort of banner, some sort of rallying point must be devised. Once again Strathdee conjured up, deliberately and in detail, a vision of Telemaque; Telemaque in his peasant’s blouse and trousers, goggling through his frog glasses, talking about his pipples, who should like, who hadn’t foun’ Jeeze, who knew nothings. And, as a sponge sweeps a slate, the picture was wiped from his eyes and laughed into scorn by a technicolor tableau, dominated by a demigod in black cord riding-breeches and a grey silk shirt, complete with revolver and hero-legend. And behind him a woman, a beautiful woman, perhaps ten years his senior—and wiser; who maybe loved him and maybe not, but who would anyway work him for all and more than he was worth. And the woman was Spanish or Spanish-Irish or Spanish-Irish-American; and she wasn’t even a good woman; she was the sort of woman who’d been in and out of police hands for the last ten years; she knew. And behind her again were unlimited people who were quite clear as to what they wanted and were quite ready to pay for it. Whew!
Strathdee took up the pack of greasy cards with which the commercial travellers at the Hotel Zirque were wont to while away their time at euchre, rummy or the Lassou game of bombo. Absently, still seeing demigod young men and Dietrich women, he dealt himself a poker hand. It was the knave and two of diamonds, the seven of clubs, the three of spades and the three of hearts. Strathdee sat looking at it sourly.
“Aye!” he said in his vernacular, “Jist like that!”
Like all bachelors—and perhaps some others—in Larcadie, Strathdee kept a girl. She was a chubby little creature, simple and affectionate, who served very well the purpose for which Strathdee employed her. She was, however, by no means a fool. Along their simple lines of thought and existence, few of the Lassoux really were; the trouble was that these lines were usually so narrow and so short.
Early on the second morning after Florian’s film-star arrival, Strathdee was giving Lucienne coffee and sweet cakes in the private verandah of his bedroom at the Zirque. Lucienne was in merry mood—owing, perhaps, to the free déshabillé of her attire. In the Lassou French she had learned at her Catholic School, she was giving Strathdee a vivid account of the joint funerals of Hippolyte and Le Zouz which had taken place on the previous day. The two ought in that climate to have been buried much sooner, but Florian had held up Le Zouz and it was desirable to have the two functions simultaneously: because the Protestant and Catholic burial-grounds lay, by good fortune, at opposite ends of Larcadie and the likelihood of a clash could thus be avoided. In point of fact there had been no clash; the ceremonies had passed off remarkably quietly; the crows, Strathdee had told himself, still sat upon the wall. . . . And the Jackdaws, too. . . . As for our so vigilant Police, they were apparently still pursuing their policy of masterly reticence; if they could name the dastardly assassin—and Strathdee had a suspicion that they could—they were taking pains not to.
It was very pleasant in the bedroom verandah. One could look both east and west—to the sun coming up out of the sea, and to the crests of Les Myosotes, almost beautiful in the level light of the fresh day. The Cathedral chimes had sounded for early Mass, blending agreeably—and no doubt symbolically—with the drums of some voodoo festival of rum and dance expiring with the dawn. Typical, thought Strathdee; Christ comes with the light of day; the Loas flee away back to the shades; I wish I could believe in either of them. He said, idly:
“Lucienne!”
“Chéri?”
“What do you do when you have a trouble?”
“Jesu! I take a pill.”
“Not that kind of trouble. Trouble of the head. When you want something to happen and it doesn’t happen.”
Lucienne bit a fresh cake and laughed happily.
“I go to the Coubou.”
It should not be necessary to explain that the Coubou is the Magician: he can cure warts or toothache, inspire your lover, prevent undesired fertility, and—kill your enemies dead. Strathdee knew about Coubous.
“And what does the Coubou do for you?”
“He will give me a charm. He will give me words to say.”
“And then all is perfect?”
“But yes! O.K. Fine.” She laughed in delight at her cleverness with the foreign words. “I spik zee Ehng-leesh. No?”
“Well, American, anyway,” said Strathdee. “Langue internationale. But never mind that; you’re a clever girl. . . . The Coubou, eh? Don’t you go putting any Coubou stuff in my coffee.”
Lucienne looked at him in genuine horror. “Oh, no; no! Quelle histoire!”
“All right, all right. . . . Well, put your clothes on now and run and buy yourself some snuff.”
He gave Lucienne a kiss and a Lassou dollar; she departed, still laughing. She was a simple child, happy and honest and—loyal. I wish to God, thought Strathdee, they were all like her.
After breakfast he put on his best suit and drove himself up to Les Fleuris. (Strathdee invariably drove himself and had resisted all attempts to saddle him with a chauffeur; he went to so many odd places at odd times that chauffeurs were better out of it.) Les Fleuris seemed to have aged in the three days since he last saw it; it had a deposed and defeated air as of one passed in the race; cleaners and gardeners had evidently been letting themselves down easily; the Guard was still at the gate but in a shocking state of untidiness—even for Lassou. Already the place was a has-been, a back number.
He was received by Celeste who was at the maidenly occupation of arranging flowers; that she was arranging them in horrible combinations of reds and whites, blues and yellows, reds and blues, was no matter. Strathdee thought once again, I wish you were your brother. Celeste spoke no English, and only Lassou French; for some odd reason, her best and favourite language was Spanish. As Strathdee—also for some odd reason—spoke Spanish very well, they conversed normally in that tongue; it made them, in that dreary household, a little cabal of conspiracy and fun. Spanish is a language of many opportunities.
Strathdee paid Celeste a fulsome compliment—something about a flower among flowers; she responded suitably. Then she dropped a bomb.
“This Don Florian. He is arrived then at the Hotel Zirque?”
“Not that I know of. Why should he?”
“Because he is to live there. It is said on the radio this morning. You had not heard?”
Strathdee cursed his preoccupation with the agreeable Lucienne which had caused him to miss for once the latest instalment of that serial story which Poutin distributed under the name of news bulletins. He said lamely—and it was an expression he much disliked having to use—
“I had not heard.”
Celeste said politely, “Si?” But her mind was evidently not at the Hotel Zirque. She said—archly and playing with a large double-dahlia:
“I—I have seen Don Florian.”
“You have seen him?”
“I—I have spoken with him.”
This time Strathdee was really startled; he said to himself, “The hell you have!” and hastily translated it into something more becoming. “And where, Señorita, did you contrive to do that?”
Celeste fiddled with her dahlia. “It was in the Magasin Gombard. I was buying a black veil. He—he was buying, I think, a shirt.”
“Men must have shirts,” said Strathdee. “And this earth-shaking conversation—how did it go?”
Celeste’s little pink tongue peeped between her lips. “He wished to pass by. He said—but it was in French, of course—’Pardon me, mademoiselle.’ And I said, ‘Not at all, monsieur.’ . . . It—it was not much.”
“Not much,” Strathdee admitted. “All the same, it was enough. You do not say anything more to Don Florian.”
Her face fell; the happy excitement died out of it.
“I must not speak to him?”
“It isn’t for me to say ‘must’ to you. But—better not. He’s no friend of ours.”
“But—but——” Her eyes clouded, her mouth turned sullen. God! thought Strathdee, even the family—even the family are going to rat on me! “But—he is muy bonito.”
“Muy muy bonito,” agreed Strathdee, “He is as bonito as”—he searched for a word—“as a bullfighter. And our Telemaque is the bull. You see?”
She cheered up at that, unexpectedly. “They will fight, then—Telemaque and Florian?”
“Probably. Certainly. Yes.”
“Who will win?”
Strathdee patted her shoulder in a fatherly manner.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “I will tell you the fable of the Señorita who asked Silly Questions. . . . Behave yourself nicely and you’ll see.”
He left Celeste, the vivid little creature, happy again with her flowers. But Telemaque was a different story. He was in his work-room again; this time he was wearing a frock-coat of Edwardian cut, with an immense bat-wing collar and a cobalt tie. You couldn’t blame him, thought Strathdee, remembering how Hippolyte had loved to appear in a suit of practically purple with a tie of pure vermilion. . . . He saw that Telemaque had given up Hamlet and was reading now in a huge calf-bound family Bible; it didn’t seem to Strathdee quite the time for Bibles. He said, with a false cheerfulness:
“Hallo, Telemaque; reading about Samson?”
Telemaque lifted his goggle eyes; it was like looking into a diver’s helmet.
“No. I read Our Lor’.”
“Quite right too,” said Strathdee. “You couldn’t do better. Except that it isn’t a time for reading at all. You and me, we’ve got to go into action.”
“Action?”
“Yes. Start a campaign. Into battle. Fight the good fight.”
Telemaque said dismally, “I don’ wan’ fights.”
“Nobody does. But sometimes one’s got to. . . . Look here, Telemaque, do you want Florian to walk over?”
“Walk——?”
“Win without anyone doing anything to stop him. Do you want that?”
Telemaque—his mind seemed slower than ever that morning—said, “Florian is go back Sud Amerique.”
“‘Has gone,’” corrected Strathdee. “Not ‘is go.’ Anyway, he hasn’t. And he won’t—unless you tell him to.”
“I am to tell him that?”
“Yes. He’s your enemy. Get rid of him.”
There was a thoughtful pause.
“The Book say—‘Love your enemies.’”
“The Book says a whole lot of things. Forget it for a minute. Look, Telemaque, things aren’t too good. In fact they’re pretty desperate. You’ve got to do something.”
“What I do?”
Strathdee considered. “I think you’d better start by calling a public meeting.”
“I am to call? Who will come?”
“God damn and blast it!—I beg your pardon, Telemaque, but really Man, you’re Consul. What you say goes. If you call a meeting, they’ve got to come.”
“Everybodys?”
“Everybody. Singular. No ‘s.’ The more the merrier.”
“What will they do?”
“It’s not what they’ll do, it’s what we’ll do. I mean, what you’ll do. You’ve got to tell them your policy, make some sort of announcement. You’ve got to——”
“I am to speech?”
“ ‘I am to speak’ or ‘I am to make a speech’; ‘speech’ is a noun. . . . Yes, you’ll have to. I’ll write it for you; I’ll coach you; you’ll do it easily.”
“Sad-dee! What I can say?”
“God bless my soul, man, you’ve got heaps to say. All that stuff you were telling me the other day about making the people happy. You know—the Library and the Musée and all. That’s what you’ve got to say.”
Telemaque flickered. “They like to hear that?”
“Yes! They’ll like it so much that they’ll tell Florian to get to hell out of it one-time. That’s what we want. And the sooner the better.”
“O.K. I will speech.”
“‘Speak.’ Fine! And now——”
“But—Sad-dee!”
“Yes?”
“Why not Florian and me can be brudder? I am son-of-Lor’-Jeeze. Florian are son-of-Lor’ Jeeze. So Florian and Telemaque brudder. We should love.”
“All right, all right,” said Strathdee, at his wits’ end. “Love each other if you like. Be brother if you like. But you can’t both be Consul of Lassou. . . . Telemaque, do you want to be Consul of Lassou or do you not?”
To his surprise, Telemaque drew himself up with a sudden dignity; it was for the moment as if Hippolyte stood in his shoes. For the moment Telemaque was no longer a shambling youth in an out-of-date frock-coat and an impossible tie. He said—and he said it well:
“I am Consul of Lassou.”
“Right!” said Strathdee. “Keep it. . . . I’ll bring you a draft of your speech tomorrow.” He went off fuming; the cards I have! he thought—they’d drive a smoke-room crook to suicide. Telemaque!
His temper was not improved because on the homeward journey his way was blocked and he was brought to a standstill by one of the advance Carnival processions. The Mardi Gras Carnival was not due until the end of February; it was still three weeks ahead; but the Lassoux liked Carnivals—they believed in starting them early and keeping them on as long as possible. Here, then, was the first of those endless processions that would go wandering round the streets of Larcadie, bawling and singing and dancing, and clad in this or that degree of fancy dress. There being no option, Strathdee drew in to the side of the road and watched it pass. It was headed by an imbecile on a white horse; he wore an ancient top-hat, a red jacket that must have belonged to some British soldier of the ’8O’s, the khaki shorts of the Garde, and bright yellow boots; he sang, in the Lassou language, something that was partly obscene and partly unintelligible. Behind him came a rout of drummers, beating their monkey-skin drums, sidling and posturing and butting each other; a second buffoon blowing on a comet; and a gentleman in black tights considerably the worse for wear, who was evidently a vampire bat. Strathdee looked at this idiot rabble with despair; he thought again, What an island. And then, suddenly, his mind changed; he thought: Have I been making the mistake everybody makes—living in Larcadie and forgetting Lassou? Have I been hanging about too much with Chiefs of Police and Quotidien Editors and Ministers of the Interior, and forgetting—the Island? Asylum Island? These jumping nitwits, he thought, they’re savages; but then nine-tenths of the Lassoux are savages; maybe I haven’t thought of the savages enough. . . . I’m at my wits’ end over this, he thought; wherever I go, I’m met with smiles and shrugs and charming manners and hell’s own politeness and hell’s own lies. Crows on the wall—the whole lot of them. Yes, and the people too—that’s the worst of it; nobody will come out big for Telemaque; the Nègres, big and small, they’re all hanging back and waiting and sitting on the wall just like everybody else. Why? They can’t want Florian. They’ve no other candidate of their own. Why don’t they come forward and help?
Damned if I know, thought Strathdee; and had a sudden vision of Lucienne. “What do you do when you have a trouble?” “I go to the Coubou.” I’m going daft, Strathdee thought; still—give the savages a chance. It’s a long time since I went down to Basse-Borrou and saw old Zoti. . . . Well—why not?
The procession having passed, he drove home in a better humour; at the Hotel Zirque he suddenly remembered something. He pushed open the door of the unsavoury den where Antofrino, the Greek—or reputedly Greek—proprietor hived among ledgers, empty rum bottles, cups of Turkish coffee and goats-milk cheeses.
“Say, Frino—I hear we’ve got royalty coming.”
“Howzat, a-Colin?”
“M. Malmaison, Junior. Lord-God-Almighty Florian.”
“Sure he a-come, a-Colin. Day after—two day after—tomorrow. I a-give a-suita. Twenty-a-five. Nexta da you.”
“That’s nice. How long’s he staying?”
“No say.”
Strathdee thought a minute. “What about his—er—Secretary?”
Antofrino looked at his ledger. “Twenty-a-six.” He broke into an elderly and obscene cackle of what might have been laughter. “That door gotta a-mighty good bolt. On da innaside, a-Colin. No-a-no, a-Colin, no-a-no!”
At the time when Strathdee first visited Congo Zoti, he had been a bare three months in the island. He had gone down to Basse-Borrou—a patch of flat ground on the coast about four miles north of Larcadie—after a series of elaborate pourparlers with various citizens who seemed insignificant but actually weren’t; it was understood that anybody could go to see Zoti, but that you didn’t get much out of him without suitable introductions. Strathdee’s introductions had been impeccable—though some of them had come from unlikely places. It seemed strange that members of the Cercle Lettré who liked talking about Hugo and Chopin and spieling off passages of Racine should have anything to do with Coubous, but that again was Lassou; in Lassou, if you dropped in by chance at a voodoo dansant, you occasionally recognized—or more tactfully did not recognize—some odd participants. One of Strathdee’s secondary reasons in making Zoti’s acquaintance had been the desire to annoy Bosomworth: Bosomworth had never visited Basse-Borrou, and never would. If he could have sent his tourists down there, it would have meant a nice little income; but he couldn’t. He had been stuffily contemptuous: “I wouldn’t go mixing myself up with that sort of muck.” Strathdee had said, “No, of course not—not in your position.” He had left Bosomworth fuming.
For all the pother and all the introductions, Strathdee had expected nothing much more than a dirty old hut containing a dirty old man; he had been the more astonished by what he saw. Zoti’s establishment covered the best part of an acre; its centre was a nice little tiled four-roomed bungalow, with a verandah; grouped round this were a number of one-room kiosks, with whitewashed walls and roofs of sound thatch. The whole place was—astonishingly—clean; swept and garnished indeed. There were big shady trees that had not been hacked and draggled to provide fodder for goats; there was a quantity of grass which had almost the appearance of turf; a little stream ran through the middle of a flower-garden. The place had, in fact, once been the Coastguard Station, but Zoti had coveted it and had secured it by the simple expedient of investing it with a devil. It had been a very unpleasant devil: a woman who crawled round the place on all fours crying out in her desires; if you went out to see what could be done about it, she raised her head and showed you her face, and then—oh, God! The Coastguards—who never patrolled or went to sea or did anything but lie about and play bombo—had disliked the devil very much; in the end they had mutinied. The Government had been obliged to build a new Coastguard Station; and Zoti had got Basse-Borrou for a song. It pays to be a Coubou.
But the most extraordinary thing about Basse-Borrou was the birds; Zoti had a perfect aviary of them. Many of them were wild; they lived in hundreds in the raffle of stuff round the tops of the palm-trees, they pecked and perched in the flower-garden, they bathed and splattered in the little stream. Many more were in cages which were hung up everywhere; the cages were small and overcrowded, and some of the birds had even had their wings clipped; yet the odd thing was that they all sang. They sang perpetually; you could hear them a hundred yards away. “They are my little angels,” Zoti used to say, “they tell me what passes.” Lassou, as a whole, firmly believed that they did.
The one-room kiosks grouped round the main bungalow were for Zoti’s patients; for he had an enormous and perfectly legitimate practice as a doctor. Many persons in Lassou are apt to become possessed of devils, with resultant hysterical symptoms of a distressing character; with this type of patient Zoti was almost infallible. A Lassoux from the hills would be brought in strapped to a mule, shouting and raving and foaming at the mouth; Zoti, hardly looking at him, would say, “Cut him loose.” Not looking at him at all, he would say, “Go to House Number Five”—and the man would go. It was uncanny. Zoti could give you a pill or a draught or a charm for almost anything, and unless you were beyond hope altogether, they did good. There were no doctors in Lassou—outside Larcadie—and the Lassoux, perhaps excusably, had no belief in the Government Hospital; they did believe—strongly—in Congo Zoti. Strathdee sometimes thought Zoti was a villain, sometimes that he was a good old man who put up all his mumbo-jumbo merely as a bait for patients who wouldn’t have come to him without it. He did a lot of good—there was no doubt about that. Whether he did also a lot of harm was another question.
At his first visit Zoti had taken to Strathdee, and Strathdee had gone back to see him on the average once a month ever since. In an odd way they were friends: at least they understood one another. On Strathdee’s third visit, Zoti had taken him into the bungalow and showed him his shrine: a tiny little room furnished only with a small table draped incongruously with a Victorian lace valance. On the table were a mixed assortment of objects: a coloured picture of St. Anthony, a brass snake, an indubitable golf-ball painted scarlet, a stuffed fish, a crucifix, a silver spoon. There were also the offerings brought by votaries—two or three bottles of Poutin’s rum and several of Coco-cola, a small flask of frangipani, some cakes, a brass toe-ring, a brilliant woollen scarf of red and green and yellow. Strathdee had stood gazing at this pathetic collection while Zoti watched him with his head on one side. Zoti said:
“They bring these things. It is nice.”
Strathdee said, “It does no harm, anyway.”
“It does good, mon Capitaine.” (For some unfathomable reason he always called Strathdee “Mon Capitaine.”) “It purifies the soul. It is holy.”
But Zoti had another room, deeper inside the bungalow, which contained quite different objects. Bones and bits; a skull or two; knives; a black coat and top hat that should have been comic but were somehow shudderingly gruesome; things in bottles; most curious and arresting pictures. Not so nice, not so holy at all. Strathdee had paid quite a number of visits before he was allowed to see that room.
On this particular afternoon, Zoti’s establishment was much as usual. The appalling racket of the birds broke out as soon as Strathdee switched off the engine of his car: parakeets screeching, the honk-honk of a sort of bell-bird, the whistle of canaries, the twitter of finches and sparrows, the mewing of kites. Zoti was walking about on the grass in front of his bungalow, smoking a cigar; he wore, as usual, an incredibly spotless white suit; the jacket had a high stand-up collar like a mess-jacket, and silver buttons. He was a small, squarish negro with a face of comical alertness; his hair was of a dazzling and preternatural white. It stood up in tufts above his forehead like horns and stuck out in jags of whisker in front of his ears. With his coal-black face, it gave him rather the appearance of a colobus monkey.
Strathdee said, “Good afternoon, Doctor”—Zoti liked being called “Doctor”—“I have come to see you.”
Zoti said—as he always said—“I knew you were coming. My little angels have told me.”
Strathdee said absently, “Yes. I know.”
“You will take coffee? It is ready for you.”
“You are very good.”
They sat down at a little table on the verandah. Immediately behind Strathdee’s head there was a cage of starlings which were chattering incessantly; just opposite, four canaries were singing as if they would burst. It was deafening. He said:
“The birds are happy today.”
“My little angels! They tell me what passes.”
Strathdee said, more absently still, “Yes.” He was wondering how to begin. But Zoti forestalled him.
“You vex yourself, mon Capitaine.”
Strathdee admitted it.
“What worries you, then?”
Strathdee thought: Better make a clean breast of it. . . . This is simply absurd. . . . Oh, well, I’m here now. Sipping the hot, sweet coffee, he began his story. Hippolyte . . . Florian . . . Telemaque. What are we to do? Zoti blew clouds of cigar smoke; it was a very bad cigar—one of Poutin’s worst. The birds in their cages whistled and chattered. Strathdee felt more and more of a fool; but he persevered. Slowly his difficulties emerged.
“You see, Doctor! Telemaque must succeed. It is right, that; it is just. Isn’t it?”
“It is right. It should be so.”
“But it may not happen. Florian, the son of Baptiste Malmaison, is a beautiful young man. He is a hero. Telemaque is a good young man. But he is not beautiful; he is not a hero. He has good ideas.” He sketched some of the ideas: the Lib’y, the Musée, “I want that the pipples like.” “Are not these good ideas, Doctor?”
“They are very good ideas.”
“But they may never happen. What am I to do about it?” Zoti blew a blast of smoke that would have felled an ox.
“What is it all to you, mon Capitaine? You are not a Lassoux.”
“No. But I’m a Scot. I am the tutor of Telemaque. And I like to see fair play. Doctor, it isn’t fair play that a good young man should be defeated by a—a species of gigolo. And a woman.”
“Ah—the woman!”
“Yes, the woman. It’s—it’s all sham, Doctor; it isn’t true, real, just, right.” (And you aren’t being very helpful, he thought, either. Not so far.) “If we don’t do something, if I don’t do something, Florian—les Mulâtres—are going to win.”
“It is possible.”
“It is certain.”
“The Mulâtres have won before. They have lost again. That can repeat itself. Why should that trouble you?”
“I’ve told you why it troubles me.”
“Yes.” But Zoti’s large brown eyes suddenly came to life. “But that is not why you came here today. That is not what you came to ask me.”
Strathdee lit a cigarette: one must do something against that cigar. Above the uproar of the birds he said:
“What I came to ask you is this. Telemaque could win if his own people would back him up. Les Negrès. They’re not doing it. Why not?”
Zoti’s engaging grin came and went; his strong white teeth flashed like a lamp.
“Do I know?”
Strathdee stared at him. “Yes!”
“Why should I tell you?”
“There’s no reason. Except that I need help.”
Another blast of smoke, another grin. The birds in crescendo. “You are a good man, mon Capitaine. You are not like those others that come to Lassou. Perhaps I can tell. . . . A moment, mon Capitaine, I must listen to my little angels.”
He cocked his head on one side, his eyes half closed, he seemed to go into a trance. Strathdee thought: You old humbug! but he waited patiently. The sun blazed down outside, the birds yelled and screamed; at a little distance someone was playing a drum. Zoti opened his eyes.
“You do not know Lassou, mon Capitaine.”
“Not as you do, Doctor.”
“No. . . . Telemaque does not succeed because he has not the Thing.”
“The what?” It was a Lassou word: “Thing” seemed to translate it.
“The Thing. It has always been called that. Never anything more.”
Strathdee thought: This is going from bad to worse; this is just daft; “Asylum Island”; you said it! Against his own judgment he said:
“But what is it? This Thing.”
Zoti gave him a considering look.
“You have seen a drogue, mon Capitaine?”
“What kind of drogue?” Strathdee had seen dozens of drogues; but there were all sorts.
“It is the usual kind. A glass bottle.”
“Rum bottle?” (They usually were.)
“No; it is a very, very old bottle. It is very thick glass. Not so big as a rum bottle. Half as big.”
“And what’s in the bottle?”
“It is the soul of the Liberator Boufallon.”
Strathdee had a moment of bitter despair. I come here, he thought, looking for practical help in a practical difficulty; I’m given the soul of the Liberator Boufallon in a glass bottle. But then he thought again: Hold on! It’s Lassou, not Larcadie. “Asylum Island”; hold on to that. It’s not what I think, it’s not what any sane person thinks, it’s what they think. Whether it’s Boufallon’s soul in the bottle or just dust and a smell, the Thing counts. He said:
“In effect, Doctor! And what does it do, this bottle?”
“It does everything, mon Capitaine.”
“As how?”
“Only the Nègre who possesses the Thing can rule in Lassou. It is well known.”
The hell it is! thought Strathdee. He said, “The people know that?”
“Of a certainty.”
“And they know Telemaque hasn’t got it?”
“Exactly, mon Capitaine.”
“Did Hippolyte have it?”
“No. That is why the people would not follow him.”
“Did Le Zouz have it?”
“No. But he was Mulâtre. It did not matter to him. It is only the Nègres.”
Strathdee took a fresh cigarette. “Well, who has it?”
Zoti shrugged amiably. “Nobody. Nobody at all. It is lost.”
Despair seized upon Strathdee once more. “You don’t know where it is?”
“How should I know? It is lost.”
“How long has it been lost?”
“I do not know. A long time. Twenty-five years? Fifty years? It is not known.”
“And if Telemaque hasn’t got it——”
“He cannot rule. No. It is sad, that. But——” He shrugged again.
So there you have it! thought Strathdee; and it serves me damn well right for being such a fool as to come on a wild goose chase like this. He got up angrily, throwing away his half-smoked cigarette.
“Well, Doctor, I’d hoped for something better from you.”
“Alas, mon Capitaine.”
“You’re quite sure—you’re quite sure you don’t know where it is?”
“Mon Capitaine!”
“I beg your pardon. . . . Well, there seems to be no more——”
Zoti said, getting to his feet, “Before you go, come with me and I will show you something.”
He led the way, talking pleasantly, to a corner of his compound near the gate. There stood there a single dead palm tree—bare and grey and ugly as a telegraph post, its leaves entirely gone. Zoti said:
“My beautiful palm tree has died.”
“So I see.”
“Ah, yes. But watch!”
Strathdee stared at the unattractive object, expecting he knew not what. If the Liberator Boufallon or the astral body of Le Zouz had emerged from it, he would hardly have been surprised. But in fact nothing happened at all. Zoti said, “Wait; patience; wait”; and then, suddenly, like the cuckoo in a cuckoo clock, a little fat brown and grey bird popped out of a hole high up in the trunk. It perched on the top of the tree and presently a second little brown and grey bird popped out of the hole and joined it. They sat together conversing pleasantly in chirps and croaks; they were about the size of starlings.
Strathdee turned to Zoti and surprised on his face an expression of absolute beatitude.
“Is it not beautiful, mon Capitaine? They are my little angels. They tell me what passes.”
With a superhuman effort Strathdee kept his temper; somehow he forced himself to say that it was indeed charming.
“Just recently,” said Zoti, “they have come.”
Strathdee said, keeping up the farce, “And what is it that they tell you, these ones?”
Zoti stood gazing at the birds, lost in complete fatuity.
“Alors! Different things.”
“I wish they’d tell you where the Thing is. . . . I wish they’d tell you to tell me.”
Zoti only said, reprovingly:
“Ah, mon Capitaine!”
At twenty-four hours’ notice, Telemaque called his public meeting and made his speech; the one, Strathdee thought, was about as flat as the other. Fortunately, of course, Telemaque did not have to speak English—that would have been disastrous—and his French, like his father’s, was excellent. He had, too, on the platform, a queer sort of dignity; he was round-shouldered, badly-dressed, goggle-eyed; yet he was by no means unthinkable as the Consul of Lassou. The cardinal fact that he was Consul was assumed; Strathdee had induced him to abandon the idea, instilled into him by his family lawyer, of embarking on a detailed legal exposition of his claims; even if Telemaque—or anybody else—could have made this intelligible in a court of law, it could not have been made so to one in fifty of his present audience. There had been rather more difficulty over the terms of the speech, on which Strathdee had been driven to a rather deplorable volte face.
“Sad-dee! You said the Lib’y. The Musée.”
“I know. I know that fine. But that’ll have to wait a bit. Give it time.”
Telemaque sulked. “It is what I wanna say.”
“‘Want to,’ not ‘wanna’; ‘wanna’ is American.”
“You said I should say.”
“I know, I know. And you will say it—one day. But just this time——” He directed Telemaque’s attention to an uproar in the road below the house; a passing Carnival procession. “You hear that row?”
“Sure I hear.”
“Don’t say ‘sure’; say ‘certainly’ or ‘of course’; ‘sure’ is vulgar. . . . Well, just think a minute. These are the kind of folk you’ll be talking to. Now what do they want?”
“Only they want to eat.”
“Sure—I mean, of course—they do. Well, tell them they’re going to eat till they burst. Later on——”
“Sad-dee, if I don’ say about the Lib’y, I don’ speech.”
In the end Strathdee had been obliged to revise his draft; so that the audience in the Great Hall of the Palace were promised the improvement of the banana trade, better roads and the dredging of the harbour of Larcadie, and then, as an afterthought, collections of the best authors and the best archaeological relics. Telemaque was strong on the banana trade, having just inherited several plantations; he was lukewarm on roads; he didn’t care a hoot about the harbour. On the Lib’y and the Musée, he was almost fiery; but it seemed to Strathdee, sitting in the front row, that the audience received the last as apathetically as the first. It was a poor house—never a hand. To Strathdee, fresh from his interview with Congo Zoti, this could have only one meaning—the Thing; they were thinking about the Thing, all these sullen and unresponsive Nègres, they were thinking that Telemaque hadn’t got it. Tripe, nonsense, superstition, old wives’ tales? It was no use saying that; it was what they thought that counted. A bottle of very thick glass; a thousand very thick heads; and Telemaque could talk about the banana trade and the roads and the harbour till he dropped. We had to hold this meeting, Strathdee thought, he had to come out of his shell somehow; but you couldn’t call it a roaring success—you certainly couldn’t! And I’ve lost a lot of ground with Telemaque over that damned Lib’y. It’s a hard life.
He went home to the Hotel Zirque depressed and thoughtful; nor was his mood improved by the news, via Poutin’s evening bulletin, that Florian that afternoon had been holding a rival meeting at the Centenary Market. Florian, said the news reader sweetly, had proved himself a Cicero, a Demosthenes, a Lincoln, a Mirabeau; the meeting had ended in ecstasies and embraces. Making all allowance for the fact that the transmitter was in the hands of the Mulâtres, Strathdee thought this was probably substantially true; if Florian and La Chouie couldn’t cook up a piece of flamboyancy between them, they had a poor look out. But once again he thought—cards, cards; how can I play without cards?
And the main heads of Florian’s discourse, it appeared, had been the dredging of the harbour, better roads, and the expansion of the banana trade. Hell!
The arrival of Florian and his entourage at the Hotel Zirque was staged much as might have been expected. It was timed carefully for mid-afternoon, when such guests as the Zirque could boast—commercial travellers and a few semi-resident agents and officials—were likely to be lying about its verandahs in a state of receptive stupor. Its courier was a handsome young mulatto on an explosive motor-cycle who shot in at the Zirque’s narrow gateway and up the two hairpins of its open entrance drive in the most spectacular manner. His dust had hardly died down when it was disturbed by a procession of three cars which also took the ascent as if they were competing for a hill-climbing trophy; it was headed, Strathdee saw, by Poutin’s enormous touring Cadillac. At the second bend this colossus very nearly went over the edge, but to Strathdee’s disappointment Poutin’s driver managed to right it and Florian and La Chouie descended safely at the front door of the Zirque.
Peering over the private verandah of his bedroom, Strathdee saw that Florian was wearing a superlative silk suit of off-white; he was hatless as usual and he was beyond doubt a magnificent and commanding figure. La Chouie’s wardrobe had apparently been sacrificed to the necessities of air travel; at any rate she wore the same rig-out as that in which she had arrived five days ago at the airfield. She was, however, still as handsome as ever and as confident indeed, a good deal more confident. Today there was none of the demure Secretary, waiting in the background with the despatch-case; Strathdee had much more the impression that it was now La Chouie who dominated the proceedings. She reminded Strathdee of a female lion-tamer seen once long ago at a circus in Aberdeen; the same panache, the same air of commandership. True, she lacked a whip, but Strathdee noted that she had now garnished herself with a holster containing a large bright-hilted revolver. There was a law of Lassou that no woman should buy, sell, carry or possess any description or sort of firearm; apparently Florian and La Chouie had already transcended the laws of Lassou.
Strathdee, his upper lip drawn in very tight, went and lay on his bed, listening angrily to the uproar and disturbance involved in the installation of Florian in his suite next door. Pandemonium was contrived for the best part of half an hour; persons clattering up and down the wooden stairs and along the wooden boards of the corridor; orders shouted; occasional—and rather pointless—yells of “Vive la Liberté” from one supporter or another. Whenever the demonstration seemed inclined to flag, the voice of La Chouie, a deep, rather pleasant voice with—Strathdee thought—a distinctly Spanish intonation, hounded it into life again with some fresh demand. Champagne corks popped; three of them, one for each car. Antofrino was heard being presented—and grovelling. Complaints resounded; the furniture was wrongly arranged; there were not enough flowers; the hotel boys were sent scurrying and squealing for improvements. There came a point, however, when the excitement could be kept up no longer; every possible demand had been assuaged; the supporters, despairing of further champagne, departed in a chorus of war cries; the cars outside started up and trundled away down the slope. Florian and his lady were left alone in his sitting-room. A fourth and belated champagne cork went off; there was animated conversation. But—as Strathdee had already discovered on investigation—the bathroom of the suite lay between his room and Florian’s; even by craning his head round the verandah partition, he found, he could not distinguish words. He thought they spoke now Spanish now French or a mixture of both; there was nothing very exciting in that.
Towards six Poutin’s Cadillac reappeared down below; Strathdee, who was now suitably dressed, slipped out and posted himself at the head of the stairs. Contact with these people had to be made—even at the risk of a snub. He was well placed—apparently just completing the ascent of the staircase—when Florian burst out of his suite; to Strathdee’s disappointment he was alone. He had changed into yet another silk suit, this time of a rich golden brown. Strathdee, planted fairly in his path, said in Spanish:
“Good evening, señor. You come to join us here?”
Florian, with the most complete insolence, looked him up and down from head to foot; Strathdee, always fidgety and sensitive about his own short stature, felt his gorge rising. Florian said—and as a Spaniard speaks to a servant:
“You are English.”
“Scot,” said Strathdee amiably. “It makes a great difference.”
“Not to me.” And without further word, the magnificence pushed past and went striding down the stairs. Strathdee had a moment’s insane impulse to lean over the banisters and drop a flowerpot on its sleek and polished head; he restrained it. He went slowly back to his own room thinking, “All right, my young friend—all right!” A mortifying encounter but not without its uses; for—item of information—Florian had quite evidently heard of Strathdee. We knew where we were. All right!
Strathdee made a point of being down that evening in good time for dinner; he had already satisfied himself, from the presence of a table loaded with flowers, glasses and such real silver as Antofrino possessed, that the royal party would be dining in. He had also satisfied himself that the table was laid for two only. Strathdee, who liked to be inconspicuous, had always sat in the furthest corner of the dining-room; a fact which greatly annoyed the beggars, curio-sellers and touts who managed to creep into the verandah at meal times; Strathdee’s was the only table they could reach and Strathdee was useless to them. It was no use offering him a carved wooden serpent or an indecent photograph or an ingratiating murmur of “Une poule, M’sieu, une p’tite poule? Une jolie p’tite poule pour M’sieu?”: Strathdee had bought all the indecencies he wanted—including Lucienne. Tonight, he noticed, none of these tiresome gentry had appeared; Antofrino had presumably been directed to clear them out and—surprisingly—had managed to do it. Strathdee said to the head boy who came to attend to him:
“Serve me slowly. I have tonight a little mal d’estomac.”
The boy said, *”Dommage! C’est donc la colique?”
“Vents,” said Strathdee. “Just wind,” and illustrated it. The boy said, scowling at that decorated table, “It is not only M’sieu who has the wind. . . . He blows himself up, that one. Figure to yourself, M’sieu, he brings his own servants from the houses of his friends. We others are not good enough.”
“No tip, then?” said Strathdee, “c’est formidable.”
“He thinks,” said the boy sulkily, “he thinks he will be poisoned.”
“He has reason—unless the dinner’s better than usual.”
“But sans blague, M’sieu. He is afraid. What are we, then, here—species of assassins?” He went away grumbling. Strathdee thought: Swank, no doubt, more swank, more effect. Who’s going to poison him? . . . Or is it perhaps genuine? If so, we could maybe do something about it. He began to muse over what they could possibly do, and decided there was nothing practical. But if Master Florian were perchance less gallant than he seemed, if there was a yellow streak somewhere? . . .
Needless to say, Florian and his partner were as late for dinner as possible; Strathdee had finished his fish before Antofrino appeared, bowing them punctiliously forward. You could take your time from Antofrino, Strathdee reflected; it was difficult to extract him from the hermit-crab existence he lived in his loathsome little den; if he now came out—and in a clean suit too—it meant that Florian had already made a considerable impression in Lassou. If Antofrino had not yet put his shirt on Florian for Consul, he had at least gone the length of that clean suit. The royal party advanced smiling amiably; to Strathdee’s intense annoyance some of the commercials stood up, bowing and wiping their chins with their napkins. The two sat down at their table, La Chouie facing Strathdee, Florian in profile; Strathdee watched. Florian, he saw, had got himself into a Spanish version of evening dress—black silk coat and trousers and a scarlet cummerbund; he only lacked, one felt, a black sombrero and a guitar. La Chouie had compromised on a sort of negligé in old rose; it showed her bare brown arms with which Strathdee, who was inclined to judge women by that commonly neglected portion of their bodies, was delighted. Her wrists and forearms, when she put her hands under her chin and addressed her companion, were most lovable. So was the shape of her cheeks and the way her head sat on her neck; but her eyes and her mouth, he thought, were hard. Still, beyond doubt they were an attractive pair, she and Florian; if you put in their places, for instance, Telemaque and his lady mother. . . . Or even Celeste . . .
If Florian entertained any apprehensions about his food he certainly did not show them; he bolted it back like—a Latin American. La Chouie, on the other hand, ate scarcely anything and she did not even drink from the glass of rather bad Californian wine—Strathdee knew that wine—that had been poured out for her. She talked and talked and talked; eager, vehement, intense. Over his cutlet of Lassou goat—and mountain goat, one would think, at that—Strathdee watched and watched; it was necessary that he should learn as soon as possible the exact relationship between these two, and it was a thing nobody was going to tell him. They had not apparently observed him in his corner and, disregarding the commercials and other fry of the Zirque, they were being natural and at ease. Strathdee thought: What are you? Wife, mistress—or just shorthand typist after all? So far he had been cynically disposed to believe with Bosomworth in the second of these choices; La Chouie was quite evidently not a shorthand typist and—even if one knew nothing of her previous history—could never have been taken for one. She was—as Bosomworth had confirmed—married to an extant Señor Branzada. She must therefore be accompanying Florian in that character in which ladies have accompanied Consular candidates from time immemorial; and very nice, too, for Florian. But as the dinner proceeded from garbage to garbage, he began to change his mind. Strathdee was far from inexperienced with women; he knew—and he had good reason to know—precisely how a woman looks when she is dragooning her man; and that was how La Chouie was looking at this moment. Beyond doubt Florian was the centre of her universe; but not in the sense Strathdee had so far supposed. Beyond doubt she had a proprietory interest in Florian; but it was not—or it did not centre—in Florian’s body. She talked and talked, her hands under her chin, her eyes blazing—very handsomely—with excitement; while Florian rather sulkily shovelled back one after another of Antofrino’s abominations. “Proprietory,” thought Strathdee; that is the word. If she and Florian had been married—which was ex hypothesi impossible—she would have been the tiresomely ambitious wife goading on her mate to fresh achievement; the boss, the husband-devourer, the trousers. If they were not married—which was ex hypothesi certain—then she was still the boss, but in some other way. That she was lecturing the wretched man—nagging, gingering, pestering, prodding—there was not a shadow of doubt. Nor was she apparently adult enough to realise that to any man any dinner, however bad, is still sacred as a dinner; it is not the moment when he relishes dissertations on the theme “Excelsior.” Come! thought Strathdee almost happily, she can’t be so dangerous after all if she hasn’t even got that length. . . . He observed with delight that Florian, in his haste to terminate the one-sided meal, had dropped goat-and-tomato-sauce on his immaculate white silk shirt; and that he was very much annoyed about it indeed.
Strathdee had now consumed the slabs of yellow felt which Antofrino called “Crêpes Suzette”; it was time to go into the verandah and drink his equally remarkable coffee. He lit a cigarette and strolled towards the door. To pass the royal table involved quite a considerable detour but he undertook it; he passed so close that he could have knocked their heads together—as he was tempted to do. Florian was still wrestling head-down with his portion of goat, but La Chouie looked up and straight into Strathdee’s face. She did not smile, she did not stare, but—she took him in. Strathdee passed on to the verandah with an inward content; Florian’s rudeness of the afternoon was confirmed. You’ve heard about Colin Strathdee, he thought; all about him, I wouldn’t wonder. Maybe even more.
Before Strathdee’s cigarette was finished, a chair scraped noisily back in the dining-room and Florian and La Chouie emerged. There was a brief, half-whispered colloquy, the lady—or so Strathdee judged—saying verbosely, “Must” and Florian, grumpily and monosyllabically, “No.” There was then a brief and pregnant silence at the end of which La Chouie went very resolutely upstairs. Florian, on the other hand, ran lightly down the verandah steps, sprang into a waiting car and was driven away.
Strathdee thought he recognised the symptoms.
It was one of Lucienne’s nights and it passed agreeably as usual; Florian, as was indicated by adjacent noises, came home at two in the morning, rather inclined to throw things about. Shortly after daylight Strathdee gave Lucienne five Lassou dollars and told her to go round the slum shops and the back bazaars and look for a glass bottle about half the size of a rum bottle, as old as possible, as thick as possible, as dirty as possible. He had grave doubts as to whether she would unearth anything that would be of use; indeed, it was highly probable that she would get no further than the Grande Rue where she would spend the money on snuff, flowers, a picture of St. Antony and a new turban. Still, thought Strathdee, when one is dealt a hand like mine, one has to do something; if I can’t draw cards, I must make them. A fake Thing would evidently be the last resort; but—it might come to the last resort, and that only too soon. Lucienne had asked no questions; he had told her he wanted just that sort of bottle to make into a charm and it had seemed to her the most natural thing in the world. Thank God! thought Strathdee, Lassou is a place where one can tell the truth—sometimes; if I’d had to explain a thing like that at home . . .
He then had a busy day investigating, as inconspicuously as possible, just what was going on in Larcadie; to his relief, the answer seemed to be—nothing. There was the wall and the crows, in a body, sitting on it. Questioned as to the so dastardly assassin, the Chief of Police said, “For that, my friend, do not disturb yourself: tomorrow we shall make an arrest.” Strathdee thought, Maybe. The political position was still obscure; the Legislature and the Ministries had automatically ceased to exist with Hippolyte’s death; even as Bosomworth had said, the Council of Affairs had come into being. It must do one of three things—ratify Telemaque as Consul in accordance with the Law of Succession, ratify Florian as Consul in accordance with the curious clause Le Zouz had worked into it, or elect somebody else as Consul altogether. But to do any of these things, it must first assemble, and about that the Council seemed in no hurry. One member, Strathdee learned, had gone to his sugar-plantation, another had diarrhoea, a third was serving on a jury. Everybody else smiled, shrugged and told lies. So far, so good—except that it showed that Florian was at least holding his ground. He had not been—as he should have been—sent back to San Hieronimo; La Chouie had not been—as she should have been—deported for the second time from Lassou.
How Florian and his Secretary spent the day Strathdee had no means of knowing; they were in their separate rooms, however, when he returned to the Zirque about half-past six in the evening—Florian in his suite, La Chouie in the reputedly well-bolted twenty-six. Relations were still, then, strained about something—it didn’t matter what. Idly Strathdee switched on his wireless; a programme of deafening Cuban music was just concluding; in a few minutes came the honeyed tones of Poutin’s newsreader. Poutin served his Court Page first; he had pleasure in announcing, Strathdee learned, that M. Florian Malmaison would be the guest of honour on the following evening at a garden party given by our esteemed citizen M. Henri Poutin at the Government College; there would be Carnival dances; there would also be fireworks. Strathdee switched off—not so idly—and stood tickling his lip on that little black moustache. Nothing said about the Secretary; odd? If she had been going, thought Strathdee, I think they would have said so. If Poutin hasn’t invited her, he must have been told not to. It looks as if . . . On the impulse of the moment, he took a sheet of his best notepaper and wrote on it in his best Spanish and his best handwriting: “Mr. Colin Strathdee presents his compliments to the Señora Branzada and begs that she will do him the honour of taking an apéritif with him at six p.m. tomorrow; in the upstairs lounge of the Hotel Zirque.”
Bells, in the Hotel Zirque, had not functioned within the memory of man; but after a little search, Strathdee unearthed Louis Philippe and commanded him to take the note to Number Twenty-Six. Then he lit a cigarette and went back to a long chair on his verandah, where he amused himself by calculating the odds against La Chouie’s accepting—or indeed, even replying at all. They were long; yet not so long as might at first sight appear. You want the best brass tacks, thought Strathdee, we have them; you must have questions to ask as well as me; if either of us is to get ahead at all there must be some sort of liaison, and Strathdee and La Chouie are the obvious liaison officers. . . . If there’s to be Carnival dances and fireworks tomorrow night, we could have at least two hours; you can’t get out of Poutin’s fireworks in less. There’s opportunity. I wouldn’t wonder. . . . He had got no further in his reflections and his cigarette was but two-thirds smoked when Louis Philippe reappeared bearing a purple envelope seven inches by four with a scarlet monogram on the flap and a reek of Coty. This, thought Strathdee tearing it open, can only say “Go to hell”; there hasn’t been time for more. There had, it appeared however, been time for less; for the message on the sheet of purple notepaper consisted of only two letters—that useful and international expression, “O.K.” Beneath, in an enormous dashing sprawl, ran the signature “Cecilia Branzada.”
Mechanically, Strathdee gave Louis Philippe a half-dollar—leaving him to draw such inferences as he thought fit. He then sought out Antofrino in his den. There was never any difficulty in finding Antofrino: he lived—and would probably die—there.
“Frino! I want your best silver shakers tomorrow night in the upstairs lounge with cocktails in ’em. And when I say cocktails I mean cocktails—packed ones, see? And—Frino—I want flowers all over the place—proper flowers. And I want that upstairs lounge to myself till eight o’clock.”
“Chris’, a-Colin; you gotta a-dame? Nice-a-nice.”
“I gotta a-dame, Frino. Nice-a-nice. I’ll say.”
That portion of his premises which Antofrino dignified by the name of the Upper Lounge was in reality no more than a projecting corner or turret of verandah; it had however the merit of being completely secluded. There was but the one entrance doorway, and an arrangement of adjoining bathrooms made it practically soundproof. Strathdee—and many others—had found it most useful on previous occasions—romantic, political or merely business. Surveying it now, a few minutes before six, he was decidedly pleased with it; Antofrino, besides supplying a liberal table of frosted cocktail-shakers whose aroma at least was encouraging when tested, had put up his “Occupé” card on the door and had even run to a rose-shaded lamp. He had also removed all seating accommodation except a single deep and inviting sofa. The place would do.
So, emphatically, would La Chouie, presenting herself at last nearly an hour late when Strathdee’s patience, never his strong point, was almost at an end; he had felt confident, however, that she would come, and now—here she was. It was old-rose again but in a more elaborate style with a décolletage and wide, swinging lace sleeves. A confidential garment altogether. She was, beyond doubt, an exceptionally handsome woman; and as hard, thought Strathdee, handing her the first cocktail, as any granite that ever came out of the Rubislaw.
He opened with a fulsome compliment in his best and most idiomatic Spanish, and was promptly shot down. For she replied in what is called perfect English; but indeed it was more than perfect English for it was beautified by a trace of foreign accent, a slight and fascinating drawl or slur that could be Continental, could be Southern States, could be almost anything.
“That what they taught you to say in Abuhdeen?”
Strathdee tried not to be taken aback. “So you’ve heard I belong to Aberdeen?”
“I’ve heard a lot about you, Misser Stra’dee. . . . Say, these are good cocktails; I can’t get Frino to shake ’em like this for me. . . . I reckon I’ve heard all there is.”
Strathdee said, “Well, that’s grand!” and wondered, Have you?
“Yeh. If I’m going to drink your cocktails, it’s only fair I put that card on the table. And I’d better tell you another thing right now; I’ve a pretty good head for cocktails. If you’re figuring on getting me on the run with these things, think again.”
She sat down gracefully on the sofa.
“The only thing about drinks,” said Strathdee, sitting down beside her, “they make things either real or unreal—it doesn’t matter which. Anyway, they make them better.” He tried a feeler. “I remember once seeing a sunset in the Alleghanies after about a quart of applejack. It was a rare sunset but I wouldn’t have seen it just the way I did—not without the applejack.”
“You know the States, then?”
“Not very well.” In point of fact he had never set eyes on them. “But you do.”
“Me, I know everywhere. The whole round earth. My dad was a bit of a wanderer. He——”
“Don Jorge de las Vegas,” said Strathdee; but she was unmoved by that.
“That was his name—or one of ’em. He got around. We went places, him and me.”
“Including Lassou,” said Strathdee, firing a shot. “You’ve been here before.”
La Chouie favoured him with a speculative stare and evidently decided to lie in moderation.
“I was here for a few weeks when I was a kid. A girl anyway. If I was ever a girl. My dadda thought he’d go in for bananas; then he thought he wouldn’t. That’s what he was like.”
“See any changes?”
“It’s a few steps nearer the finish, that’s all. . . . I’ll have another of these cocktails. . . . I reckon Lassou’s had it.”
“Oh?”
“Yeh. It just keeps on getting rottener and rottener. It’s about time it fell into somebody’s lap. So it will.”
“Maybe. But whose?”
La Chouie smiled her first smile; it was a good one.
“My, my! And he can’t guess a little thing like that. I thought Scotties were clever.”
“I’m too clever to believe that story anyway.”
“Too stupid, you mean.” (She said “stoopid.”)
“All right, too stupid. Anyway, it’s a story. Lassou’s going on and on and on.”
“And Little Black Jumbo—what’s-his-name—Telemaque—going on and on ruling it?”
“Yep.”
“Against all the laws of the island, eh?”
Strathdee said, pouring the fresh cocktails, “For God’s sake don’t let’s talk about the laws. I can’t understand them. You can’t. No woman can—they’ve got more sense. . . . Telemaque’s Consul, that’s all.”
“Like hell he is! Florian’s Consul.”
“Like hell he is!”
“O.K., O.K. You say it your way, I’ll say it mine. We’ll see who’s right. . . . Say, Misser Stra’dee, why you want to mix yourself up with all these niggers?”
“Maybe I like niggers.”
“Maybe you do and all.”
“Maybe I like Lassou. Maybe I want to stay here.”
“For God’s sake! Why?”
Strathdee swallowed his cocktail and set down his glass. It was a good cocktail—a tongue-loosener. He intoned, “‘God bless the thoughtful islands Where never warrants come; God bless the just Republics That give a man a home.’”
La Chouie stared. “You didn’t think up that?”
“No. I wish to God I had. It was a gentleman called Kipling. . . . It’s a good poem; it goes on about the ‘warder ocean That keeps us from our kin.’”
“Like that, is it?”
“Something like that.”
La Chouie said, rather meditatively, “Kin’s hell. . Sometimes. . . . All this about loving your relations, just because they’re your relations; it’s boloney. . . . I loved my dadda, though.”
“He was an American, eh?”
“Well, then, he just wasn’t. He was Irish. And my mother was a Spaniard. I reckon she was a sort of Countess——”
Strathdee had spent a not unprofitable morning with the Police archives and the back files of Le Quotidien and Le Mardi; he took a swig of cocktail and said, slowly and deliberately, “How’d it be if we said your Dadda was an American citizen and he got married in Mexico City and your mother was——”
La Chouie was touchée at last; she flew up.
“Oh? So you’ve been grubbing about have you? Nosey!”
“Not me. I just heard.”
“You just heard. You’d hear a lot in this hole.”
“It just came into my mind hearing you talk. You’ve got a little accent, you know “
“I’ve got a little accent, have I, Mister Scottie. What about yours? . . . Say, Misser Stra’dee, you made a black at the very start of this li’l conversation. When you spoke Spanish. Where did you learn Spanish?”
“Took it at College.”
“Oh yeah? How’d it be this time if we said you learned in it Spain. In that war they had.”
Strathdee’s small black eyebrows went up; they’d been digging about, had they, over in Latin America? Well, tant mieux; Mr. Colin Strathdee must be a person of importance if they’d bothered to go into all that.
“I knew Spanish before I ever went to Spain. I learned a bit more there.”
“You learned a lot of things in Spain, Misser Stra-dee. How to fight on both sides, for instance. A’nt that so?”
“Well, what about it?”
“Well, if I was Little Black Jumbo, I wouldn’t trust a man who’d fought first on one side and then on the other. First Franco, then Red.”
“I don’t know about Little Black Jumbo,” said Strathdee rather testily, “but if you’d been taken prisoner by Los Cominunistas because your officer was a bloody fool, and it was a question of fighting or being shot, what would you have done?”
“I’d have been shot. Twenty times over.”
Strathdee studied her; he thought, rather grudgingly: I believe it’s true; she’s that kind. And she’d go down with Florian to the last. She isn’t buyable. . . . Well. . . . He observed that she was looking at him rather kindly.
“My, my! Fancy you fighting in the Spanish war. You must have been just a kid.”
Strathdee said sulkily, “I was twenty. You did some odd things when you were twenty.” But he got no rise to that.
“What one does when one is twenty has no importance.”
“Oh, hasn’t it?” Strathdee reached for the second cocktail-shaker. “It lost me a job, anyway.”
“How come?”
“Well, I’m a schoolmaster by profession “
“You are at that. Teaching Little Black Jumbo Telemaque. Those dumb clucks at the Protestant Mission taught him all he’ll ever know. Sayin’ his prayers. Well, he’ll need it. Who else did you teach, Professor?”
“I had a damn good job in a Prep School in Berkshire. I don’t suppose you know where Berkshire is: it’s in England; it is England. I don’t suppose you know what a Prep School is. That’s England too. It’s where little English gentlemen learn to play cricket.”
“Crazy game, that. I’ve seen it.”
“It’s not a bad game so long as it’s a game. Where they made the mistake was telling these brats it was like life. You say ‘Play’ before you bowl. You don’t shy the ball at the chap’s head when he isn’t looking. You wouldn’t dream of bowling a sneaker. This is the secret of England’s greatness, England’s glory.”
“I don’t wonder they fired you if you talked like that.”
“Oh, it wasn’t that. They found out somehow about the Communists.”
“You fighting for them?”
“Yeh. They got on to that somehow. And of course they couldn’t have a blasted Red revolutionary teaching Snuffle Minor his Catechism.”
“His how much?”
“Local voodoo ritual. Never mind that.” His tongue began to run away with him. “And then the bitch of a Matron nosed out something about me and the music mistress.”
“My, my! You were one of the boys, weren’t you. . . . So they fired you? Well, you’d misbehaved; you’d nothing to be sore about; you deserved it.”
“Oh, did I? If my old stiff of a Headmaster had been faced with the choice—change sides or be shot—I know what he’d have done. As to the music mistress . . .”
“Well? As to the music mistress.”
“She got what she wanted. She got what she was asking for. Why not—so long as the brats didn’t get round to it. Which they never did.”
“Maybe she thought you’d get round to marrying her one day.”
“Not she. For God’s sake, Cecilia——”
“Señora to you.”
“For God’s sake, Señora, don’t tell me you’re one of those women who believe every man’s got to marry. Happy ever after, and so on.”
“We-ell. What’s wrong with it?”
Strathdee looked at her sourly. “Everything’s wrong with it. . . . I suppose you’ll tell me you’re one of these happy-marrieds.”
La Chouie glanced down demurely at her rings.
“Well . . . yes.”
Strathdee said, “Swell!” He reached for the third and last cocktail-shaker, poured and tasted. He was conscious of a faint crackle inside his head, a feeling as if someone had flipped the inside of his skull; Antofrino had certainly packed them. He thought, I hope she doesn’t fall off the sofa. La Chouie was sipping her cocktail and looking demure; she showed no signs of falling off anything.
“You know, Misser Stra’dee, it’s no use your picking on marriage. Just because you’re a bachelor and miserable.”
“Who says I’m—miserable?”
“I do. I can see it. Anybody could see it. Now, me—I’m happy. I’ve got a husband who loves and adores me. It’s—it’s an idyll. It’s lovely.”
“Oh, it is, is it? Any children?”
“Yes, three. And let me tell you, Misser Stra’dee, they’re just the cutest, prettiest, nicest children you ever saw. And we’ve got a lovely home back there in South America; it’s a sort of a castle, really . . .”
“Then why the hell don’t you stay there?”
“I got things to do.”
“Things to do! What about your husband? Messing about in a place like Lassou with a fellow like——”
La Chouie drew herself up rather magnificently, rather too magnificently. They were good cocktails.
“My husband is a patriot. He’d let me do anything that would be for our country. He’d like me to.”
It was a slip, and Strathdee pounced on it.
“Oh? So it’s for your country that you’re here? I thought——”
He had the satisfaction of seeing that La Chouie was really angry this time, with him, with herself; the trouble was that it improved her appearance twenty per cent, and Strathdee had for some time been feeling uncomfortably that her appearance was quite good enough as it was. She said, tensely:
“Well? You thought what?”
“I thought you’d come over here to see justice done. I thought you were interested in the laws.” He took another good sip of that formidable cocktail. “If you want to know what I really thought, I thought you were here with Florian.”
La Chouie followed, but she contrived a reasonably natural laugh.
“Me! Florian! That kid.”
“He’s not a kid. He’s twenty-two. He’s got what it takes.”
“Not with me, he hasn’t.” She looked at Strathdee a little mistily. “Say, Stra’dee”—(Hullo! thought Strathdee; the Misser’s gone west; well now!)—“Say, Stra’dee, you thought that. And you’d call yourself clever.” She swilled off her cocktail. “Listen here, now. What you said about justice was right. I’m not going to tell you this twice, so get it into your head. What you said about justice was right.”
“You have told me that twice.”
“Oh, shah! I’m going to see that boy gets his rights. I’m going to put him where he belongs.”
“You are? Some Secretary.”
“Oh, Secretary nothing! That was just some hooey we had to use at the start. He’s—he’s just a boy, Stra’dee; he’s gotta have a hand. A guiding hand. A woman’s hand. It has to be a woman. . . . Me and Florian? Oh, shucks, Stra’dee; I’m—I’m like’s it was his mother.”
“A boy’s best friend is his mother,” quoted Strathdee. “Well, I don’t doubt you’ll do what you can for him. Don’t break your heart when he loses.”
“He won’t lose. I don’t back losers, Stra’dee. I’m gonna put that boy where he belongs; I’ll see him righted and you can take your Little Black Jumbo and put him where the monkey——”
Strathdee also drained his cocktail.
“Well, now we know.”
“Now we know. And I ain’t going to take long over it either. I want to get back to my husband and my kiddies. And my garden. I haven’t got time to waste in a dump like Lassou, even if you have.”
Strathdee said, “Get back to it all right now.” But he observed that La Chouie was looking at him more mistily than ever; and La Chouie was just amazingly attractive; it was a sin and a shame to see such a woman wasting herself, whether it was on Florian, Lassou or a fat South American with a lovely garden and three of the cutest, prettiest . . .
“Misser Stra’dee”—(“Misser” back again, he thought; Damn!)—“Misser Stra’dee, you’re cleverer than I thought. . . . I mean there’s more to you than I expected . . . I mean . . .”
“You mean,” said Strathdee, “it hasn’t been such a bad half hour after all.”
La Chouie glanced at a little jewelled watch on her wrist.
“Oh, Gee, that boy Florian will be back any minute. I’d better skip.”
She got up; Strathdee also.
“So Florian doesn’t know about this.”
“Well, no; not so far. I’ll tell him something. Or maybe I won’t. But you keep this—this meeting under your hat, anyway.”
“You can count on me,” said Strathdee. “I’m a believer in secret diplomacy. If they’d stuck to secret diplomacy we wouldn’t have wars. All this damned Democracy and telling the People everything . . .”
La Chouie bit her thumb; the loose sleeve of her gown fell back over that excellent forearm. She said:
“I wish I could count on you. I—I didn’t mean to say that when I came here tonight. There’s—there’s more to you than I reckoned. . . . Why don’t you duck your old Telemaque and climb on board the waggon.”
Strathdee shook his head, smiling. “Don’t like the waggon. Don’t like where it’s going.”
“You think that’s into the ditch, eh?”
“Right into it. . . . I’ll come and pick you out.”
“Like hell you will. . .” She glanced again at her watch. “Well, it’s been a nice little talk. Nice drinks. Now I suppose it’s got to be goodbye.”
“Goodbye. Till next time.”
“There won’t be any next time. I’ve got to get this job finished pronto and light off hoppity back home. There’s too much waiting for me back in San Hieronimo for me to keep on wasting time in this hell-hole. . . . Say, Stra’dee . . .”
“Yes?”
“I feel bad about that Communistas business. And the school. And the music mistress and all. I reckon it was tough on you. I said you deserved it, but maybe you didn’t. It doesn’t seem fair—me having so much back home there and you having nothing and stuck in this dump. It’s just too bad.”
“Just too bad,” agreed Strathdee. “But after all, you’d a bad time here once.”
“You ain’t going to let me forget that.”
“No—nor anybody else. But the point is—you had that bad time and now everything in the garden’s lovely. Cheer up! maybe it’ll work out that way with me.”
La Chouie looked at him most mistily indeed.
“I’d like to have it come out like that. Oh, I would. . . . We’ve got bits in common, you know, you and me. But I reckon it won’t. I reckon—I reckon you’re a wicked man really.”
Strathdee realised it was a compliment.
“Wicked as hell,” he said. “Almost as wicked as you.”
In the pleasant grounds of the Government College, gaily illuminated with bulbs of coloured light, while Poutin’s fireworks banged and barked and spluttered, Celeste said, in her beautiful Spanish:
“One has said to me, Señor, that you are a bull-fighter.”
“A bull-fighter?”
“So one has said to me.”
“A bull-fighter? I? I am a student at the University of San Hieronimo.”
“You study, then?”
“Claro! I am a student of philosophy.”
“It is an interesting subject?”
“Of the most interesting.”
“And what does that teach one, Señor?”
“Many and useful things. It teaches one, for instance, not to miss chances.”
“Oh-oh?”
“As when one meets a charming young lady . . .”
Yes, Celeste—who should not, of course, have been there at all—was going ahead nicely; she too was missing no chances; it was a thousand pities that Strathdee could not be there to see it. But Strathdee, at that moment, was dining in solitary state in his corner of the Zirque’s salle-à-manger, with a rather poor appetite and that feeling of distention in the cerebellum which is the sequel to a succession of packed cocktails. He was reviewing his late diplomatic interview in gloomy retrospect; and his thought was—That wasn’t how I meant it to go; it wasn’t at all. . . . But I wouldn’t have it back. . . . No.
During the next day or two Strathdee had ample and disagreeable evidence in support of his estimate of the political situation: Florian was undoubtedly booming. The so dastardly assassin of Le Zouz had not yet been arrested—there was nothing so open as that; but there were endless hints, evasions, things half said. Soutey, for instance, that wobbler on the wall: “He is formidable, that Florian. Boy, he’s a hunner per cent.” The Chief of Police, with one of his most beautiful smiles: “What pity that he returns to South America; so fine a young man!” And Bosomworth, encountered by chance in the Place de la Liberté, was pleased to be cautionary.
“Your horse isn’t running very well.”
Strathdee said, fuming, “No?”
“No. I’d mind my step if I were you.”
Strathdee said with some asperity that he could look after his step all right.
“It’s as you say,” said Bosomworth. “But I’ve been here longer than you; I’ve seen what happens when fellows get into politics on the wrong side. It’s all politics, damn it. There was a chap in the Bank who got mixed up in it once—didn’t do him any good. And there was that Missionary fellow—what was his name?—Liggett. He got beaten up. . . . Mind your step.”
Strathdee said, controlling himself, “What do you suggest I should do?”
“Well”, said Bosomworth, “least done’s soonest mended. If you can’t sit tight and do nothing, I’d hedge.”
Strathdee thought: You would. Bosomworth, looking at him with kindly compassion, said, “I can’t think why you want to bother about that blasted young nigger.”
Strathdee said, hoping it would get home, “I don’t suppose you can.” But the interview annoyed and shook him; at some sacrifice of dignity he crept into the back of one of the public meetings that were now a part of Florian’s daily campaign. Florian spoke for an hour—very effectively; he had reached the stage when he was frankly a candidate, and a candidate promising anything and everything to any and everybody; one would induce the United States to cancel the balance of their loan to Lassou; one would build a railway across the island; one would erect such a cinema and theatre as had never been seen outside Broadway; one would liberalise the laws of marriage—though how these could be further liberalised than in practice they already were was difficult to see. His audience soaked it all down. La Chouie did not appear.
Strathdee, gravely disquieted, drove himself out to Les Fleuris where Telemaque was turning a set of outsize chessmen on his lathe. Strathdee, sitting on the edge of the work-table, outlined the situation. Promises must be met with counter-promises, boasts with counter-boasts, boloney with boloney.
“But, Sad-dee. How to do? Railway and all.”
“We can’t do. Neither can Florian. It’s bluff. Finesse.”
“It is lies?”
“Well—yes.”
“To lie is not good. . . . You want that I speech about cinemas?”
“Speak about. Not necessarily cinemas. There’s lots of other things. A new market. . . . You could say you’d cut the octroi.”
“But how to do?”
“That doesn’t matter. Not just now.”
“But, Sad-dee! We should not lie to the pipples. No?” Sighing, Strathdee endeavoured to set forth once more the distinction between morality and expediency. It was very, very difficult.
“But, Sad-dee, you have tell me—we must not promise what we cannot deform.”
“Per-form. Sometimes you have to. When the other side’s doing it. . . . Look, Telemaque, this is an election. Any day now the Council of Affairs must meet. . . .”
“How is election?”
“Election,” said Strathdee, his tongue running away with him again, “is the name given by the winning side to an outburst of mob hysterics. . . . No, never mind that now. Look, Telemaque, it’s like this . . .” He proceeded to sketch for his pupil just how he stood (a) legally, (b) in actual fact; he made it appear that there was a considerable difference between them. Telemaque goggled.
“But I am Consul.”
“For the moment, yes. But it’s got to be ratified. We’ve got to make them——”
“But you have tell me God want me to be Consul. If God make me Consul, if God want me——”
God damn you! thought Strathdee savagely; he plunged once more into explanations and arguments. But if Telemaque budged at all, it was only to an infinitesimal degree. He was prepared to promise better cinemas than Florian’s—he liked cinemas; but he would not look at the railway or the octroi or the American debt. Strathdee went home to the Zirque dispirited and fighting mad; you couldn’t but respect the creature—his honesty, his Christian good intent; but—what sort of use were these against rainbow Paradises thought up by La Señora Branzada and put over by her musical-comedy hero? None, thought Strathdee bitterly, not any; they never were, they never will be.
At the Zirque he found Lucienne; it was one of her nights, and she had brought an old bottle with her after all. Strathdee gave it a cursory glance, said it was just the thing, and locked it away in a suitcase. He dismissed Lucienne early, however—much to her annoyance, as it meant no coffee and cakes on the verandah in the morning—and when she had gone, he extracted the bottle and spent some time considering it with the greatest care as a conceivable receptacle—even by Lassou standards—for the soul of the Liberator Boufallon. It was a very solid and thick bottle of a curious and perhaps an antique shape; it had what seemed to be a dolphin embossed on one side of it; but that didn’t matter; dolphins didn’t date. It was not really old enough but Strathdee thought that, with some scratching and burying and general dirtifying, that might be overcome. The Liberator Boufallon had performed his achievement in January of 1813, when Napoleon—his only comparable rival in the eyes of the Lassoux—was somewhat preoccupied elsewhere. It had not been, after all, a very remarkable feat, consisting in the massacre by a ten times superior force of a small and starving French garrison at Larcadie and the more leisurely extermination of some scattered French planters throughout the island; but Lassou opinion rated Boufallon above El Bolivar or Garibaldi. (Incidentally it was at that time that Boufallon devised for himself—and his successors—the title of “Consul,” which he believed still to be that of his European rival; his history was a little out of date but the title did as well as another.) The Liberator Boufallon had been gathered to his fathers in 1828, at which date presumably some contemporary Coubou had ensnared his soul in the bottle. The article produced by Lucienne could hardly, on the most hopeful estimate, be older than 1845, and was possibly much younger; still, it might—perhaps must—be made to do. Mercifully it had a glass stopper which got rid of the cork difficulty; seals—there must have been seals—would be another matter. Very thoughtfully Strathdee locked it away again and sat for a long time in his verandah chair, smoking Poutin cigarettes and gazing at the Centaurs and the Cross, which—as always at that season in Lassou—were brilliant.
To be or not to be? These are deep waters, Colin, my boy, he thought; very deep and pretty reasonably dangerous. Bosomworth’s warnings, at the time merely annoying, came back at that dead hour of the night with sinister boding; and there was no doubt that Bosomworth spoke sense. Foreigners who meddled in Lassou politics were heading for trouble; and I’ve had enough trouble in my life, thought Strathdee, God knows. The dossier of Colin Strathdee—if anybody kept such a thing—was far from spotless; it was desirable, for more reasons than one, that Colin Strathdee should not have to appeal to his Motherland for help. And the trouble in store for meddlers in Lassou politics was as nothing to that which awaited meddlers in the darker side of the island—in Coubous and voodoos and damnation generally. Sane and healthy men—or those who wished to remain sane and healthy—kept out of that. Supposing I put up a fake Thing, thought Strathdee; supposing I make some bloomer and I’m spotted, then what becomes of Colin Strathdee? I just don’t like to think.
His upper lip drawn in very tight, Strathdee pondered and pondered while the Cross and the Centaurs moved across his field of vision. Even supposing I brought off a fake and escaped with my life, could it do any good? Is there time? Not to get the knowledge that Telemaque had the Thing broadcast through the island—not even with the Lassou bush telegraph. But you could get it to a few of the people who mattered—Hippolyte’s old gang, the Council of Affairs. Worth doing? Yes. No. Yes. . . . Telemaque . . . right’s right, fair’s fair . . . he’s an ass, but he’s a good ass . . . you can’t help liking him. Why the devil should Lassou be handed over to those South American gangsters? Damn Lassou; but—Telemaque. . . . Ratted on by everybody; is he going to be ratted on by Strathdee also? . . . No, by God, he’s not! . . . I’ll do it . . .
Very well, then, I’ll do it. It means faking a Thing; nothing else on God’s earth will stop Florian now. But if it’s to be done, it must be done well. . . . Zoti says that the real Thing—presuming it existed—has been lost for a great many years. How many people in Lassou, if any, know what it looked like? Who are they? Data, data, we must have more data. And there’s only one place where I can get them, thought Strathdee—and that’s Basse-Borrou. It’s another visit to Zoti as soon as it’s decently daylight; and that, thank Heaven, won’t be very long.
He dragged himself wearily to bed. Colin! he thought, you’ve been a fool all your life but you’re putting the lid on it now. But Telemaque . . . the poor decent little bastard. . . . The Lib’y; the Musée. . . . He shall pull it off, thought Strathdee; and damn all the King’s enemies, male—and female.
At Basse-Borrou the birds clamoured as usual, the morning sun shone kindly on the green grass lawn and the little rippling stream; and as usual Zoti was there in his white suit with its queer jacket, walking up and down in front of his bungalow as if in pleasant expectation of his chance visitor. Zoti was known to go about the island a great deal on his errands of necessity and mercy, and he obviously kept himself very much au fait with what was going on; yet somehow or other, he was always at Basse-Borrou as well. Magic?
This morning he seemed tiresomely disposed to waste further time on his new pair of visitors in the dead palm tree. After the routine gambits—(“I knew you were coming, mon Capitaine; my little angels have told me.” “It is wonderful, Doctor, how they know.”)—he led the way to the corner of his compound and spent some time in raptures over the little brown and grey birds. They were behaving much as on the previous occasion, popping out of the hole in the tree, sitting a little while on the stump-like top and popping back again. Zoti said:
“They have the beautiful life, these ones. Ah, yes!” Strathdee said, no doubt; but a trifle monotonous?
“Ah no, mon Capitaine. There is no monotony in the place to which they go. There they hear everything—but everything; and they come and tell it all to old Zoti. It is not so, my angels?” The birds chirped as if in response.
Strathdee wondered, What’s he getting at? He was privately convinced that Zoti possessed some sort of clairvoyant or hypnotic powers—they needn’t after all be more than those of a music-hall thought-reader—and he had tried to clear his own mind as far as possible of any ideas bearing on Things, real or counterfeit; he doubted now if he had succeeded in clearing it sufficiently. For Zoti did what he had done only once before; he led Strathdee into that inner room in his bungalow which was filled with unpleasant, not to say horrible, objects. While Strathdee gazed at a picture of a snake ascending from the viscera of a negro who was being roasted in a fire—the expression on the negro’s face was arresting—Zoti took down from a shelf a glass jar of the kind used for bottling fruit. He said:
“This I have just received.”
Strathdee, peering, saw that the jar contained a lump of what looked like pinkish-brown guttapercha. He said:
“What is it?”
“It is the heart of a goat.”
Strathdee was in no mood for goat’s hearts; he ate too much goat at the Hotel Zirque; he said:
“Alors?”
“It has come to me from the hills. From a temple. From a temple of a certain kind. It is of a goat that was killed in a special way by a special person at a special time. . . . It was a special kind of goat, mon Capitaine.”
Strathdee felt the horrid little room go suddenly cold; if the thing in the jar was a heart at all, it was no goat’s. It was probably—almost certainly—a child’s. He looked round at the depressing pictures, at that subtly intolerable black coat and top hat, at those knives that seemed so full of unpleasant history, at Zoti. He felt a twinge of nausea, but he said, as jauntily as he could:
“And what will you do with it, Doctor?”
“I do not know, mon Capitaine. This goat, it was killed in a certain way at a certain time; now it too can kill.”
“I see. And who are you going to kill with it?”
Zoti shrugged. “I do not kill, mon Capitaine. But I could.” For a moment he looked really rather horrid; his little prongs of hair took on the semblance of horns, there was Something in his eyes. Strathdee thought: If it wasn’t absurd, I’d think he was trying to frighten me. “If I should wish to, I could. With this.” He tapped the bottle, put it back on the shelf and led the way back to his verandah. Strathdee was still wondering: What’s he getting at now? when he said, in the pleasantest tone:
“And now let us go on from where we left off. When you were here last.”
Strathdee jumped at it; he thought it more than possible that Zoti—clairvoyance and thought-reading apart—could make a pretty good guess at the reason for his visit; the cards might as well be on the table.
“You were kind enough then, Doctor, to tell me about the—the Thing.”
“Ah! The Thing.”
“Will you tell me again?”
Zoti obligingly told; but it was a disappointingly exact repetition. Strathdee said, biting his moustache:
“You cannot tell me some more?”
“I do not know any more. There is no more to know.”
“How long has it been lost?”
Zoti said, again repeating, “Twenty-five years. Fifty years. I do not know.”
“Have you ever seen it?”
“Yes. Once I saw it.”
“Then it can’t have been lost so very long.”
“I am old now. I was young then, mon Capitaine.”
“You—you would know it again if you saw it?”
“But certainly. I would know if it were within a mile of me.”
Strathdee thought: This is an idiotic conversation. He lit a cigarette. The birds squawked, whistled, chattered. Zoti stood looking amiably expectant.
“I—I want to be frank with you, Doctor.”
“It is better, mon Capitaine. I should know in any case.”
“Quite so. . . . Well, it is necessary for our Telemaque that the Thing should be found. I am trying to find it.”
“You will never find it. It cannot be found.”
“Why not?”
“It is simply so. It is lost. It cannot be found.”
“Nevertheless,” said Strathdee, “I am going to try. . . . Tell me, Doctor, how should I recognise it if I saw it. Are there marks?”
“There are marks.”
“What sort of marks?”
“You could not see them.”
“But you could?”
“But naturally, mon Capitaine.”
Strathdee thought: Hell! He tried one more question.
“If anyone found it—if anyone had found it—would they bring it to you?”
“It would come to me.”
“You mean somebody would bring it to you.”
“It would come to me of itself.”
Strathdee thought: Damnation! this is lunatic; Asylum Island today, yesterday and for ever. He said, “At any rate if anyone found it, you would know of it.”
“At once. As soon as he found it. Perhaps before.”
Strathdee thought it was time for a little artistic verisimilitude. “If I find it——”
“You will not find it.”
“No, but if I do, may I bring it to you?”
“You would not need to bring it. It would come.”
“But if I find a thing I think is it; a thing like it——”
“There is nothing like it.”
Strathdee gave it up; he made some more purely polite conversation and got back to his car. On the long and rather beautiful drive from Basse-Borrou to Larcadie he sat wrapped in inspissate gloom. I’ve heard a good many lies this morning, he thought, and a certain amount of truth; if only I’d any means of knowing which was which. But one thing seems all too certain; faked Things are off. If I shove the Liberator Boufallon into Lucienne’s dolphin bottle, it’ll go in the end to Zoti; and whether there are marks or whether there aren’t, and whether he’s seen the Thing before or whether he hasn’t, he’ll spot the fake. . . . And then I suppose he’ll kill me. With a goat’s heart—let’s call it a goat’s heart anyway—in a jam jar. . . . And the damned thing is, I half believe he would. . . . Colin, Colin, you’ve been living too long in Lassou.
On the stairs of the Hotel Zirque he ran into La Chouie descending. La Chouie was in green linen, and she carried an air of radiance and success.
“My! If it isn’t Misser Stra’dee. How’s it all going?”
Strathdee said absently and in her own idiom, “Swell.”
“Little Black Jumbo doing his stuff nicely?”
“Like a book.”
“Catching fresh votes every minute of every hour of every day? Building rainbows to Paradise?”
“And back.”
La Chouie looked at him kindly.
“Say, Stra’dee, why don’ you throw in the cards?”
“I don’t throw in winning cards; that’s why.”
“Winning cards! Little Black Jumbo! Say, Stra’dee, that boy’s more like a Georgia revivalist stuffed with straw than anything human I ever saw.”
“There’s more to him than there is to your Don Juan de Los Hieronimos. All he wants is a guitar.”
“You ought to know. Sittin’ in the back seats at Florian’s meetings.”
Strathdee flushed. “Well, you weren’t there. Come to that, you don’t appear much in public these days, do you now?”
La Chouie flushed in her turn; she sulked for a moment, then seemed to brighten.
“Oh, well, let it ride. . . . Say, those cocktails were something that night. I felt good and then I felt not so good. You can mix ’em.”
“I didn’t mix them. It was Frino. Come and have some more another night.”
La Chouie shook her head. “No time, honey. That balloon’s going up any day now. Next cocktail you drink with me’ll be at the Palace. If you haven’t been bumped off. You can’t trust those nigs once they get excited.” But the old misty benevolence seemed to creep into her eyes. “Look, Stra’dee, there’s still time to climb on to the waggon. Come on in.”
Strathdee shook his head. “Not at any price.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t like Dagoes.”
This time she was furious—and furiously handsome with it; her eyes darkened and flashed, the colour flew in her face, her neat, even teeth showed under her lip.
“You mind what you’re saying! My—my husband is one of your Dagoes.”
“That’s one reason why I don’t like them,” said Strathdee, extricating himself, as he thought, rather neatly.
Strathdee slept badly that night—in fact, he hardly slept at all. The cold, steely constellations marched across the Caribbean sky, drums beat at a distance, the Cathedral clock—which was wildly inaccurate—chimed hour after weary hour. He was tormented by two demons which he normally contrived to suppress very adequately—conscience and funk. Strathdee liked Lassou; it fell in comfortably with his easy cynical amorality; he wanted to stay there. And it looked as if Lassou, for Colin Strathdee, was coming to an end. He was not afraid of physical violence—though you never knew, even about that; he was afraid of awaking to another of those grim mornings of fresh start, of the renewed search for somewhere to lay his head while he collected a livelihood. And his conscience gnawed; it is a trite expression, but that is just what his conscience did. At times, as he tossed and turned in his bed, it seemed simple folly not to accept La Chouie’s invitation and climb on her waggon while it was still possible—people who lived by their wits must use their wits, and that was all there was to it; at other times the desertion of poor Telemaque seemed a monstrous felony, an unendurable surrender. He got up and pouring himself a little rum, sat drinking it and considering again Lucienne’s bottle; one could still try it. Then, in the silence of the night, cold, idiotic fear came down upon him—fear of a white-haired old negro in a mess-jacket, of a room full of—Something, of a piece of pinkish-brown gutta-percha in a jam jar. No use telling oneself that this was all folly or worse; it was Lassou—Asylum Island; you must take the place as a whole or leave it. Well, then—leave it. . . . But I don’t want to leave it. . . . And so on.
Dawn came at last, creeping along the coast—a fluttering light, the stars paling one by one, a rustle in the dark mango-trees in the Zirque’s garden, a lull in the night-long howling of dogs. Strathdee got up, took a cold shower—rather noisily in the hope of disturbing Florian next door—put on a shirt and shorts and rope-soled shoes, and went for a walk up the hill tracks of Les Myosotes. Like Bosomworth and others exiled in Larcadie, he had at one time meant to make a habit of this; like them, he had grown out of it. Les Myosotes ought to have been charming in the early morning, but they weren’t; the tracks were like the side of a house, they were rough and slippery, at every turn they landed you in some God-forsaken little hut with yelping, snarling dogs and Lassoux coming out and staring—not hostile, not friendly, just blemishes on the morning. Always you thought you were coming to the end of these hovels; always there was yet another—and another. When at last you shook them off, you found yourself in a tangle of limestone ravines, thorn scrub and knife-edged grasses, with the crests of the ridge seemingly as far away as ever. The walk became a task, a pest, a tedium. Not unnaturally one’s enthusiasm for these early-morning rambles—so delightful in theory—was extinguished.
There was, however, one point on Les Myosotes which Strathdee could still enjoy, to which, in a moment of Aberdeenshire nostalgia, he had given the name Benachie. It was a jut of limestone crag, not too high on the hill, involving just enough struggling through grass and thorn to make it worth while; from it you had a view for which most people would have given a great deal. Sitting on it this morning, feeling red-eyed and weary, Strathdee looked out over Larcadie; he could see Les Fleuris and the other houses in the suburbs huddled among the red glow of immortelles; he could see the sprawl of the town with the bare brown desert of the Place de la Liberté and the grey buildings of the Palace: and beyond all, the infinite blue of the ocean out of which that South American plane had come flying. He could see the massive French Cathedral and the feeble wooden spire of the Protestant church. And just below him he could look right into the Jardin du Faune. The Jardin du Faune had been one of Poutin’s presentations to the town—some form of conscience-money, no doubt; it was a pleasant little place with grass that was almost green, red-ochre paths and blazing beds of cannas. It got its name from a little statue in its midst, charmingly French and indecent, which had tickled Poutin’s fancy on one of his visits to Paris and had quite probably given rise to the whole garden. From where Strathdee sat on Benachie, it seemed that one could fillip a stone and hit the Faune on his little dancing bottom.
They were awake already on Les Myosotes—women screeching and squalling, little naked black boys driving, or being driven by, herds of goats this way and that; but down in the town very few people were stirring. Yet Strathdee saw that there were two persons in the Jardin du Faune—a male and a female. At first he looked at them idly, just seeing them and no more; then suddenly his upper lip went in and he jerked his field-glasses out of their case. They were good glasses and the tiny figures sprang up into glowing detail. Strathdee gasped; they were—yes, by God they were!—Florian and Celeste.
Strathdee levelled his glasses on a rock and studied them at leisure and without compunction. Apart from the fact that the conjointure of La Chouie’s Florian and Telemaque’s sister was in itself astounding, there was nothing very remarkable about them. They were behaving in a perfectly normal manner; walking slowly round and round the paths, apparently in polite and decorous conversation. There was a clear foot of space between them and they made no attempt to diminish it. Yet—there they were: Florian and Celeste. Florian and Celeste. My God! thought Strathdee, a chink in the armour at last!
The perambulation of the Jardin du Faune lasted perhaps another quarter of an hour, Strathdee following every movement with absorbed interest. Then he saw that Celeste looked at the watch on her wrist; they came to a halt near the little gateway of the garden. For a minute Florian stood magnificently upright, gazing like a Conquistador at the mountains—gazing, if he had known it, straight at Strathdee—while Celeste scraped the red gravel with the toe of her shoe. Then Florian took her hand and bowed over it with Spanish gallantry; Strathdee hoped he was going to kiss it, but he didn’t. With a flourish he stalked away out of the garden; presently a plume of dust proclaimed a car going downhill towards the Zirque. Celeste sat down on a seat for an exact five minutes; she was evidently timing an interval, for she glanced repeatedly at her watch. At the end of the five minutes she got up briskly and went off.
Strathdee put his glasses back in his case and scrambled off through the grass and thorn feeling so much better that he hardly knew himself. Florian and Celeste; shades of all the romances that ever were! A break at last, he thought—and a real break; if we can’t make something out of this, it’s a poor look out. Who ever would have thought it?
A chink in the armour, a chink in the armour indeed.
Strathdee had once described himself to Bosomworth as a quick worker; he gave an illustration of this admirable quality that morning. He presented himself early at Les Fleuris where he had a brief battle with Telemaque—Telemaque at his most stubborn and difficult—on the subject of yet another public meeting. He then wandered round the house till he discovered Celeste arranging, as usual, her kaleidoscopic bouquets. He said, in the customary Spanish of their conspiracy:
“I grow so old, I grow so stupid. I have again forgotten to bring you the Rey Baltazar.”
Celeste said it was of no consequence; and neither, to be exact, it was. Celeste’s interest in the poetry of Calderon was more a convention than a reality; it had been understood for some time that she wished to make a further study of his works and that Strathdee—who really did delight in them—was to lend her certain volumes. Neither of them had regarded the matter as of any urgency. Celeste was therefore a little surprised to find that this morning Strathdee was taking it seriously.
“What is to be done any time,” he said sententiously, “is done never. No, no; let us get on with it. You shall have the book today. It means that I must make another journey out here this evening. It serves me right. . . . Unless, of course——”
“Unless what, señor?”
“Unless by any chance you happened to be passing the Zirque. Then you would be sure of it.”
Celeste was amiable—and unsuspecting. She said, reflectively:
“It is true that I have this afternoon an appointment with my hairdresser.”
“At what hour, señorita?”
“It is at four o’clock. I could perhaps call in passing . . .”
Strathdee affected to consider it. “Unfortunately . . . At four o’clock . . . But could you perhaps . . . How long will the hairdresser take?”
Celeste sighed. “Oh, it will be long—long. I have such horrible hair. It is like wire.”
Strathdee said mechanically that it was like the manes of celestial stallions—and wondered, en passant, if he was repeating Florian.
“Ah, no—it is horrible. It has to be waved and set.” (Actually, poor girl, it had to be straightened, taken out of curl, taken out of wool—a painful process.) “It takes very, very long. Perhaps two hours.”
Strathdee made a rapid mental calculation. You could say for Florian—perhaps it was his South American training—that he ran on a schedule. In the neighbourhood of six he came in every evening to the Zirque—yes, every evening, bless him—changed and went out on the stroke of half-past to the Cercle Lettré. You could count on Florian. He said:
“I shall be in at six-fifteen. If it would not inconvenience you——”
Celeste, nice child, said that it would be an outstanding and particular pleasure.
It seemed to be Strathdee’s day; he spent most of it delving again after La Chouie among the files and the archives, where luck or inspiration led him to several new and most interesting items. As for the evening, it went like clockwork. At six came Florian, whizzing up the drive in Poutin’s Cadillac which he seemed to have annexed; the usual commotion which attended his toilet broke out in the next room. At precisely six-fifteen Celeste arrived in a grinding and dilapidated taxi which she paid off at the door; Strathdee had her shown up to the little lounge where La Chouie had so enjoyed her cocktails. He had the Rey Baltazar ready there; for good measure he had thrown in a volume with La Vida es Sueno as well. It took—naturally—a little time for Strathdee, with one ear on the partition wall, to point out the most exquisite passages in these immortal works. The eventual collision was timed to a matter of seconds; Celeste hovering with Strathdee at the head of the stairs, receiving his final commentary; Florian dashing from his room in all the magnificence of a newly-ironed suit of russet silk. He very nearly knocked them over.
“Señorita!”
“S-señor!”
“I had not expected. . . . A very great pleasure . . .”
Strathdee stood back admiring him, admiring Celeste, admiring himself. His one problem had been as to how he might efface himself; he saw now that that presented no difficulty whatsoever; he was effaced. Even his “Good night” was spoken to the empty air. Strathdee, in common with the poet Calderon, had ceased to exist.
The two went downstairs together as if glued by magnetic attraction; Strathdee, leaning against the railing, heard scraps of their conversation.
“Which way do you go, señorita?”
“I am going home. Straight home. I will have a taxi.”
“No, no, I beg you! My car . . .”
“Señor! I should not dream . . .”
Nipping hastily back to his own verandah, Strathdee enjoyed the pleasant spectacle of the Cadillac sailing down the tortuous approach of the Zirque. Florian drove; Celeste sat modestly beside him; Poutin’s man was in the back. At the hotel entrance there was a perceptible check; then the car turned smoothly away in the direction which did not lead to Les Fleuris.
From behind the closed door of Number Twenty-Six there came the industrious rattle of a typewriter. In a moment of impishness, Strathdee knocked, knocked again. The typewriter stopped.
“Whoozat?”
“Strathdee.”
“Hell!” There was a pause; then La Chouie in resigned annoyance, “Well, you can come in, can’t you? I guess the room’s all right.”
Strathdee entered. La Chouie was sitting at a rickety little bamboo table by the window; she was wearing a green-and-gold kimono and a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles which somehow increased rather than decreased her essential femininity; her hair was tousled as if she had been rumpling it. She said:
“Now it has to be you. I’m busy.”
“What at?”
“I’m doing a speech. For Florian.” You said that “Florian” very attractively, thought Strathdee; damn him. He said:
“I could do that fine for you in five words. All this and Heaven too.”
La Chouie glowered at him. “That funny?”
“No. Just concentrated lies. . . . You’ve got a smudge of ink on your left cheek.”
“Oh, shah! You didn’t come in here to tell me that.”
“No. I didn’t.” He hardened his heart. “As a matter of fact, I came in about something rather unpleasant.”
“My, my! O.K., brother—shoot. I guess I’m used to unpleasantness.”
Strathdee thought: There’s something childish about her—that defiance, that hope, that tousled hair and the smudge on her cheek. He said, enjoying it less than he had expected:
“It’s this Don Juan of yours.”
La Chouie took off her glasses. “Why do you keep on calling him that?”
“You’ll see. Well, it’s what I hear everywhere. He’s been going round a bit, you know.”
“So what?”
“Oh, nothing. It’s no business of mine what he does; he can have all the tarts in Larcadie for all I care. But—you might tell him to keep off my charges.”
La Chouie was puzzled—as she well might be. “Your—how much?”
“Your Florian,” said Strathdee very deliberately, “met Telemaque’s sister by appointment in the Jardin du Faune at six this morning. Ten minutes ago your Florian and Telemaque’s sister went off from this hotel together in his car. And if you think that’s playing the game——”
La Chouie jumped up so violently that her kimono flew open—so open as to be almost embarrassing; she snatched it together again angrily.
“It’s a lie!”
“All right. Ask him.”
“That—that black bitch!”
“Black bitch or no black bitch,” said Strathdee, “there it is.”
There was a brief silence; La Chouie was quite evidently stricken—as heavily as Strathdee could ever have hoped. She crumpled down again helplessly on to her chair.
“Sit down, for God’s sake. Don’t stand there like a fool! . . . I—I don’t get this. You’re telling me Florian——”
“I’m telling you Florian’s running after Celeste. And I’m telling you I want it stopped.”
La Chouie took up a pencil and stabbed the table with it till the point broke; she threw it out of the window.
“You want it stopped. You want—— It’ll stop all right. . . . That bit of black rubbish . . .”
Strathdee felt his gorge rising. “Celeste’s a very nice girl. And don’t you go calling her names. Not to me, anyway.”
“I’ll call you some names in a minute that’ll surprise you. As for Florian . . . The dirty little——! This moment of all moments he has to go chasing niggers. And it has to be Black Jumbo’s sister. Oh, it has to be! . . . Where did they go to?”
“Search me. I expect they’re spooning somewhere on the beach.”
“I’ll spoon them. The—the rabbit! . . . Say, Stra’dee, you’re not just lying to me? It isn’t all just a make-up?”
“I wish it was.”
“Like hell you do! . . . Well, can you beat it? The rotten little——”
Strathdee got up from the bed on which, faute de mieux, he had been sitting.
“Oh, have a heart,” he said. “Love’s young dream. It’s a beautiful romance really.”
La Chouie snorted. “I guess Florian’s ro-mances can wait. Till the job’s done. . . . Say, Stra’dee, can you beat it? Just when everything’s in the bag, he goes and turns soft on me.”
Strathdee said, eyeing her curiously, “Well, you shouldn’t be down on ro-mance.”
“Howzat?”
“Well, all this happy-married stuff you were giving me the other evening. What about that adoring husband of yours and the prettiest, cutest——”
To his surprise La Chouie seemed suddenly deflated; she sat there humped on her chair like a crestfallen child whose fairies have gone wrong. She said sulkily:
“That’s different.”
“It isn’t. That’s what we all think. We’re always different. We aren’t, really.” He said, on a sudden wave of inspiration, “Maybe the happy home isn’t so happy after all?”
She said, in astonishing surrender, “Maybe it isn’t at that.” And then, jumping to her feet again, “Now, look at here, Stra’dee, you’ve wasted enough of my time already. If I’m to get this blasted speech typed out——”
“O.K.,” said Strathdee equably. “O.K. I’ve said what I came to say. You keep Don Juan on a lead, that’s all.”
He went back to his room, whistling happily. It had been a Strathdee day from start to finish; a good day. The typewriter had started rattling furiously again as soon as he closed the door; he had a moment’s rather contrite vision of that tousled head bowed over it, with the horn-rimmed glasses—now, how the devil did they make her more feminine?—of the crestfallen child that had bitten off more than it could chew. Then he pulled himself together. Keep your eye on the ball, Strathdee, he thought; and no red herrings.
Yet—what had she said that first evening: “We’ve got bits in common, you know, you and me.” Well, you could look at it that way. You could.
Florian, in his nice regular dependable way, came back to the Zirque at precisely seven-thirty; he dashed into his sitting-room very much as he had dashed out of it. True, his silk suit was not what it had been; it had lost its freshness and was stained on the back and under the arms with sweat, for Celeste had insisted on tramping up and down the jetty at the harbour—an unsuitably public place—and Larcadie was warm after San Hieronimo and Florian was not in the best of condition. But he was still very much in top gear. On the sitting-room sofa he saw Nemesis waiting for him in the person of La Chouie.
He did not at first recognise her as Nemesis. He said brightly:
“Allo-allo! ’Sta bien?”
La Chouie said, in English, with a very nasty intonation:
“Get what you wanted?”
“I do not understand.”
“Come off it. You had a shot at her in that Garden place this morning and another on the Plage to-night. Don’t tell me she’s still holding out on you.”
Florian—it was his first experience of the bush telegraph of Lassou—was nonplussed. He said, waveringly:
“What is all this?”
“Yes; what is all this? What d’you think you’re playing at this time? You great fool, you’ve been chasing Telemaque’s sister.”
Florian drew himself up.
“Telemaque!” he said grandly. “Poof!”
“You’ll see if it’s Telemaque—poof! For God’s sake be your age. Just when they’re getting to like you a bit—just when I’ve got them to like you a bit—you go messing yourself up with blacks.”
“I do not mess myself up with blacks.”
“Is that so, now? She’s a lilywhite blonde, is she? Don’t take after her ma, then. Or her brother.”
“If you are referring to Mademoiselle——”
“Mademoiselle nothing. I’m referring to that black nigger bitch you’ve been hunting all day. I’m referring——”
Florian strove for dignity. “You shall not speak like that!”
“I’ll speak a lot more than that. I’m just starting.” Suddenly she loosed on him, switching at the same moment into a hail of Spanish. The hard, resonant words flew like bullets. Florian shouted back; La Chouie shouted him down. She switched again to French, in search of fresh words; she found them. So did Florian. For a clear five minutes there was pandemonium; you could have heard it at Basse-Borrou. Then La Chouie came back—in English again, or what passed with La Chouie for English—to where she had started.
“If you think I’m going to stand by and see the whole thing scrapped just because you can’t control your beastly body——”
“It is not my body. I tell you it is friendship. It is a friendship of the most——”
“Oh yeah? Like cats being friends on the wall. . . . Now look here, my boy; get this . . .”
“I am not your boy.”
“You said it. I’ll tell you what you are, at that. You’re the thing I’ve got to work with, God help me, and if you think I’m going to let you mess it all up——”
“You are a bitch!”
“Yes I am. And it’s people like you that’s made me one.” But she steadied herself a little. “Look at here, my wonder hero. Suppose I take a plane tomorrow and light out for home——”
“You would not get a plane. I should prevent it.”
La Chouie thought it was possible; the idea drove her to fresh fury; she was beside herself.
“Well, there’s a telegraph office, isn’t there? If I just send a word—and it’s a word you don’t know, Florian Malmaison, but I know it—if I just send a word, there’ll be a dozen bombers over here in two hours. And where’ll you be then, beautiful?”
She was sorry the moment she had said it, but—too late. Florian’s olive cheeks went quite pale.
“Bombers?”
“Yes, bombers. . . . I’m—I’m not saying they’d drop anything.” She flared up again. “Not if folks behaved themselves.”
“But—bombers. Is that arranged?”
“It’s all set. It was before we came away.”
Florian said—but very shakily—”I will not have it.”
“You’ll have this—you’ll have that! You’ll do what you’re told.” She made an immense effort at self-control. “Oh, shucks, Florian, this isn’t getting us anywhere. Look at here, you know what you said you’d do.”
“What did I say I would do?”
“You said you’d help us—us at home.”
“I said that, when I was Consul—I shall never be Consul if we go on like this——”
“You said it. Boy, you said it.”
“I said that when I was Consul I would—I would encourage trade. I said I would help the Syndicat. I said . . . But—bombers. No.”
“Well, it needn’t be bombers. Not if you behave yourself. But if you go messing about with black bitches——”
“You shall not call my friend a black bitch!”
“Well, lilywhite black blondes, then. . . . Oh, can it, Florian. Just go slow for a bit, son, and you’ll get everything the way you want it.”
“I shall do as I think fit.”
“Well, me too. I’ll send that telegram. Florian, I’m not bluffing. For God’s sake——”
“You would not dare.”
“Dare!” La Chouie flared up again. “That’s a word you’d better forget, son. When you’re dealing with me. You could write the things I don’t dare on a fly’s eye with a billiard-cue.”
Florian was terrified; he said, pacing up and down:
“What am I to do? What am I to do?”
La Chouie took pity on him; she was regretting her outburst, but—no use crying over spilt milk.
“Just go easy, boy. Just go easy. Everything’s coming your way. God knows what kind of a mess you’ve started today, but we’ll get out of it. I’ll fix it.”
“You—you will not send that telegram?”
“Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. We’ll see how it goes. Come on, Florian, pull yourself together . . .”
“I do not trust you.”
“In that case,” said La Chouie, “you’re sunk.”
Strathdee, pondering love’s young dream over a glass of rum in his bedroom verandah, heard the commotion of Florian’s return; he heard—as he could not avoid hearing—the crescendo of his opening exchanges with his friend and guide. He heard that sudden polyglot explosion. Wearily he got out of his chair and craned his neck round the corner of the verandah. It was no good; he could hear the noise, he could hear the tone of fury and recrimination, but strain as he liked, he could not distinguish words. He kicked off his slippers and crept out into the passage; there the Hotel Zirque brooded in that restful silence that normally preceded dinner; the guests were in the bar, the servants in the kitchen. Strathdee stepped forward and applied his ear to the sitting-room door; he had no compunction over this act; either you did not indulge in this sort of thing or you did, and if you did you made a job of it. All in; nothing barred. He enjoyed for the first minute or two a blast of Spanish vituperation compared with which the works of Calderon were spiritless indeed; then they came to the French and then back to English again. Strathdee heard all about the bombers—a dozen in two hours; he noted the confidence in La Chouie’s voice, the terror in Florian’s. The conversation was practically ended when he heard feet ascending the stairs and reluctantly tore himself away. The last that came through to him was Florian’s pitiful “I do not trust you.”
He’s got something there, thought Strathdee, he’s got something there. . . . Poor devil! . . . And if he ever becomes Consul, then poorer devil still. . . . But—he won’t.
At Les Fleuris, Celeste, creeping in as inconspicuously as possible—for Celeste was no fool—was confronted by a majestic figure in black satin. Maman!
“Where have you been, mademoiselle? Where have you been?”
Celeste had no gift of improvisation; she stood tongue-tied like a servant girl caught in theft.
“You need not answer me, mademoiselle. I know. You were seen tonight on the jetty. Go to your bed!”
“But, maman——”
To your bed. Snake! Traitress! I will talk to you in the morning. Meantime—to your bed!”
Celeste burst into tears.
Strathdee woke up next morning with one of his nervous headaches; the previous day, following on a nuit blanche, had been too exciting altogether. He decided to give Telemaque and English Literature a miss that morning and he lay for a long time in a chair on his verandah, chain-smoking and ruminating on possibilities. Meanwhile the life of Larcadie went on around and in front of him; and nervous headache seemed to be the keynote all round. Quite early a number of mulatto gentlemen—whom Strathdee could more or less identify by their voices—called on his next-door neighbours and were received in conclave; it was evident that a scandal of the first class was raging. It could hardly be otherwise. Celeste, in pure simplicity and innocence, had chosen the jetty for her walk with Florian just because she liked the jetty; as is invariably the case when our actions are dictated by simplicity and innocence, she was credited with the darkest and most intelligent motives; she had lured Florian into a place where the whole of Larcadie could see them; she had made, in effect, a declaration of war. Florian in turn had chosen the jetty because Celeste chose it; and he, it seemed, had made a deliberate gesture of rebellion. It was certainly a fact that the place had been very public and that quite a number of the citizens of Larcadie had seen them there. Strathdee, judging by tones of voices, concluded that the mulatto gentlemen came in a spirit of remonstrance and were met in a spirit of suppressed fury (La Chouie) and sulks (Florian). They went away, as they had come, in twos and threes, carrying an air of pensiveness and dissatisfaction.
Well—so far so good. Presently Strathdee had a glimpse of Florian, who looked like an undergraduate with a severe hangover—gloomy and rather white about the gills. About nine-thirty La Chouie, in green muslin, went out in Poutin’s car by herself; and in about half an hour she returned. The door of Number Twenty-Six was slammed and bolted; the rattle of the typewriter began; otherwise there was silence and peace.
Strathdee, forcing himself to action, went down town to buy some necessaries; but here there was neither peace nor silence. For Soutey rushed up to him outside Jean Sordou’s shop, in a state of wild excitement.
“Sadille! That woman, she is sending telegrams to South America.”
Strathdee said solemnly, “Nous sommes trahis! . . . How d’you know?”
Soutey fawned and grinned like an embarrassed dog.
“Just—just I heard.”
“Well, what about it?”
“Sadille! You must do something. Our Telemaque . . . Oh, Jeeze!”
“What the hell do you expect me to do? If she’s sent the thing, she’s sent it.” (And we ought to hear those bombers coming over, he thought; yet I don’t think we will.) “When was it sent?”
“Perhaps an hour ago. Sadille, you must help us. You.” Strathdee said something noncommital and got rid of him. He did not think that there was any hurry.
Nor was there. Some little time earlier, La Chouie had bullied and bribed her way into the back office where the Postmaster of Larcadie dozed away his hours. She had banged down a typewritten slip on the table.
“I desire this to go. Pronto.”
The Postmaster put on his spectacles in a leisurely manner. He did not like the word “pronto”—in any language.
“It is in cypher, Madame.”
“But naturally.”
“What does it say? I am obliged to ask you.”
“It’s—it’s telling them to send me some clothes.”
“Then why is it necessary to say this in cypher?”
“That’s not your business. I have told you the contents. That suffices.”
“And you have nothing else to say, Madame?”
“No. . . . Oh, well . . . Voyez-vous.” La Chouie opened her handbag. “Here’s fifty dollars. American. You’ll know somebody——”
“But, Madame——”
“It’s all right. It is a gesture of friendship. It is the entente. Friends in South America have asked me to do it. Say no more. . . . The telegram goes?”
The Postmaster said, “Parfaitement,” and La Chouie took herself out—looking hot and uncomfortable. The Postmaster said to himself, “These Latin Americans! What methods . . . Of a crudity.” He put the fifty dollars in his wallet, however, and the telegram in his safe. There was a salutary—if secret—rule in Lassou that any telegram or letter which looked in any way suspicious was to be shown immediately to the Minister of Communications; owing to the demise of Hippolyte and the consequent dissolution of his Cabinet, there was at the moment no such Minister, there was only the Postmaster. The Postmaster had no intention of allowing an opportunity of this class to be wasted. He made one or two telephone calls—among them Soutey; then he went to sleep again.
He was roused all too soon by Strathdee—not entirely to his surprise. The Postmaster knew Strathdee and respected him; he would have said, in the local parlance, that Strathdee had all his fingernails on his fingers. Strathdee said, coming straight to the point:
“Monsieur! I believe that a certain telegram has been handed to you for despatch to South America. I ask that as a favour I may see it. I am directed to do this by M. le Consul Telemaque.”
It was a lie, of course, and the Postmaster knew it was a lie; but it was a lie that made things easy for him and therefore he liked it. What pleasure to work with civilised beings after these South American savages! He produced the telegram without demur. Strathdee bent his brows over it.
“Do you understand what this means?”
“No, Monsieur; I do not.”
“The—the lady who handed it in, she did not say anything?”
“She has told me it was a request for clothes.”
Poor! thought Strathdee, uncommonly poor; the girl’s losing her grip. He gazed again at the typewritten slip: XTFRY IOLMG JJPSC and so on. I suppose, he thought, one could decipher the thing in time, but why worry? I don’t think it’s about clothes—and I don’t think it’s about bombers. He decided to bluff a little.
“You are unable to decipher this, Monsieur?”
“But naturally, Monsieur.”
“I also. That is to say, I cannot read it all. But I can read some of it. . . . Enough to be aware that this has nothing to do with the wardrobe of the lady.”
“You tell me so, Monsieur?”
“I tell you so. . . . I do not think this telegram should be despatched. Not at least pending further enquiries. M. le Consul——”
The Postmaster held out his hand for the slip. “I will restore it to my safe.” Like all Hippolyte’s ex-administration, he was prepared to support Telemaque rather than another—provided it paid. “If you assure me, Monsieur, that such would be the wish of M. le Consul . . .”
“I do assure you,” said Strathdee. He got up to go, but at the door turned back as if he had forgotten something. “By the bye, my subscription to the Fund for the Indigents is in arrear; would you be kind enough to credit . . .”
The Postmaster saw on his table a hundred-dollar note. American. It was a treat to deal with such people; such savoir faire after the crudities of Latin America. Still, savoir faire or crudity, it had been a good morning for the Postmaster of Larcadie. And there might be others like it—if the Revolution did not come too soon. The Postmaster hoped it wouldn’t.
But Strathdee, biting his lip as he drove home to the Zirque, was thinking, What the hell was in the telegram? It wouldn’t be bombers—she isn’t such a fool—but it might have been reinforcements and that, in the circumstances, would be just about as bad. More likely it was just to say that boy Florian isn’t behaving too well and would they please put on the screw a bit. Or was it just a fake—just a bogey to scare young Florian after that nice little talk last night? Anyway, it won’t go—not till she comes down with a few more dollars. She will, of course—in time; but before that we’ve got to have our showdown, she and I.
Showdown. Yes. Soon.
At Les Fleuris that morning they had held a family conclave as serious as any at the Zirque. It assembled round the fine mahogany table in the salle-à-manger; such servants as remained in the household had been sent out of earshot, the Garde snored gracefully in their little sentry-box at the gate; the proceedings were strictly in camera. Celeste, the accused, had sat in a blear-eyed stupor of impenetrable sulks; Telemaque had goggled; Maman, as Counsel for the Prosecution, had talked and talked in her rapid, quick-firing French.
“You must give it up. It must stop instantly. You will obey me?”
“Non.”
“Ciel! You should be beaten with a strap. What is it you have in your mind?”
“I love him.”
“You do not love him. What do you know about love? ’Spèce d’imbecile! I will tell you——”
“I love him.”
“You will give him up.”
“Non!”
“Instantly.”
“I love him.”
“Peste! Is it a parrot with which I converse? ‘I love him, I love him, I love him. Mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi’! . . . So, Mademoiselle, you take it upon yourself to love the enemy of your brother, the murderer of your father, the—the . . . oh, God!”
“He has not murdered my father.”
“No? And he is not, sans blague, the enemy of your brother? ‘I love him, I love him.’ You do not, then, Mademoiselle, love your poor brother?”
Celeste raised her eyes and feasted them for a moment on Telemaque. Telemaque was wearing his peasant’s blouse and slacks; and it was always an open question whether he looked worse in these or in full dress. Compared with a radiant vision in russet silk, stalking along the jetty, driving his car—well, Poutin’s car—with such eclat, talking so wonderfully. . . . She said:
“One does not love one’s brothers.”
“Indeed, Mademoiselle—indeed?”
“Not like that.”
“One does not love one’s brothers, no? But one betrays them? Ah, yes! One betrays also the memory of one’s father, of the good, kind father who is now in Heaven. Mademoiselle——”
There seemed to be an impasse. But it was then that Telemaque, sprawling uncouth in his seat, had broken into the tirade.
“Maman! You are wrong.”
“Oh, I am wrong, then? So your good, kind father is not in Heaven, is it?”
“I say nothing of that. But it is wrong what you say to Celeste about me. About the enemy of her brother. Let us not have enemies. I do not wish.”
There ensued the pregnant pause of persons confronted by one of Telemaque’s mental entanglements; Strathdee would have sympathised with it. Then Celeste, grasping at a salient, said timidly:
“I too do not wish. That there should be enemies.”
“Celeste!” said Telemaque, frog-eyed in his pebble-glasses and following his own thoughts, “You are not to think of me. In the Evangel it is said that we shall love our enemies. That is what you do; it is right. I too shall do it. It is right.”
Celeste began, her head spinning, “But he is not my enemy——” But her mother had recovered her speech; she said in a shriek, “In effect! So you resign yourself then from the Consulate? You go, no doubt, to the Council of Affairs and you say to them, ‘I renounce’——”
Telemaque said, beaming, “It is what I should like to do. It is how I have said it often to Sadille. Celeste is right.”
Celeste said, struggling in the morass, “I want to do what is right. But . . . enemies . . . it is not for that reason that I love him.”
“Ah—reason!” said Telemaque. “That has not importance. It is that we must do what the Bon Dieu would wish. If he wishes us to love our enemies——”
“But—but he is not my enemy . . . Maman, I do not wish to go against my brother. But”—she rallied—“I love him! I love him!”
Maman said with a snort, “And he you? Sans blague!”
“Y-yes, Maman.” (But had he ever said so?)
Maman rose to her feet; she towered; she was gigantic; ten thousand widows, ten thousand mothers, met in her expanding bosom.
“Idiot! I love, thou lovest, he loves! He pays himself your head, that one. He is to become Consul, hein, saddled with une—une Nègresse? Tschah! To him you are a tool now; then you are an obstacle. Thus he uses you”—she snatched a figue from a bowl on the table, tore the skin off and hurled it violently across the room. “Thus, Mademoiselle!”
Celeste was stunned by the demonstration; she said miserably, thinking of Florian, “You say I stand in his way?”
Maman said, thinking of Telemaque, “I say that you destroy him, I say that you are his assassin. Traitress! Viper!”
Telemaque said severely, still far away upon his own line, “If we are Christians, we are to love our enemies. So it is said in the Evangel.”
There was a brief silence. Celeste, poor child, had had a sleepless night; her head—small blame to her—was going round. She looked miserably from her mother’s agitated bosom pounding like an engine under the black silk, to her brother’s rapt and magnified eyes; and she didn’t know what to do. There he sat, radiating goodness and dispensing worth—ah! he was a saint, a saint. And she had said “One does not love one’s brothers”—ah! but one did. And because of her—or so at least they seemed to be saying—he was to lose the Consulship. But also—so they seemed to be saying—the Bon Dieu liked people to renounce things. But then it would be good for Telemaque to renounce the Consulship and it would please the Bon Dieu if he did so. . . . But it would also be good for Florian if he renounced. . . . Her eye lit on that symbolical banana-skin lying accusingly at the far side of the room; and quite suddenly she gave it all up; it was too much for her. Maman, still glaring alternately at her son and her daughter, was suddenly astonished by the very sound for which she had been praying—a howl of remorse from Celeste. It was a howl in good earnest at that; she opened her mouth as if she were singing; enormous tears burst from her eyes; out came a positive roar of contrition.
“He is right,” sobbed Celeste. “He is right. My brother is right.”
“Tiens!” said Maman, with a rapid shift of ground. “You see it then? At last.”
“I see it,” wailed her daughter. “I see it. He is good, my brother, so good. It is I who am wicked, wicked, wicked. I should die.”
Telemaque said, “Ah, non!”
“I should kill myself.”
“It is not necessary,” said Maman, “to go so far as that. But a little sensible behaviour——”
“I will do it!” shrieked Celeste; she threw herself forward, face downwards on the table and beat it with her fists. “Yes, yes; it is I who will renounce. I will give up. . . . Because he is so good. . . . I renounce the world; I renounce life; I renounce everything. He is good, my brother, he is so good. . . . For his sake. . . . To be like him . . .”
The thunderhead under the black silk had subsided; for the first time that morning Maman looked at her daughter with kindness and approval. The logical sequence in Celeste’s mind was certainly obscure, but Maman was not in a mood to trouble over logical sequences.
“What you will do,” she said, “this afternoon, you will drive to the Mission Anglais and there you will have a nice talk with Mees Mac-quey. Or perhaps Meester ’Udson. Yes, better Meester ’Udson. Perhaps I too will come.”
“Yes, yes,” sobbed Celeste. “I will obey. Always I will obey. He is so good, my brother——”
“And thy mother, thy poor old mother. The poor widow. Is she not good?”
“Yes, yes; all good. . . . I renounce. I renounce everything.”
“Our Lord Jésu,” said Telemaque helpfully, “He has renounced everything in the world. In the Evangel it is said——”
Celeste, hammering the table with her fists, howled deafeningly in a mixture of temper, misery and surrender to the very highest principles . . .
Among the vaunted conforts modernes of the Zirque was an internal telephone system which—miraculously—worked rather well; at half-past five that evening Strathdee called Room Twenty-Six. A sulky voice answered him, “Qui?”
“Strathdee.”
“Oh . . . And now what?”
“I want you to come out for a drive with me.”
“I can’t. I’m busy.”
“You’d better. I’ve got something to say to you.”
“You’ve got too much to say. . . . Why can’t you say it here?”
“There are four mulatto gentlemen,” said Strathdee, “waiting in the upstairs lounge. If you’d really prefer to talk to them——”
There was a short silence; then the voice said wearily, “Seems I can’t get any peace in this place. . . . If these boys are in the lounge, how am I to get out?”
“Go through your bathroom and down the cleaners’ stairs at the back. Come out through the kitchen. I’ll be there.”
“Well. . . But look here! I had to warn you about those cocktails. I’d better warn you again. I’m not the sort of girl you can take out in cars and get fresh with.”
“You’re very suspicious.”
“I was born that way. I’ve got a sort of idea you’re trying to put it across me somehow.”
“I’m not. This is just liaison. I want to pool information; that’s all.”
There was another silence; then, “O.K. I’ll come. Give me five minutes to get ready.”
The road up Les Myosotes was practicable for cars as far as the long-deserted Fort Boufallon; this must always have been negligible as a stronghold, but it was a pleasant place, commanding a fine view; Strathdee, who was a believer in settings, had thought it would do. He drove there almost without speech. La Chouie, looking sulkily handsome, followed him through the old gateway and up the steps to the grass-grown ramparts. They sat down on what had once been a gun-carriage. Strathdee offered cigarettes; he said simply:
“I stopped your telegram.”
La Chouie smouldered; but she had a practical outlook.
“How much did you give him?”
“A hundred. American.”
“Well? I guess I can give him two hundred and he’ll send it.” Her voice hardened. “If it comes to putting down money, Little Black Jumbo had better quit. I can raise him every time and never notice it.”
Strathdee said, “Good God! Telemaque doesn’t bribe. He wouldn’t—he’d think it immoral. He’d be very, very angry if he knew.”
“Then—it was your own money?”
“Every cent of it.”
La Chouie gazed at him. “I don’t understand you. I really don’t. Why on earth——”
“Because a few dollars aren’t going to stand between Telemaque and winning if I can help it. He’s got to win——”
“Sez you!”
“Sez I. You don’t know what that means—even yet. But getting back to where we were, that telegram isn’t going.”
“Oh? Why not?”
“Because you’re going to stop it yourself.”
La Chouie laughed loudly—but it was rather forced.
“You do think up some nice stories. How’s that?”
“Because if you don’t, I’ll blow.”
“Blow what?”
Strathdee clasped his arms round his knees and gazed out at the evening panorama of Larcadie and its environs spread below him. It was an attractive panorama and he was fond of it; he meant to stay with it if at all possible. He said, slowly and deliciously, as if he liked the word:
“Bombers.”
La Chouie rewarded him—for the first time in their acquaintance—by a really perceptible start. She said, too soon and without thinking, “If that fool Florian——”
“It didn’t need to be Florian. Strathdee has his own methods.” He lit a fresh cigarette and gazed pensively out over the peacock sea of evening. “It’s a pity,” he said, “that the world’s round. If it wasn’t, we could see right over that horizon out there. We could see into a nice little town in South America. We could see that nice husband of yours and all the pretty children. And we could see some gentlemen sitting in an office. Or more likely a pub. And they’d be saying—what d’you think they’d be saying?”
“They’d say you’ve gotten a touch of the sun.”
“They’d be saying, ‘What’s that woman doing in Lassou? We aren’t getting results. She’s asleep’——”
La Chouie said smokily, “I suppose that woman’s meant to be me.”
“Como no? . . . All right, let’s take my story back a bit. These gentlemen sent one day for the Señora Branzada who was a bit hard up at the time——” La Chouie laughed mirthlessly. “Who was a bit hard up at the time; and they said, ‘Look, Señora, we want you to go over with young Florian and make him Consul or whatever-they-call-it in that place Lassou or whatever-it-is. If all goes well, just come back again; we’ll manage Florian later. If it’s sticky, send us word and we’ll get cracking. It may just as well be sooner as later.’” He squinted at his companion; no reaction; he guessed more boldly. “One of them was in the Air Force and he said, ‘What the hell’s the use of wasting time with women; let’s send a few bombers over right now.’ But the others wouldn’t stand for that . . .”
La Chouie yawned. “What’s all this? James Thurber? Or O. Henry?”
“Neither. Just front-page news. I’m just making things easy for you. Instead of you telling me, I’m telling you.”
“You are telling me! I’ll say.”
“Well, it was like that, wasn’t it? and these gentlemen over there are getting a bit impatient. Florian hasn’t clicked——”
“So you say.”
“That’s feeble. You know he hasn’t. And last night on the pier hasn’t helped him.”
Her face darkened. “You worked that.”
“I didn’t. It was God. The worst of all you clever people, you always leave God out of your plans. He gets back at you. Serve you damn well right. . . . As I was saying, Florian hasn’t clicked and the gentleman in the Air Force would like fine to come over. And if he gets a telegram——”
“Tales I heard at Mother’s knee,” said La Chouie. “Say, you’re good at fairy stories, ain’t you?. . . Honest to God, Colin—there wasn’t a thing in that telegram except asking them to send me over some clothes.”
Strathdee had not missed that sudden “Colin”; he said, echoing the Postmaster, “Then why did you send it in cypher?”
“Why do you teach Little Black Jumbo Shakespeare? Because you’re paid to. I’m paid to send cypher telegrams. They sort of expect it. If I can’t find anything else to say, I ask them for some clothes. Or books. Or—or what not.”
Strathdee shook his head. “You tell that to the Marines. They won’t believe it in Lassou, anyway. Not when I tell them——”
“Tell them what?”
“Oh, come on. Be your age. You know the game and I know it, but there are a lot of poor mutts here in Larcadie who don’t know it—like these four gents we left behind at the Zirque for instance. If I put it round that if Master Florian’s made Consul we’ll have your South American friends over here to stay—well, that’s an end of Master Florian. They may be an odd lot in Lassou but they love their island. Vive la Liberté! If you can’t see that—Cecilia——”
La Chouie’s eyes blazed; but there was no remonstrance this time over the “Cecilia.”
“Then why don’t you go and tell them? Go on. Do it.”
“Because, if I did, it wouldn’t stop your South American friends. It would be just what they’re looking for. It would only stop Telemaque. And Telemaque’s going to be Consul; that’s what I can’t get you to realise.”
“I certainly don’t.” But her mood changed and softened with characteristic swiftness. “Honest to God, Colin, there was nothing in that telegram but just—oh, well, just that things were going O.K. and just wait a little longer and—and send me some clothes.”
Strathdee thought—that may be the truth, or pretty near it; but I don’t want telegrams, I want time. He said:
“If that’s all, it won’t matter if it doesn’t go. . . . Look here, I mean this. If you don’t stop that wire, you’ll read the whole story in the Quotidien tomorrow morning. I swear it.”
La Chouie held out her hand for a cigarette; she lit it without a tremor.
“Listen to the he-man! Look here, Tarzan, you say you gave that black bum a hundred to hold the thing. Well, he will hold it. Let it ride. I needn’t do anything.”
“Yes, you will. You’ll stop it. You’ll tear it up.”
“Oh-oh! Just hear him. And suppose I don’t?”
“In that case the Quotidien will publish a little article I wrote for it about a lady who once lived in Lassou.”
La Chouie’s eyes were round. “More fairy stories? I reckon Hans Andersen hadn’t anything on you.”
Strathdee stretched himself: the gun-carriage was getting uncomfortable. “Look!” he said, “I don’t want to have to hurt you; I don’t really. But if you go sticking out your chin . . . All right! . . . Once upon a time, there was a young girl who had an old humbug of a father who got an idea that there was money in Lassou. So there was. Faked notes for one thing.”
“Say!” said La Chouie happily, “You must have been talking to little sweetie-pie Bosomworth. Honey, that story’s as old as the island. Everybody’s heard it. And if there’s anybody who hasn’t, they’d think the more of me when they did. If that’s all——”
“O.K.,” said Strathdee equably. “You’re very likely right. It isn’t all. . . . You see, this old chap, the father, he took to using the girl as a sort of decoy for men he wanted to get hold of. Know what a decoy is?”
“Yep.”
“Well, this girl was one. . . . There was a nasty old General called Doulay——”
“That’s a lie!” But he saw the flush spring up in her cheeks.
“Maybe. . . . And there was a Colonel Voisin. And there was the Minister of the Interior. There was a whole tribe of them.”
“Well? Supposing?”
“And then,” said Strathdee deliberately, “there was Love’s young dream we were talking about the other night. There was a young negro in the Palace office—a young negro, my dear—called Saubigny——”
But La Chouie was suddenly transformed. She hurled her cigarette, holder and all, over the ramparts; she sprang to her feet.
“You spy! You dirty, bloody little spy!”
“‘Sticks and stones——’” began Strathdee and then, whack! came her open palm on the side of his head. The force of it knocked him off the gun-carriage; but he landed on one hand and was up again in an instant. They faced each other, both standing.
“Well,” he said, “that’s that. . . . I told you I didn’t want to do it. . . . Now, will you stop that telegram?”
La Chouie said, gasping for breath, “Yes! . . . You—you . . . Take me home!”
“On the contrary,” said Strathdee, “we’ll take a turn round the ramparts. We’re only beginning.”
During these exchanges the sun had dipped behind the crest of Les Myosotes; with acknowledgments to Mrs. Bosomworth, it was as if someone had switched off a lamp. Tyrian purple and Ophir gold had gone out of the sea, which now coloured itself in plain Lassou slate. The little late-evening coastwise breeze was springing up; presently there would be a moon. It was exceedingly beautiful and exceedingly quiet. The old fort of Boufallon the Liberator had turned to a sombre grey; the light had left its grass, the life had gone out of its ancient stones. And round and round its ramparts went Strathdee and La Chouie—cooling down. At first he had thought she would refuse; it had been touch and go; then, with one of her sighs of resignation, she had suddenly surrendered.
“All right. Let’s walk.”
They completed the first round of the ramparts—not a very long journey—in silence; half-way round the second time La Chouie said, rather indistinctly:
“I’m sorry I hit out like that. I shouldn’t have.”
“It wasn’t anything.”
“It was as hard as I could make it. And if that isn’t anything . . . But don’t speak to me about André again. Please.”
“I won’t,” said Strathdee, hating himself. “But don’t you talk to me again about folks fighting on both sides. I—I didn’t know it was so bad, anyway.”
“He—he let me down. I reckon he was a mean sort of cuss, really. Let’s forget him.”
“They’re all mean,” said Strathdee, improving the occasion. “They’ll all let you down; sooner or later. That’s what you don’t seem to see. Florian. Every god-damned one of them.”
La Chouie studied her feet; they were neat little feet in over-smart Bata shoes. “Well, will you tell me what’s a girl to do?”
That’s an easy one! thought Strathdee; he said so. “Beat it. Beat it back to South America.”
“And then?”
“God damn it! You’ve a husband there. You’ve children. You’ve a house and a garden. If that isn’t enough——”
“Who told you all that?”
“You did.”
La Chouie raised her head. “If I said it wasn’t true? If I said it was those cocktails of yours——”
Strathdee was about to reply with a flippancy when he saw that her eyes—those big, greenish, inscrutable eyes—were charged with enormous tears; in another moment they would be over the lids. He said, shaken almost out of his wits and hastily improvising:
“Well, that’s why God made cocktails. Helps you to tell lies. To yourself. And then you get these damn teetotallers, they cut off a man’s drinks and what do they give him in return? Nix.” He glanced sideways; the danger seemed to have passed. “I’d shoot teetotallers. Blast them!”
La Chouie had evidently been following her own line of thought throughout this tirade; she said:
“It was a lie, anyway, about the children. There weren’t ever any. Well, there was one once, but it died. I reckon it wouldn’t have been much good if it had lived. It—it wasn’t quite right somehow. I reckon I fell downstairs or something when it was coming. Anyway”—she blazed up suddenly—-“who wants to bring children into this goddamned rotten hellfire world?”
“It’s not such a bad world,” said Strathdee seeing quite clearly that she had fallen downstairs or whatever it was on purpose; seeing quite clearly that she was now sorry for it. And whose, by the way, had been the child? “It could be worse.”
“It isn’t so bad for men. A girl don’ get much of a show.”
“We could argue about that all night,” said Strathdee. “But let’s get back to where we were. Why don’t you go back to your husband? If he’s fond of you——”
La Chouie kicked a stone out of her way. “Well, he isn’t, then. We’re—we’re divorced. . . . Oh, shah! why do I keep on telling you lies. We aren’t even that. He just left me. I reckon he got tired——”
“The bloody idiot!” said Strathdee, and he said it with such fervour and so naturally that she burst out laughing.
“Well’ an’t it nice to hear that. And from Misser Stra’dee too. . . . Oh, bother that crazy name. Let’s make it Colin.” She said “Colin” really rather delightfully: not “Cah-lin,” not “Coh-lin,” not “Collin”; something between the three.
“O.K.—Cecilia. . . . I suppose that is your name?”
“Yeah. There’s no lie about that. Come to that I am Señora Cecilia Branzada; that an’t hooey. I reckon my Emilio would tell you the same—if you could find him.”
The slow beauty of the evening was working on Strathdee as it always did; he felt himself, to his disgust, becoming increasingly sentimental. He said:
“Why don’t you go back—like I said. Give it another try.”
“Takes two to make a try, Colin.”
“Takes one to start it. If nobody makes a start . . .”
“And all live happy ever afterwards, eh? Like you once said.”
“Well—yes.”
“You are a one for fairy stories!”
Strathdee shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably. “I’m old-fashioned, that’s all. I’m a believer in marriage, really. The trouble is it never works. But there’s nothing as good as a happy marriage. Nothing. Not height nor depth nor any other creature . . .”
“My, my! Listen to Hans Andersen. Say! what do you know about marriages?”
Strathdee hesitated; then another wave of the evening took hold of him; he plunged. “I—I was married myself. Come to that, I am married . . . I bolted.”
“And that’s how he knows about happy marriages. And he’d say women were illogical.”
“Some men,” said Strathdee, quoting from Gorgon Graham, “learn the cussedness of whisky through having a good mother and some through having a drunken father. You can learn all about happy marriages by having one. Or—not having one.”
“I see.” But she laid a hand on his arm—their very first attempt at physical contact. “Tell.”
“There’s nothing to it. . . . But I’ll tell you this—there’s nothing on earth quite so bad as good women. They’re the wrath of God, they’re a foretaste of Hell——”
“And she was a good woman?”
“She was a good woman.”
“And you were a bad man.”
“Yes; I expect so. I expect that’s all there was to it. . . . She kept on at me . . .”
“But, Colin, how come you married a woman like that?”
“She looked all right. . . . Anyway, I had to.”
“Oh-oh?”
“No, no; not that kind of had-to. But I—well, I was in business . . . well, God dammit, why shouldn’t I tell you I was running a sort of ramp in foreign currencies——”
“Illegal?”
“Yes, of course; everything worth doing’s illegal. Well, things went wrong and I had to raise some money or else—quod. I didn’t want quod—or I thought I didn’t. My God—if I’d known! I’d have asked for it.”
“What was her name?”
“Lucy.”
“And she’d money?”
“Plenty. Still has.”
“And she gave it to you?”
“The damn thing is she didn’t—not when the time came, not once she’d got me.”
“Then how come you didn’t go to quod?”
“I got round it some way. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was.”
“I believe you liked her really.”
“Oh, well . . . of course I did. In a way. But I wouldn’t have married her. Or anybody else for that matter.”
“Any little babies?”
“My God, no! I saw to that. And she didn’t even know I was seeing to it. That’ll show you what she was like. She was one of those women who just aren’t women. But she looked all right.”
“So you quit.”
“I quit. I fixed things up for her—my folks had a farm in Aberdeenshire near a place called Strichen—you never heard of it. I fixed up for her to get that. I expect she’s happy there. She didn’t mind sex—in animals. She’d like it.”
“Still—just because she was a good woman. I don’t think it was right of you. I don’t.”
“Don’t you? If you’d had to live with her! My God! how she kept on at me. ‘You should, you should, you mustn’t, you mustn’t. Don’t, mustn’t, do.’ Every damn thing was one or the other. I told you I was a schoolmaster. She wanted me to start a school of my own. She wanted me to be a Professor. If it wasn’t ‘don’t, don’t’ it was always ‘do, do,’ ‘be this, be that, try, try, try again.’ Always at me. My God, I had to bolt for it. Else it would have been murder.”
“And she doesn’t know where you are?”
“She does not. And she bloody well won’t. And now you know why I live in Lassou.”
“Colin! Lassou isn’t a place.”
“It suits me. I’m going to stay here.” He came back suddenly from reminiscence to reality. “That’s why I have to get you out of it. You and your blasted Florian.”
There was a brief silence; then La Chouie said, with genuine sorrow:
“And you can’t do that. You just can’t. Oh, honey, I do wish you’d believe me; things aren’t coming your way. I—I couldn’t do it. Not now. Not even for you.”
“I’m not asking you. I’ll do it.”
She wrung her hands. “You can’t; you can’t. I’m just somehow bound to beat you. And now I won’t like doing it, blast you, like I thought I would. . . . Oh, Colin, be your age and come in for the divvy-up. I’ll get you anything you like. Would you like to be a Professor at San Hieronimo? I’ll fix it.”
Strathdee burst out laughing despite himself. “My God! You’re all alike. Now you want me to be a Professor.”
“Well—anything. I can get you it. I will. Just say——”
“No! You go back to South America and take Florian with you before worse happens.”
La Chouie sighed deeply. “The trouble with you is you haven’t any sense. I guess that Lucy of yours had something to be said for her.” She looked at her watch. “And I guess it’s time I got home. That Florian——”
Strathdee looked round him; a moon was coming up through clouds—a sight of which he never tired; one could have an hour’s peace—two hours even. He said:
“Look here. You take my car and drive it home. Leave it out at the back; I’ll put it away later. It’ll look better, anyway. You—you can go round by the Telegraph office.”
She said, doubtfully, “Come on home and—talk to Florian.”
“I’d rather talk to Judas Iscariot. Go on; beat it.”
They walked together down the short steep flight of worn grass-covered steps; it was darkish there; there was an excuse for taking her arm; Strathdee took it. At the car she said suddenly:
“You know, Colin, it’s like a book.”
“What is?”
“Well, me carting round those snide banknotes. You playing the foreign currencies. Me and my Emilio, and you and your Lucy. I can’t go back to him, you can’t go back to her. I can’t find him, she can’t find you. Oh, gee! it’s fan-tastic!”
Strathdee said, “It’s all that!” And when the car had driven off he climbed the stairs again thinking: Fan-tastic? It’s not the word for it. If anybody had told me—— . . . He sat a long time on the gun-carriage watching the moon rise and fancying he detected still a film of scent on the air. It was one of those Dutch scents that you buy in Curaçao: good, individual, expensive. And his thought was:
“And that wasn’t the way I meant it to work out, either!”
In the early morning there was a certain bustle at the Zirque and then there fell upon the place a peace and quiet it had not known for several days. Strathdee, enjoying his early breakfast of brioche, coffee, figues and papaya, could not fail to notice this decrescendo; enquiring the cause of it from Louis Philippe, he was told that his next-door neighbours were partis.
For a moment Strathdee’s heart leapt. Surrender? Victory? But Louis Philippe’s next words dashed him.
“It seems that Monsieur will make a tour of the villages in the mountains. It will be two days.”
Strathdee said, absurdly damped, “Why does he do that?”
“In effect!” said Louis Philippe. “They are animals, those there. It is a wastage of time.”
Strathdee finished his coffee, feeling more depressed than he could have believed possible. She must have known perfectly well last night, he thought, that this was going to happen; but not a word of it to me. And I thought we were really having cards on the table. I put mine on the table, anyhow. How many lies did she tell me, and how many of them did I soak down? I thought we were getting together; was she really stringing me along the whole time? . . . Strathdee, you’re a fool!
With his first cigarette, however, he began to brighten up; the event had its compensating aspects. In the first place it got Florian and La Chouie out of the way for a clear forty-eight hours; people who ventured into the mountains of Lassou, for whatever reason, became wholly inaccessible. They’ve presented us anyway, he thought, with a clear two days; a lot can happen in two days. One might—it’s conceivably possible—do something about the Thing in that time; a Thing might be found. And secondly, all this about touring the hill villages is tosh: nothing in the wide world could matter less. There must have been a better reason for taking Master Florian away from Larcadie; and it isn’t, thought Strathdee, hard to guess. Celeste—of course. That’s going well, anyway; it’s paying; clever Strathdee! Florian has to be taken away from Celeste; and if he has to be taken away, that can only mean that he’s refusing to go away of himself. He’s kicking, bless him. Love’s young dream; we’ll pull something out of it yet. My God! what a mess of everything women do make.
They’ve made a mess of me, anyway, he thought. For a moment he called up a vision of Lucy; tall—too tall—fair, in her way very nearly beautiful—and as sexless as a stack of peats. Lucy prodding and goading and nagging and nattering and sermonising; Lucy offended, Lucy disappointed, Lucy shocked and in the sulks. She had a tiresome cousin called—his Christian name, and very suitable—Gladstone; and at every turn “Gladdy” had been held over Colin’s head. Gladdy was uniformly successful—he would be; he was also, poor devil, untiringly industrious, indefatigably good. “If Gladdy can, why can’t you?” “I can’t think why you don’t try to be more like Gladdy.” “Gladdy says——” Curious how you could feel murder against a person you never even saw; I could have killed Gladdy, thought Strathdee, twenty times over and a different way every time. . . . And then, of course, there had been Church; and the Minister; Lucy had set the Minister upon her Colin more than once. She had been devotedly religious with a complete absence of intelligent thought; if a sea anemone were religious, it would be like Lucy. “Not on Sunday, Colin,” about summed her up. . . . I wonder, thought Strathdee, not for the first time, how much a judge would have given me? Five years? Hardly more. Not life, anyway. . . . Well, I’m out of it.
Per contra La Chouie—or let’s call her Cecilia. Also beautiful but not all that tall, not blonde and most emphatically not sexless. No sir! But just as capable of making Strathdee make a fool of himself. All these confidences—and not a word about this trip to the mountains; that hurts. And how much truth did she tell me—and how many lies? Her blasted Emilio; does the man exist? God knows. And I—I Went and blurted out everything, and the truth at that, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And—this is really unbearable—I made myself out the mari incompris, the Man with the Nasty Wife—like a blasted stockbroker telling his typist. What kind of a show. . . . My God, Strathdee, you’re a fool and a half when it comes to women!
Strathdee dragged himself wearily up to shave and dress; he poured himself out a nice refreshing glass of Eno. It was surely a particularly oppressive morning—dull, coppery, airless. Perhaps it was that. A touch of constipation and a stuffy Lassou morning; perhaps it was only that.
At Les Fleuris the usual interminable battle with Telemaque—gingering, gingering. “Now look here, Telemaque, we’ve got a clear two days to play with. It’s more than I hoped. We must use them.”
“What to do?”
“Well, one thing. I want you to have a meeting——”
“I must speech again?”
“Speak . . . No, not this time. A private meeting. With the Nègres. Your father’s Ministers. They’re not pulling their weight. They’re not doing a damn thing for us.”
“They do not like me.”
“They’ve got to like you. . . . You must give them a chance. Have them up here to the house. Get in a case of rum . . .”
“Rum?”
“Can’t do anything in Lassou without it.”
“But drink is bad. The Book says——”
“I keep telling you the Book wasn’t written in Lassou. Or for Lassou. . . . Telemaque, you’ve got to be human with them. Friendly. Good-fellow. You’ve got to win them.”
“My fadder would say——”
“My dear boy, if your father was here to say, we wouldn’t be in all this mess. It’s you now, not your father.”
But Telemaque had a new idea.
“Sad-dee! Florian and me. We could take it to United Nations.”
That’s his infernal lawyer again, thought Strathdee; I could wring that man’s neck. He said:
“We could take it to United Horse Marines.”
“Horse?”
“Never mind. . . . Only people who’ve lost their cases already take them to the United Nations. It isn’t as bad as that. Anyway, you’ve no case. It’s just a question of persuading the Council of Affairs. Ask them to the meeting too. No, a separate meeting. One lot today, one lot tomorrow. We can square the whole bunch before Florian gets back.”
Telemaque gave him an odd, unusual look—almost intelligent.
“Sad-dee! Why Florian has gone?”
“‘Why has Florian gone’; in questions the noun comes between the auxiliary and the participle; you ought to know that by now. . . . He’s gone to make the hill villagers love him.”
“They will love?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter one way or the other. The point is—he’s out of the way. Our way.”
“Sad-dee! I mus’ tell you . . . I think Florian love my sister Celeste.”
Blast! thought Strathdee. He said, thinking quickly, “That would never do. That would never do at all.”
Telemaque’s formidable jaw stuck out.
“I don’ see. I think it is good.”
“I bet Celeste doesn’t think so. She ought to hate him.”
“No! The Book says——”
Oh Lord, thought Strathdee, this boy and his Book! He said—knowing better:
“Well, anyway, she does hate him.”
“No. She love.”
“She do? I mean, does?”
“She did love. But now she has renounce.”
Strathdee, suddenly alert, said sharply:
“How’s that?”
“It is Maman. She was very angry. She has told Celeste she will beat with a strap. Then Celeste has cry. Very loud she has cry. At last she say she will renounce.”
Strathdee’s upper lip went in, very tight.
“Has she told Florian that?”
“No; I do not think. She has not see him. It was yesterday. Sad-dee, I am puzzle. I do not know what is right. Love is good. But renounce is also good. Our Lor’ Jeeze has renounce everything . . . Sad-dee!”
“Yes?”
“What I must tell Celeste? I think she should love Florian. We should all love, isn’t it? But I think renounce too is good. What to say?”
Strathdee studied him; the gift the poor devil has, he thought, for tying his mind into knots. He said at last, striving to keep the bitter disappointment out of his voice:
“Don’t say anything to Celeste. Don’t say anything at all. . . . There are times, Telemaque, when it’s better to leave things in the hands of God. Especially with women. God can maybe manage them; we can’t. Leave it like that. Just—watch and pray. . . . And now, about those meetings . . .”
Telemaque nodded approvingly.
“That is good,” he said. “Watch and pray. That is right. I will do it. But why not also we watch and pray about the election? Why we have meetings?”
My God! thought Strathdee; between one and another of them, this family will drive me daft . . .
The day went on hotter, heavier, stuffier, more and more passively depressing. Telemaque, after an interminable wrangle that had taxed Strathdee’s patience to the limit, had agreed to meet his father’s ex-Ministers; but he would have nothing to do with the Council of Affairs. “We should not influence,” he had said—with a burst of unusually good English—“it is not democrat.” It had required all Strathdee’s self-control to keep himself from saying just what he thought of “democrat”—at any rate as applicable to Lassou; and for that matter, just what he thought of Telemaque. That had been avoided; but the nett gain was slight. The two precious buckshee days would—so far as Telemaque was concerned—be largely wasted. The Ministers would doubtless come to Les Fleuris; they would drink up the rum, they would talk charmingly, they would smile and shrug and—sit tight upon the wall. And Celeste’s infernal family had made a mess of the only decent break that had so far been vouchsafed in the struggle; it was an odd word to use in connection with that household, but the fact remained that they had been too quick. Too quick for Celeste, too quick for Strathdee. The prospect, look at it how you liked, was poor. In less than forty-eight hours La Chouie would be back with a chastened Florian once more tightly on the lead; the meeting of the Council could not then be much longer deferred; up goes the balloon. It would go up, too, in style; however needlessly, the thing would be staged as a Revolution—La Chouie would see to that. It was what she was paid for after all. If you started a Revolution in Lassou, you never quite knew where it would end; it might be as peaceful as a Sunday School treat; or there might be mobs out and red murder in the streets. But there was one feature of Lassou Revolutions which was constant—the losing side bolted from the island. Maman, Telemaque, Celeste—they would have to jump for it. And Strathdee: and Strathdee. . . . If I stuck it out, he thought disconsolately, what would happen? Probably—almost certainly—Florian would put me in prison. When I married Lucy to avoid prison, it would seem a bit flat to go there for the sake of Telemaque. It may come to a quick scuttle . . . I’d better get my passport seen to.
The passport involved Bosomworth; it was distasteful to confess failure to Bosomworth, even to the extent of taking prudent precautions, but there was nothing else for it. Towards six Strathdee presented himself at the British. Consulate. He laid the little blue-bound book with its many-stamped pink pages on the office table.
“You might have a look at this. I want it in order.”
Bosomworth said—he would say it, of course—“Like that, is it? . . . What visas d’you want?”
“The whole lot. States. Latin America. Central America. Mexico.”
“Haven’t you any plans?”
“I don’t expect it’ll be needed at all. It’s just a precaution.”
Bosomworth grinned. “I think you’re wise. I told you so before. There’ll be a Revolution here in less than a week.”
“It needn’t be a Revolution.”
“It will be, though. With the Carnival coming on and all. They’ll never let such a chance pass. . . . You’ll have to skip. Lord! the number of people I’ve seen skipping . . .”
Strathdee said, “Maybe aye and maybe no’. We’re not beaten yet.” He made a sudden decision. “I’ve found out why the Nègres won’t back Telemaque.”
Bosomworth’s eyes opened. “You have?”
“Yes.” He gave a concise summary of the Thing, noting with some satisfaction that Bosomworth took it quite seriously; the man knew something about Lassou after all. “So you see, there’s two things we can do.”
“Such as?”
“Well—the first of them’s find the Thing. Or if that’s a counsel of perfection—fake a Thing.”
Bosomworth almost shuddered. “You couldn’t do that.”
“You think not?”
“Good God, no! For one thing you couldn’t—actually, I mean, couldn’t. You wouldn’t know how. But they’d know. There’s always someone in this blasted place who knows the one thing needful. You’d be spotted. And if you were spotted——”
“Well?”
“Well, they’d probably kill you. They’d probably kill Telemaque too. They’ve got ways. That wouldn’t do you any good.”
Strathdee sat silent. Bosomworth looked at him kindly.
“I can’t think . . . Why don’t you leave the black bastards to stew in their own juice?”
“I’ve told you before. It’s a question of principle.”
“Oh—principle. There aren’t any principles in Lassou. Never were.”
“Yes, there were,” said Strathdee stoutly. “There was a chap called Boufallon once who had a principle. And by God he lived up to it too.”
“Vive la Liberté, eh?”
“Yes. Vive la Liberté. You know as well as I do what would happen if Florian gets in.”
Bosomworth said, playing with the celebrated cigarette-holder, “Too true. If Florian gets in, Telemaque’s up the spout and we’ll have the South American friends over in no time. They’ll infiltrate. They’ve learned all the good old words from Hitler and Stalin. And the good old words’ll have the good old meanings. If they come, Lassou’s up the spout too. Pity, but—there it is.”
“Not if I know it. . . . Telemaque talks about the United Nations.”
“United fiddlesticks! No great power’s going to bother about this pothole. ’Tisn’t worth it. No, the Dagoes’ll get it. Not a bad thing either. I mean, Liberty and all that, but—they’ve got the money. They’ll improve the place.”
“They’ll kill the place.”
“Well—something’s got to kill it. Time marches on. Why worry?”
“I do worry. . . . Look here, d’you mind coming over to your shop for a minute. I want to see if you’ve got anything I could use.”
Bosomworth gaped at him. “You’re not still thinking of that?”
“I’ve got to think of everything. Come on over.”
“I can’t leave the office. Not just now.”
“Oh can it, Bozzy. Nobody’ll come near. Let’s go.”
Grumbling about irregularities, Bosomworth locked up his safe and gave minute—and wholly unnecessary—instructions to the Garde private at the door. Together they walked across the square and along the Grande Rue. As they walked, Bosomworth wiped his brow.
“Damned hot. I’ve never known it so hot in January. . . . There’s a blow coming, I wouldn’t wonder. Cyclone.”
In the shop it was stuffier still; the warm reek of mystery and incense over which Bosomworth took such pains enveloped them like a warm bath. They passed through a jungle of rubbish—basketwork, woodwork, brasswork, mats, hats, bijouterie. Strathdee thought sadly—Telemaque’s Musée, that’s where all this junk should be. Poor Telemaque! In his little office at the back—the stuffiest yet—Bosomworth unlocked his safe.
“There’s a thing here—it’s the sort of thing.”
He took out a small square glass bottle, cobwebby and dirty. The bottle had a cork and over the cork was a heavy seal; on the sides of the bottle were other smaller seals and these were attached to the cork seal by tiny chains, so that That which was in it might never, never get out. There were marks on the seals, Strathdee saw—a snake, a fish, the auspicious symbol of the Twins.
“That’s a drogue, of course,” said Bosomworth. “But it’s just any drogue. . . . Your marks would be different. God knows——”
Strathdee took the bottle and studied it. There appeared to be nothing inside it at all. It was certainly thick glass; it looked old as the hills. He had a sudden insane flash of hope. “I say! This couldn’t—it couldn’t be the Thing?”
“Good God, no!” said Bosomworth. “I made it myself. Some years ago. It looks all right. . . . You could have it for fifty dollars if you like.”
Strathdee said, “I’ll think about it.” Bosomworth put the bottle back in his safe and locked it.
“Well, it’s there if you want it. But if I were you, I wouldn’t touch that sort of thing with the tongs.”
Strathdee said despondently, “You’re probably right.” Bosomworth’s fake had been beautifully done; yet in all probability it wouldn’t pass muster for a moment with anyone who really knew. Zoti, for instance. And if Bosomworth’s work wouldn’t pass, he thought, miserably, how could I. . . No, it’s off.
They strolled back to the Consulate, Bosomworth again grumbling about the unusual January heat. Outside the office sat Mrs. Bosomworth in the Austin. She said:
“Tubby dear, where were you? You never leave the office at this time. I got quite frightened. . . . Oh, Mr. Strathdee! Isn’t it hot? All my nice flowers are withering.”
Strathdee, condoling, studied her. He disliked her as he disliked all women who were obviously sexless; bogus creatures, simulacra, frauds. Now, Cecilia . . . Mrs. Bosomworth said again—she was a woman who took one idea at a time, “It is so hot.” It’s more than you are, thought Strathdee; you cold cabbage! And yet—so meek, so placid, so unambitious. You wouldn’t keep on at people. Lucky Bosomworth!
Strathdee got into his car and drove along the beach road to the point where it was no longer practicable; he walked a little and sat listening for a while to the faint whisper of the palm trees and the lapping of the waves on the beach. The palms were quieter than usual—the evening breeze had failed for once; the sea was a pond, it looked almost sticky. Calm before the storm, thought Strathdee—in more ways than one; well—let’s enjoy it while it lasts. For the thousandth time he relaxed and allowed the beauty of the Lassou evening to absorb, fill and complete his being. Asylum Island? There were two meanings after all to the word ‘Asylum.’ I should never get tired of this, he thought; never; it just shows you how you should leave things to God. I never meant to come to Lassou; I’d hardly heard of it; but—I met that man in Port of Spain, I heard of this job at the Palace, I put in for it—half in fun—and here I am. Here, if I can, I’ll stay.
But—how? Telemaque’s going down; let’s face it. Even if I don’t have to bolt for it, my job’s gone, my livelihood’s lost. I can’t set up in a hut on Les Myosotes and grow figues. He had a moment’s insane inspiration—buy Bosomworth’s shop: Bozzy would sell it like a shot; Poutin would lend me . . . I could stay that way . . . Oh, forget it!
He dismissed his momentary dream and drove home to the Zirque. To a Zirque where there was no Cecilia in the dining-room, where there was not even a Lucy. “Faute de mieux, on a toujours sa femme.” . . . Yes, in a way, Bosomworth was lucky.
The Zirque’s dinner was no better than usual—was in fact, if anything, rather worse; upstairs, in a night like a blanket, neither cloudy nor clear, Strathdee switched on his wireless set for Poutin’s late night bulletin. There was nothing whatever in it about Florian or La Chouie; presumably the election tour of the mountain villages was a story too ridiculous to be worth putting out, unless to those who had to be told something. Strathdee tried to conjure up a picture of the wanderers, candidate and agent, sitting by some campfire in the hills: Florian sulking and pondering on Celeste; La Chouie exhorting, demanding, dragooning. It was a pleasant little picture while it lasted—but not very satisfying.
Poutin’s news-reader had only one item of interest: not to Strathdee’s surprise, he announced that a severe hurricane was crossing the Caribbean Sea. It would not, said the news-reader brightly, pass very near Lassou. I wish it would, thought Strathdee, loosening his collar; it would clear the air. And a hurricane up in the mountains—that would learn them!
At three in the morning Strathdee was wakened from uncomfortable sleep by a thunderous crash as every one of the slatted verandah shutters in the Zirque was driven simultaneously in. For a moment his groping mind thought “Bombers?”; then he realised it was the hurricane. He leapt out of bed, and the mosquito curtain, whipping about like a loose sheet in a gale, wrapped itself round his neck; disentangling himself, he staggered to the window and blue lightning burst in his face with such violence that he almost fell. A table went over with a crash, scattering its impedimenta on the floor; a shrieking blast of wind tore into the room, tore round it and tore out again. Above the elemental din could be heard the wailing and imprecations of the clientele of the Zirque, who disliked fresh air and were endeavouring vainly to re-close their shutters. It was the hurricane all right.
For the next hour or two Strathdee was kept busy. The contents of his verandah—chair, table, books, cups, glasses—had been swept into a mess at one end; within his room loose objects skated about the floor as in a heavily-rolling liner. The electricity had of course failed; but it often did, and Strathdee was well equipped with torches. He hardly needed them; flash after mauve-coloured flash exploded blindingly out of the sky; in their hideous blaze he could see the trees in the garden of the Zirque heeling over like racing yachts; every now and then there was an ominous crack and crash, half-heard in the general uproar. Somewhere outside, the iron roof of a shed flew off and was driven against a wall with the clang of a giant’s gong; it remained there flapping and banging. Strathdee, with his torches, went patiently round and round his room, anchoring whatever was anchorable; no sooner did he make anything fast than a fresh and contrary swirl of the wind tore it loose again. He made an effort to close his shutters but gave it up: it was beyond one man’s strength. It was a lively three hours. There was no rain: only the almost incessant lightning and the roll of thunder half drowned by the howl of the wind and the continuous obbligato of loose objects blowing about. Sans blague, a hurricane.
Dawn came at last, struggling tentatively with the lightning; by this time Strathdee had succeeded in reducing his own room to some sort of quietude, but the hotel still resounded with the clatter of miscellaneous articles leaping and drifting. Either the wind had fallen a little or its direction had shifted so that Strathdee’s corner was less directly in its course; it was possible for the first time to think consecutively instead of playing catch with poltergeists. And for the first time Strathdee thought of La Chouie. Up in the mountains, perhaps in a tent, at best in some crazy—and by now probably roofless—native hut; it must be terrible. He thought of her, in that sentimental hour, with compassion; the poor little thing, the poor gallant child battling with the devilments of man and nature! Then his mood hardened. Don’t waste your sympathy on La Chouie, Strathdee: she can look after herself. A damn sight better than you can. Hurricanes or no hurricanes; you be thankful for any trouble that comes to her. And ten to one, they’ll have got into some valley or ravine where it isn’t even as bad as it is down here. Forget it!
He was interrupted presently by the appearance of Louis Philippe. Louis Philippe was carrying a tray with coffee, figues, papaya, biscuits; except that his hair was tousled he was completely normal. By God! thought Strathdee with a burst of admiration: the Lassoux—you can’t beat them. They can take it. Vive la Liberté! Vive!
By eleven of the forenoon the wind had quite certainly abated; there was still no rain and, though the air remained heavy and overcharged, it was markedly less oppressive. The electricity—which was in the care of an American engineer at the airfield—had very creditably come on again; Poutin was able to send out his morning bulletin from his wireless transmitter; his news-reader announced blandly that the hurricane had unexpectedly shifted its course: it had passed—was passing—some fifty miles from the coast of Lassou. He was pleasantly reassuring; there had been damage, bien entendu, but nothing vital. For practical purposes it was over. So now, thought Strathdee, what next? Here has been dawning another blue day; think, wilt thou let it slip useless away? . . . No; but what to do with it?
The day was perhaps hardly blue; it was in fact a curious and depressing yellow as if the air was full of dust. The sky remained neither clear nor cloudy: it was smoky and thick like the morning sky over a burning city. But the wind had dropped; at times there was a complete calm; then, for a few minutes, a gust would leap up with the old fury, falling away again to stillness. Wherever the hurricane actually was, Lassou lay only in its backwash; so far as the weather went, action was practicable. And action of some sort, thought Strathdee, I must take. Whatever effect all this may have had on those wanderers in the hills, it must delay their return rather than otherwise; it’s gained time rather than lost it. But what am I to do with this mercy? Telemaque should be busy with his meeting of Ministers; the Ministers would make their way somehow to Les Fleuris—if only because of the rum; and Telemaque had better be left alone with them to make of them what he could. He had been carefully primed, briefed, gingered; it remained to trust in God that he would play his part successfully and make of it what little was to be made. So—what can I do with the remains of this respite? There is only one place, thought Strathdee, where I can get any forrader—and that’s Basse-Borrou; there is only one person from whom I can get any help—and that’s Congo Zoti. It’s daft: here am I, an adult and supposedly hard-headed Scot, caballing with Coubous like little Lucienne; but—you have to work with what there is. . . . On the principle that anything was better than sitting idle, Strathdee got out his car.
It took him a considerable time to reach Basse-Borrou; tree after tree was down across the road, and so far nothing had been done to clear them away; at times the drive was more acrobatic than progressive. And every now and then, out of the ochre-coloured calm, there leapt one of these spurts of wind; one of them caught Strathdee at a bend where he had reached the remarkable speed of twenty miles an hour and it blew him clean across the road; only a herculean effort saved him from the ditch. But these blasts were becoming less frequent, if not less severe. In less than two hours Strathdee saw before him the neat layout of Zoti’s sanitorium.
The first thing that struck him was the silence; for once, not a bird sang, the deafening chorus that usually met Zoti’s visitors was completely stilled. And the normal tidiness of the place had been ravaged; the buildings, save for one lean-to shed which lay drunkenly on its side, had stood up to it; but the grass was littered obscenely with fronds of palm trees, wisps and bundles of straw, dead hens, mess and raffle generally. The fine stand of coconut palms on the seaward side had been caught in some special blast and lay in a swathe like oats flattened by rain. But Zoti’s bungalow was intact and there was Zoti himself, sitting calmly in the verandah.
“Mon Capitaine! I was expecting you.”
Strathdee—with some difficulty—expressed the conventional surprise. He said rather awkwardly:
“I am making a little tour. To see how my friends in the island have fared. Naturally, I came to you.”
“It is kind of you. As you see, I am well.”
“It was a terrible night.”
“It was nothing. There have been many worse. If I wished I could tell you Who caused it and why.”
Strathdee said he was sure of it; for some minutes Zoti discoursed vaguely on earthquakes, eruptions, cataclysms and their causes: in the present instance the birth of a five-legged goat seemed to have something to do with it, but so had Ogoun—it was a little confusing. A sudden sharp gust came roaring from the sea; it struck the little house like a blow, leapt over it, passed on. It could be heard crashing away towards the hills; dead calm followed it. And now, thought Strathdee, for some more lunatic conversation; yet it’s lunatic to be here at all; why worry? He said, slowly:
“Zoti, you must help me.”
“I am at your service, mon Capitaine.”
“No—not my service, not me. . . . It is our Telemaque.”
“Ah! Our Telemaque.”
“Zoti! Telemaque must have the Thing.”
“It is certainly desirable.”
“Is it possible?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Mon Capitaine! I have told you so often. The Thing is lost.”
“Can you not find it?”
“No.”
“It would be—remunerative.”
“Mon Capitaine!”
Strathdee hesitated; how to put it? Well, the straightest way was the best.
“Zoti! If the Thing is lost, could not a Thing be made? Could not you make——”
Zoti’s odd eyes flashed—whether with interest, cupidity, rage or horror, it was difficult to say.
“Mon Capitaine! You do not know what you say. That would be to blaspheme. The most terrible punishments——”
“But it is I who would be punished. If I say that I will take what comes?”
“It would be noble of you, mon Capitaine. But the thing is impossible.”
Strathdee had the old disconcerting feeling—lunacy, lunacy; but—sitting here—one half believes it. Punishments? He shuddered and said:
“Zoti, if I were to make a Thing. If you were to show me how——”
Zoti was—or seemed to be—genuinely shocked.
“You must not say such things. You are ignorant, but still you must not say them. You do not know——”
“I must do something.”
“You must not do that. Such misfortunes would happen to you——”
“A good many misfortunes have happened to me——”
“But not such misfortunes. You do not know. If I were to tell you——”
Strathdee’s flesh crept; you did half-believe it, sitting there with that roomful of unpleasant objects just at your back, and Zoti’s black eyes on your own. That gutta-percha in the jam jar, that picture of the negro-in-flames, that top- at and coat . . . He pulled himself together.
“You will not help me?”
“I would. I cannot.”
“Well, will you do one thing for me?”
“What is that, mon Capitaine?”
“Telemaque must have the Thing. He must have a Thing. If you will not make one, then I must. . . . Will you even tell me the marks?”
Zoti sat for some seconds in silence; his hypnotic eyes never left Strathdee’s. A second gust of wind struck the house hard; shook it; passed on.
“If I told you them, you could not make them. Your hand would not do it. You would not be allowed.”
Oh Christ! thought Strathdee; this is getting us nowhere. As usual. And yet—he gazed into those speculative eyes—and yet I’m certain the old devil has something in his mind. There’s some game in it somewhere. What? He said:
“Then I must despair. Then Telemaque must lose. The Nègres must lose. You must lose.”
“We have lost before, mon Capitaine. We can lose and win again. You can do nothing.”
“But Telemaque——”
“You have been a good friend to Telemaque. You can do no more.”
Silence fell. Strathdee thought—well, it’s failed. I didn’t expect anything else. I’m no worse off. Damn Zoti. He said, as politely as he could:
“Then I must go home. I must thank you for your patience with me.”
“It is good to be patient, mon Capitaine. You too should be patient. It is not your affair after all.”
“It is! Telemaque——”
Zoti smiled and shrugged. There was nothing more for it. Strathdee got up and with Zoti at his side, went down the verandah steps and on to the rubbish-littered lawn of grass. He said:
“There is a mess. You will have to clear it up.”
“I will start when you have gone.” But Strathdee saw he was gazing at the dead palm tree in the corner of his compound; he thought, Oh blast! Now we shall have the Little Angels again. Miraculously the palm tree still stood, bare as a post, when better trees had fallen.
“My little friends,” said Zoti confirmingly. “My two little angels that have come to me recently. I fear for them. Their tree is rotten.”
“It is dead.”
“Yes. It is dead.” The idiotic conversation languished; they stood in a sort of trance gaping at the dead palm tree. There was no sign of the little brown-and-grey birds—or of any other birds for that matter. And then, suddenly, as they stood staring, there came another blast from seaward—stronger, harder-hitting than ever. The straw and litter on the grass leapt up in a devil-dance; for a moment the whole world shook and capered; and then suddenly, clear in the uproar, there was a crack like a gigantic whip. The bare, dead palm tree seemed for a moment to jump in the air; then down it went.
Zoti made the most extraordinary sound; it was a cry such as Strathdee had never heard in his life; it was mortal. He rushed forward to the fallen tree, and Strathdee rushed with him. But there was a huge palm frond in Zoti’s way; he stumbled over it; Strathdee reached the tree first. It was lying flat on the ground, pointing towards the road; the hollow top of it, the part above the hole where the birds went out and in, had broken away from the rest and lay a little forward and to the right. It was stuffed with straw and papers and grass, Strathdee saw—no doubt the nests of the birds. And then he saw something else, something much more interesting. From the straw at the bottom end, something was protruding; it looked like glass, it was glass. Strathdee—it was all a matter of flying seconds—reached down swiftly and drew out a glass bottle. It was old; the glass was thick—so thick that it remained unbroken; it had a heavily sealed cork; on the sides of the bottle were smaller seals and they were joined to the cork seal by tiny chains—so that That which was within might never, never get out. . . . He thought—my God! . . . Then he turned round and saw himself in instant and immediate danger.
A minute before he had been conversing with a cultured negro gentleman; there stood in front of him now an African savage. Zoti’s face was a face out of hell; his tufts of white hair stood up from his head like horns, his teeth ground and grinned like an iron trap, there was something in his eyes that went through Strathdee’s heart like iced water. He was utterly terrible, he was more frightening than anything Strathdee had ever seen. If Strathdee had had any doubts as to what he had found, that heart-stopping face, straight out of the Congo forests, would have told him. He stared appalled at the glaring eyes, the twitching fingers; even the toes on Zoti’s feet were writhing and twisting like some horrid kind of snakes. Then Zoti said—and he said it not in French but in guttural Lassou, somewhere down in his belly:
“Give! Give me!”
Strathdee said—or thought he said—”No! Mine!”
“Give me!”
“No!”
Zoti’s hand, that had become somehow the claw of an animal, went round to his back; he whipped out a knife. It was a hideous thing—long and pointed like a needle. He took a step forward; Strathdee, clutching the bottle in both hands, took a step back.
“Give me!”
“No.”
Step by step, Strathdee backed towards the gate; step by step, Zoti, the knife in his hand, came after him. He did not strike—except with his face which went through and through Strathdee like fire, like ice, like the vision of hell. Infinitely slowly, their eyes on each other’s, they moved towards the road; Strathdee felt the wooden gatepost in his back. I must turn some time, he thought; it has to be—now! He whipped round and ran for it. And now, he thought, that knife comes into my back; but the knife didn’t. Somehow he reached the car; still alive—if not much more—he threw himself into the driving-seat. He thrust the Thing far back into the dashboard cubbyhole and stamped on the self-starter; the engine roared. Somehow, somehow, he got the car turned; when he let in the clutch, it leapt under him like a frightened horse. The last thing he saw was Zoti standing in his gate with the long knife in his hand and looking at him; looking, looking, looking—like that.
It was nearly four o’clock when Strathdee at last got back to the Zirque; his visit to Basse-Borrou had taken five hours—a long business, yet short if you reckoned by results. In an hour or so Telemaque would be meeting the Ministers. If this was a story, thought Strathdee, I would make a dramatic entry into that meeting, flourishing the Thing, and immediately all would bow down and worship. And then, no doubt, Florian would marry Celeste and Strathdee would marry—oh, shah! That was not how things arranged themselves in Lassou where direct methods were out of favour: the Thing must emerge by way of the right people—among whom Strathdees had no place. I know exactly what I’ve got to do, he thought; I know the man I want, and now the only thing is to survive for a few hours till I’ve a chance of meeting him.
Meanwhile the Thing reposed in Strathdee’s locked suitcase, wrapped up in one of his shirts, in incongruous fellowship with Lucienne’s dolphin bottle. (Well, no more of that, anyway.) There had also reposed in Strathdee’s case a small but efficient automatic pistol; it was now in Strathdee’s pocket and the feel of it gave him sensations of comfort and relief he had not experienced since that palm tree fell.
It was a long wait. Towards dusk the sky noticeably cleared; even the aftermath of the hurricane was dissipated; a sprinkling of the brighter stars appeared shyly as if doubtful of their reception; later there would be at least a veiled moonlight. Strathdee dared not leave his bedroom; he sat on his chair, with his eyes on that suitcase, for comfort feeling now and then the stubby butt of his automatic. He dined off a glass of rum and a casual banana left over from breakfast; he dared not leave the Thing long enough to go downstairs and he could not take it with him; and in any case he felt in no form for eating. Now and then, as the dusk fell, he saw Zoti’s face again, and at each thought of it he had a fresh twinge of nausea, a sinking, a horror; presently he switched on the lights to get rid of it—but he did not altogether get rid of it. He tried to play Patience, but the kings and the knaves looked at him with Zoti’s horrible eyes and white horns grew on the aces. Strathdee, to be frank, was frightened out of his wits, and it was not a feeling he enjoyed. . . . At last, just after ten o’clock, he went out and took the road that led up towards Les Myosotes. The Thing travelled with him—in his sponge-bag, which was the only convenient receptacle he could find for it. His thought was—Quite likely I’m walking to my death.
There had been a light shower—what Strathdee, in his Aberdeenshire days, would have called a torrential downpour—between eight and nine, and the night was stuffily but clammily humid. The rain had washed the hurricane dust out of the air, and the rising moon gave enough light to make a torch unnecessary. It also, however, gave enough light to cast the most disconcerting shadows. At first Strathdee skirted these shadows very slowly and warily, but as nothing worse came out of them than a smell of wet sand and night-scented verbena, he took heart and pushed on with more resolution. He knew quite well where he was going—and fortunately it was not very far.
The voodoo temple—or the particular one Strathdee was aiming at—stood on barren high ground, a sort of bluff with eroded sides, some two hundred yards off the road; it was not difficult to find—if you knew it was there. Strathdee had quite frequently visited it and he knew the priest of it, the houngan, as well as it is possible to know such people. The side-track to the temple was narrow and tree-shaded, and Strathdee had been looking forward to the passage of it with no great pleasure; but tonight, to his relief, it was partly lit by a couple of blazing petrol lamps at its far end. As Strathdee turned into it, stumbling on its rough stones and ruts, there rose in front of him, from the temple, the long plaintive wail of the voodoo chant, up and down, back and forth, like an eternal wind soughing through an eternal forest; simultaneously came a shattering roar of drums. A man, a Lassoux, came towards him, black against the light; Strathdee said, “Elle danse ce soir?”—and the man, “Oui, Monsieur, elle danse.” Strathdee breathed another sigh of relief; that meant that the man he wanted to be there would be there. He forgot about the shadows and went forward quite confidently. The Thing in its check rubber sponge-bag bumped against his leg; all right, he thought, I’ll soon be rid of you. And the sooner the better.
The houmfort, the voodoo temple, stood in a little yard which might once have been a garden but had long since been trampled into hard and barren clay. It was a shabby, unpretentious thatch-and-mud building, containing two rooms: a very small one which was the holy-of-holies, and a much larger one, completely bare, where the dancing went on. Strathdee, who knew his way about here quite well, passed in through the garden-gate—taking care to step over the nightlight placed in a hole between the posts to guide the Loas; by means of his torch he then threaded his way through the rows of naked black babies laid out to sleep—and sleeping quite peacefully in spite of the appalling din from inside. Once in the dancing-room, he saw that the evening was evidently going well; about a hundred negroes and negresses were jigging about on the floor, each in solo and according to inclination, while a ring of spectators stood or squatted round the walls. The wailing chant rose and fell, the drums thundered as if they would split the roof. Of Strathdee nobody took any particular notice; he had been there often before, and besides, they had reached the stage when the heat and the drums and the general ecstasy had reduced them to a sort of trance. Even the late Minister of Finance, Strathdee noted, was shuffling solemnly in a corner with his gaze fixed upon the void; he recognised two other members of the Cercle Lettré equally blamelessly enraptured. Almost at once, the old negress who acted as mistress of ceremonies came up to him and offered him the inevitable bottle of rum, and Strathdee drank—not unwillingly. One had to drink—it was de rigeur; and it was very good rum and he needed it. He took the Thing very cautiously out of his sponge-bag.
It was a few minutes, however, before he could even see the man he was looking for. The crowd was dense and the houngan was in the middle of the room, bending down over a hole in the floor into which he was pouring some mess from an enamel jug. Presently, however, he stood up and Strathdee saw him. He was indeed not difficult to see, for at that moment he was impersonating the Loa who dealt with war and he had dressed the part in a shirt and shorts which appeared to have been dyed with—and probably had been dyed with—a virulent red ink. He had a sword in one hand with which he waved and postured; no doubt he thought himself awful, but he wasn’t really awful; compared with Zoti in his plain, gentlemanly mess-jacket suit . . . The recollection of Zoti fired Strathdee to action. Shuffling and jigging in the most approved fashion, he worked his way forward to the centre of the room. It was an easy matter to place himself beside the houngan; it was easier still to whip the Thing from under his coat and show it for a few seconds. Anxiously he thought—will it work?
It worked. The houngan was a man of indeterminate age, straight-featured for a negro, with grim, intelligent eyes. It was the eyes Strathdee was watching as they fell on the Thing in his hand; they fell on it and they flickered away and then they came back to it. They flashed: and it was a flash of recognition. Strathdee, breathing quickly, moved closer; he held out his hand. The houngan, still dancing and still waving his absurd little sword, swept up the Thing in one comprehensive movement; as if he had been made of water, he streaked through the crowd and vanished into the little inner room. He was back again almost immediately, dancing and singing and completely oblivious of Strathdee who, with the sweat bursting out on his forehead, was making his way back to the sidelines as rapidly as possible. It’s home! he thought, it’s home! The people who should have it, do have it. Telemaque has it. It’s home. . . . And now, do I get back to the Zirque alive or do I not?
Long afterwards Strathdee could look back on that half-hour’s walk to the Zirque as among the most unpleasant experiences of his life. The dark trees above his head—fig and mango and coco-palm—whispered and dripped; the shadows by the roadside swelled and shrank; the night was alive with fear. A dozen times Strathdee could have sworn he heard footsteps padding behind him; a dozen times he saw movement in a pool of shadow; a dozen times he heard the mutter of thick Lassou voices. Or so it seemed; but in fact nothing happened. From the narrow side-track he came safely into the hill road; from that again into the macadam street of the suburbs; and from that—and how thankfully—to the first guttering street-lamp of the Avenue Boufallon. Nothing happened; at the end of twenty-five minutes Strathdee, sticky with sweat but with his head up and his hands in his pockets, was strolling up the entrance drive of the Zirque. It was a little before midnight; the day of the hurricane was almost at its end.
There were a great many lights in the Zirque for that late hour; as he advanced up the drive, Strathdee saw that a car and a big American lorry stood at the foot of the verandah steps; groups of weary-looking negro porters were hanging about; a couple of mules were feeding under a mango tree. So—the wanderers had returned; the political excursion to the mountains was over.
Strathdee thought: Come along, my beauties; we’re ready for you!
The return of the goodwill party, invigorated by the mountain air and having (presumably) reached some sort of entente among themselves, should have started a train of firework events; in point of fact, for an entire twenty-four hours, there was a complete cessation of events altogether. This was, after all, not surprising; Lassou was recovering from the hurricane; La Chouie and Florian were recovering from their experiences, which had been sufficiently disagreeable. They were, it appeared, completely exhausted and had taken to their beds; however Florian might shine at the hundred yards or at the extermination of carnivora on his home ground, he was apparently in poor training for the mountains of Lassou. He muttered to himself, Strathdee thought, in his room; and his voice, when he raised it, was querulous.
As for Strathdee himself, he was lost in a violent nervous reaction; tremors, depressions, terrors processed through his being. He found himself incapable of leaving his room; he dared not even go downstairs, much less leave the sanctuary of the Zirque. He took medicinal doses of rum—too many doses, too medicinal. Dusk found him a trembling wreck on the verge of hysterics, facing a sleepless night; and I daren’t take a sleeping draught, he thought, I must sleep lightly, for who knows Who or What may come to my room this night? Actually, however, the only object that appeared was Lucienne; it was her routine occasion—as Strathdee had entirely forgotten. Never was he more pleased to see her chubby little face under its blue turban with the white polka dots. But even at that, he slept so ill that Lucienne—who lay, when she had a choice, on the floor—was roused. She was comfortingly calm and matter-of-fact. “Qu’as-tu, chéri? Tu ne dors pas, donc? Alors; je te donne une tisane.” She crept noiselessly out of the room and presently reappeared with some warmish liquid in a cracked cup that tasted mildly of cloves. Strathdee drank it and fell into an uneasy slumber in which footsteps padded after him and Zoti faces fluttered and swooped like birds. Such as it was, however, the uncomfortable doze revived him and he was able to give Lucienne her coffee and cakes with something of his normal verve. She deserved them if ever she did.
But when this was over and Lucienne had gone home, it was as bad as ever. I must go out, Strathdee thought, I must see what’s happening; but he could not make himself do it. Indeed, he might have wasted another whole day had not Louis Philippe appeared announcing that he was called on the telephone downstairs. So far gone was Strathdee that he thought at first it might be some kind of trap; but he pulled himself together and, sick and shivery, crept down the resounding wooden stairs of the Zirque. In the telephone Bosomworth’s voice said:
“Good God! I thought you were never coming. Are you all right?”
Strathdee, gulping, said, “Sorry . . . Fine.”
“You don’t sound fine to me. You sound as if you had a hell of a hangover. . . . Look here, the Council of Affairs is meeting at last. Next Wednesday. I thought you’d like to know.”
Strathdee forced his mind to work. “Wednesday, eh? This is Wednesday. That gives us a week.”
“You can count, anyway,” said Bosomworth. “A week it is.”
“But, Bozzy . . . Why so far ahead?”
“How do I know? Anyway, that’s what they say. When the time comes they’ll probably put it off again. You know what they are.”
“I don’t think so. I think they’ve made up their minds.” Bosomworth said, with that maddening air of superiority, “Bad luck, old boy.”
“Maybe,” said Strathdee again, “and maybe no.”
“Oh, come off it! It’s Florian. I know for a fact that two of them have been squared.”
“If you don’t know for a fact,” said Strathdee crossly, “that anyone in Lassou who’s been squared can bloody well rat, you don’t know much.”
“All right, all right. I just thought you’d like to know. . . . I say, old boy——”
“Yes?”
“I’m a bit worried about you. Look here. That fake thing I showed you. That bottle, you know. I said you could have it for fifty dollars. Well, you can’t. I’m not going to sell.”
“You can stick it——” began Strathdee and then thought, Oh, come, come! I mustn’t go on like this. He amended his tone. “I don’t want it now. I’ve given up that idea.”
“And a damn good thing,” said Bosomworth, “I’m very glad to hear it. That wasn’t going to do you any good. By the way, I’ve got your passport. It’s in order. You’d better come down and get it.”
“O.K.,” said Strathdee, “I will. . . . Er—I’m sorry, Bozzy; I’m afraid I haven’t been very polite this morning. I’m a bit——”
“Trouble about this island,” said Bosomworth, evidently grinning, “Rum’s too cheap. Well, ta-ta for now.” He hung up.
Strathdee climbed slowly back to his room. And now, he thought, I must go out, and the sooner I take the plunge the better. There was still deep silence from Twenty-Five and Twenty-Six; there seemed to be no callers waiting, either. Significant? No—couldn’t be; it was far too early yet for any repercussions from the Thing; if Florian lacked the usual clients, it could only be because the Celeste affair still rankled. Strathdee had a moment of black depression born of fatigue and the aftermath of fear; had all that lunacy at Basse-Borrou resulted in any practical gain at all? Setting aside plain magic—and one had to do that, hadn’t one?—no good could come from the Thing in time for next Wednesday. A week is a week, but—only a week. If Telemaque became Consul, then the Thing would serve him, then it would bring him his people. But meantime—had that nightmare morning at Zoti’s done any good whatsoever? Yes; if one could be sure that the Council of Affairs knew that the Thing was recovered; if the crows on the wall knew it. . . . They were a hard-headed, hard-boiled lot; would Things and such make any odds to them at all? Yes again: Asylum Island; they probably would. For the rest it was a question of time. If Telemaque becomes Consul . . . He pulled himself together: if Telemaque? When Telemaque becomes Consul. Come on, Strathdee—go to it.
Feeling a little better, he shaved and dressed and walked down into the town. A few gangs of tatterdemalions were clearing up the hurricane damage but otherwise Larcadie seemed sunk in its usual mid-morning doze. It was warm and bright and on the whole encouraging; the atmosphere, he thought, was faintly improved. Poutin, encountered in the Grande Rue, enquired with unusual solicitude for Telemaque’s health; Soutey said, as if hopefully, “So the Council, it meets at last on the Wednesday; boy, whatya know!”; at the Café Miramar the ex-Minister of Finance— apparently none the worse of his religious ecstasies—went out of his way to stand Strathdee a drink. There was an intangible something in the air; in the remote background somebody perhaps had ever so slightly moved. That was as much as you could ever say in Lassou. The idea of personal assassination at any rate became suddenly absurd.
Yet in spite of all these reassurances, it was some little time before Strathdee could make himself do what had to be done; in fact, he walked past the office door of the Chief of Police three times before he could force himself inside. He had decided on the Chief of Police after a good deal of thought; Soutey was too harebrained, the General and the Air Marshal were occupied solely with jealousies of one another, the Council of Affairs would be flying too high,
Poutin for once was unsuitable and Telemaque was a nonstarter. It had to be the Chief of Police.
The Chief, in his usual office déshabille, was as charming and urbane as ever; he showed a disposition to discuss mural paintings, but Strathdee cut him short and came to the point.
“There is a certain object, M. le Chef——”
“An object, M. Saddille?”
“An object which our Telemaque should possess. It is known as——” He gave the Lassou word, Zoti’s word.
For the first time he saw the Chief of Police’s face as it really was, without façade; it was faintly intelligent, rather childish, quite frightened.
“It is with the houngan, M. le Chef, at the boumfort on the Tête Cassée.”
There was a pause; then the Chief said, in the voice not of the Cercle Lettré but of plain Lassou nègre:
“I know. I have seen it there yesterday. But how can you know?”
“Because I put it there the night before last.”
“You put it there? He told me it came of itself.”
Strathdee smiled. “Pas exactément.”
“But how did it come to you?”
“That I cannot tell you.” (Not on your life! he thought; not with that Face still down at Basse-Borrou.)
“You must tell me something.”
“Very well. I found it”—he smiled again—“I found it in a house that had fallen down in the hurricane.”
“In what house?”
“That I cannot say. . . . M. le Chef, I do not wish to go into this with you. I only wish to be assured that now this—this Thing will be used.”
The old expression slid over the Chief of Police’s face like a coat of varnish, like a celluloid mask drawn down from forehead to chin. I thought so! Strathdee told himself, I thought so; you were going to do a bit of bargaining with the “object,” my beauty—and very useful it would have been. But you won’t now—not once you know that I know. He waited. Presently, with the old sunny smile, the Chief reached for the cigarettes.
“You will smoke, M. Sadille? . . . It will be used immediately. In fact, already . . .”
“Thank you. . . . M. le Chef, the Council of Affairs meets on Wednesday. Before that——”
“Naturally.”
“People will be told? They will know that this Thing is——”
“Yes, yes.”
“The Council will know?”
“Perfectly. . . . What do you know of the history of this—this object, M. Sadille?”
“Nothing. I knew there was such a thing. I knew it when I saw it.” (If he asks me “How?” he thought; but the Chief’s mind was apparently elsewhere.)
“How did you know to take it back to the Tête Cassée?”
“I didn’t know. I thought that would be the correct place to take it.”
“It was from there it was stolen.”
“Stolen? I did not know that.”
“Yes, M. Sadille. Shortly before the accession of the Consul Hippolyte.”
“By Les Mulâtres, no doubt?”
“Oh doubtless by Les Mulâtres. . . . Though one can never be sure. There are persons, M. Sadille”—he blew another streamer of smoke—”there are persons in this island who, for money, will do anything.”
Coming from you, thought Strathdee, that’s really rather rich. He changed the subject.
“In the affair of the assassin of the Consul Malmaison—you have not yet made an arrest?”
“Not yet, M. Sadille.”
“You have hopes?”
“Ah, hopes. Yes.”
“You do not think it is possible that he has made his escape from the island?”
The Chief of Police smiled beautifully. “I do not think that.”
Nor do I, thought Strathdee: I think you—I think the Nègre party—have a pretty good idea who he is; I think the Mulâtres have a guess and one of them, sooner or later, will put a knife in his back. They’ve got ways too. And I think that the question of escape from the island will depend on the result of the election on Wednesday. If Telemaque gets in, then the gentleman may escape. If Florian gets in, I wouldn’t be so sure. He’d be a useful card; I wonder where you’ve got him hidden away? He got up, feeling suddenly sick and tired of the whole business.
“It is always a pleasure to talk to you, M. le Chef. We understand one another.”
“As always, M. Sadille.”
Strathdee bowed himself out. And now for Bosomworth and that passport, and then—home.
In one instance—the protracted silence from Room Twenty-five—Strathdee had drawn a false inference; Florian was not lying in a stupor of fatigue upon his bed, he was silently contemplating himself, from a variety of angles, in the long mirror on his wardrobe. He was dressed in the russet silk suit—which had been cleaned and pressed by Louis Philippe while the hurricane raged—and his hair, to which he had applied a more than usually liberal lotion, was becomingly waved. He was a little doubtful about his tie which was of an American flamboyance but not, he thought, quite flamboyant enough; and he was swithering between a sombrero, a sun-helmet and no hat at all. He had forgotten Strathdee’s existence. Strathdee had not been out of the hotel a quarter of an hour when he emerged resplendent from his room and paused a moment irresolute on the landing. Then, with a somewhat doubtful expression on his face, he knocked at the door of Room Twenty-six. La Chouie’s voice said sleepily:
“Qu’est-ce qu’y a?”
At the voice Florian grimaced. He had heard a great deal of that voice during the mountain expedition—till he had in fact thanked God for the hurricane; though at times it appeared to him that even the fury of the elements had been insufficient to drown it. Sometimes it had coaxed, but most of the time it had nagged, nagged, nagged. It had called Florian a number of disrespectful names in three languages—names such as bonehead, cretin, bobo. It had referred frequently—and even more disrespectfully—to Celeste. It had gone on at him; oh God! how it had gone on. . . . He said now, in response to its sleepy question:
“It is I. Florian. I am going out.”
La Chouie said, through an enormous yawn, “Where you going, honey?”
“I have my affairs.”
“We-ll . . . Oh, say, am I stiff today! . . . Well, mind your step. That’s all.”
Florian said, very loftily, “I know what I do.” He put out his tongue suddenly at the closed door, thought of saying something offensive about old bones and stiffness, thought better of it, and went striding downstairs. That he knew at least what he intended to do was apparent; for he got into Poutin’s car—evading Poutin’s chauffeur who was sleeping under a tree—whirled himself down the hairpins and drove at high speed straight to Les Fleuris.
The detachment of the Garde at the gate of Hippolyte’s mansion had reduced itself now to three privates who were sprawling about in an unbuttoned condition; they knew Florian well enough by sight and they should have made some effort to salute him. They made in fact none, but continued sprawling and smoking on the steps of their hut as he drove slowly in through the narrow gateway. Strathdee, on the lookout for such incidents, might have thought it significant; Florian’s thoughts were elsewhere and he hardly noticed it. He was, to tell the truth, in an acute state of nervousness—as are most of us when we are doing an act which we know to be insane; he had whisked himself out of the Zirque and into the car and up the hill, but the moment was coming when he could whisk no longer. If only one could go on flying through the air, carrying oneself towards that moment but never reaching it! But no, it had arrived; short of crashing into the flowerbeds he could drive the car no further. He pulled up at the foot of the steps which that tasteful young architect had copied from Bogota or Cincinnati, suffered a spasm of terror, overcame it and went boldly upwards. The American tie fluttered in the little breeze; he was at least a magnificent figure. Arriba los Conquistadores! His thought was, I’m in for it.
In the verandah a shambling servant appeared; Florian said with the air of an El Bolivar:
“Mademoiselle Celeste?”
The servant—an aged and thunderstruck negro—said that if Monsieur would give himself the pain to be seated, he would enquire. Florian, the Conquistador mood evaporating a little, sat down in a leather saddleback chair and picked up L’Illustration: it was two years old. From some part of the house a muted, buzzing sound—Telemaque’s lathe, in fact—fell to silence; there was some muttered conversation; then heavy steps were heard approaching across an uncarpeted floor. Florian threw L’Illustration to the ground and sprang to his feet. For the first time the rival Consuls of Lassou confronted each other at handshaking range.
They did not, however, shake hands. Instead they stood for a moment staring in each other’s faces; and it was a moment for which any cameraman would have given a good deal. Against the russet suit and the surrealist tie, Telemaque advanced his working garments—the blouse and trousers of the Lassou peasant. He had sprinkled himself lavishly with sawdust, and there was paint on his hands and—regrettably—on his face. He was wearing his very worst glasses and he looked like—Telemaque. But he fixed Florian with the unblinking stare of a diver’s helmet; and Florian first winced and then—just a little—wilted. But he recovered himself and launched his opening—and underhand—blow.
“You speak English, isn’t it?”
But Telemaque knew as well as Florian that he didn’t. He said, “Parlons Français” and added, as an afterthought concession, “S’il vous plait.”
Florian, obliging him, said rapidly:
“I derange you, Monsieur.”
“But no.”
“It seems that your servant has a little misunderstood. I have asked for Mademoiselle your sister.”
“I regret.”
“You regret, Monsieur?”
“I regret that my sister is occupied.”
“But”—Florian attempted an airy, easy laugh; it was not altogether successful—“but it seems there is a misunderstanding. Mademoiselle has invited me.”
If Telemaque thought this was a lie, he did not say so; perhaps he did not even think so. He said only:
“That was some days ago, Monsieur.”
“Tiens!” said Florian. “It was some days ago. Naturellement. I have been away on my affairs. It was before the hurricane. Ah, ciel! the hurricane.”
During these exchanges Telemaque had never ceased for one instant to goggle straight into Florian’s face through those distorting glasses; Florian could have shrieked. It was like conversing with an enormous black frog. He could have stretched out his hand and pushed the frog’s face, pulled its nose—or such nose as it had; he wished he might. This clod, this block, this—this Lassoux! . . . Telemaque said, repeating him:
“Ah, the hurricane. But now it is another thing.”
“Another thing?” A sudden fear smote him. “She—she has not suffered in the hurricane?”
“Not the least in the world, I thank you.”
“She is well?”
“She is very well indeed.”
“Then”—Florian drew himself up—“then will you have the goodness to tell her, Monsieur, that I am here.”
Telemaque suddenly took off his glasses to polish them and became on the instant a different—and a decidedly more sinister—character. His tousled hair and the splash of red paint on his cheek gave him the air of a witch-doctor interrupted in his toilet. He said, with that odd dignity Strathdee had often wonderingly admired:
“You have said, Monsieur, that there is a misunderstanding. That is true. My sister does not wish to see you.”
“You tell me that!”
“I tell you that.”
“She has never said it. Never!”
“She has said it to me five minutes ago. When she saw your car coming in.”
It was a lie, but it was stoutly said: Florian had no counter to it.
“But—but she has invited me. She has asked me to come.”
“That was some days ago, Monsieur.”
“Some days ago! Some days ago!” Florian lost his never very reliable temper. “With your ‘some days ago, Monsieur’ you repeat yourself abominably. I—I ask myself, is it with a parrot that I converse? A parrot . . . If she has invited me some days ago, she invites me now, hein?”
“She does not invite you at all. My sister does not wish to see you. She does not wish to see you any more. That changes itself. She——”
“It is false.”
“It is true.”
For one glorious moment it looked as if the rivals to the Consulate of Lassou would settle the matter there and then by personal combat. They glared at each other, their breasts heaved, Florian’s fists actually clenched. But he pulled himself together.
“I see, Monsieur, that you are my enemy.”
The word “enemy” produced on Telemaque a sudden and catastrophic effect. He was accustomed to use it in one phrase only—that which directs us that our enemies should be loved. In a flash he remembered his good resolutions.
“I am not your enemy, Monsieur.”
“Tiens! You oppose me. You frustrate me. And you say you are not my enemy. You tell your sister not to receive me and you say——”
“I do not tell my sister.”
“Vraiment!”
“I do not! It is my sister herself——”
“Sans blague!”
“I am not your enemy, Monsieur. I do not wish that there should be enemies. You are a Christian, Monsieur?”
“But naturally!”
“Then you must know what is said in the Evangel. It is written, ‘Thou shalt love’——”
Florian—he was not to be blamed—was a little nonplussed. It was impossible to take this at face value—not from the man whose prospects he had come to terminate and destroy. Unless—unless of course that man knew himself beaten; as he was, as he certainly was. That must be it; claro! This lump of Lassou limestone was looking for a way out, trying to save face, to curry favour. Well—he should see.
“You are saying to me, Monsieur, that we are not enemies?”
“I am saying it. I wish that we should be friends.”
Florian gasped; the fellow was going almost too far. He said icily:
“You know why I have come to Lassou?”
“Yes; I know it.”
“And you say we must be friends! . . . Monsieur, it seems to me that your mind . . . Am I to understand then that you retire?”
“Retire?”
“Mon Dieu! Do I speak then in Paragonian? Do I fail to make myself clear? We are, I believe, contesting the Consulship of this island. You say you wish to be my friend. If there is any sense in human language, I take it that must mean that you retire. Retire, resign, surrender.”
Telemaque, staring, said—exactly as he had once said it to Strathdee—
“I am the Consul of Lassou.”
Florian threw up his hands. For a moment he waved them wildly in the air, then brought them with a slap to his sides. Standing almost at attention, he said in a tone of absolute ice:
“I see, Monsieur, that you divert yourself.”
“Du tout.”
“You mock me.”
“I do not mock you. Je veuz dire——” But what he meant to say, poor fellow, he did not know. He had just made two statements—“I am Consul of Lassou” and “I wish that we should be friends”—which should, he thought, be reconcilable but which somehow weren’t. He stood there, goggling again through his reassumed glasses, and wrestling with it. The sight of Telemaque struggling with the irreconcilable was never attractive; on this morning of frustration—and La Chouie waiting at the Zirque, too, with a tongue as long as the Cordillera—it was a sight that drove Florian fairly frantic. He began to shout.
“You will regret this, my friend; you will regret it. On Wednesday, let me tell you, the Council of Affairs will meet. On Wednesday I shall be elected Consul of Lassou. Guard yourself then, Monsieur, guard yourself!”
It was a bad move of course and a stupid; but to Telemaque the suddenly raised voice suggested only a much more imminent catastrophe. He leant forward and said in alarm and with the most disinterested sincerity:
“I beg you, Monsieur. Not so loud. You will disturb Maman.”
It finished Florian. He threw up his hands again, snapping his fingers like a madman. He gave vent to something that was a yell and a snarl and an oath. Then, muttering to himself, he rushed down the steps and threw himself into Poutin’s Cadillac. Its engine roared.
“A Mercredi!” shrieked Florian. “A Mercredi! On verra, ’spèce d’imbécile; on verra!” He hurled the Cadillac round the circular sweep in front of the house, cutting a swathe of cannas as he went; he shot like a thunderbolt through the narrow gate and past the still sprawling forms of the Garde. They viewed him without emotion. One of them spat.
Returning to the Zirque with his passport in his pocket and Bosomworth’s fatherly—damn him!—advice in his ears, Strathdee suddenly stopped and rubbed his eyes. In the verandah, waiting placidly in a cane chair, was the very last figure he had hoped or expected to see. It was an elderly and benevolent-looking negro in a white mess-jacket that matched nicely his aggressive little horns of hair. It was, in fact—Zoti.
Zoti! For a moment an ice-cold mist enveloped Strathdee; then he said to himself resolutely, “Nonsense. Not here, not in broad daylight.” He went forward.
“Doctor! I think you must be waiting for me.”
“Mon Capitaine!” The old suave civilised citoyen-du-monde Zoti of Basse-Borrou. Even Strathdee, who knew his Lassou, was taken aback; did I dream that—that demon that looked at me that morning out of what seemed to be Zoti’s body? He said, rather shakily:
“What is it?”
Zoti looked around him deprecatingly. “Just here, mon Capitaine? With all these servants, all these beggars? So many ears. You have not a room?”
Strathdee gave him a very hard look. If I take him upstairs and he wants to stick a knife in me, he can? Not while I’m on my guard, not while I’m watching him. And anyway I don’t think he wants to. Too crude. If I’m to be killed, it won’t be with a knife in the Hotel Zirque. A phrase of Bosomworth’s came back with sinister overcharge: “They’ve got ways.” They had too; and Zoti was an artist; and maybe, thought Strathdee, I’m not to be killed; let’s see, anyway. He said:
“Of course, Doctor. Come this way.”
Up in the verandah, facing Zoti across that little table on which Lucienne so much enjoyed her early tea and cakes, Strathdee took the bull by the horns.
“Doctor, if you’ve come to get that Thing of yours, if you want it back, it’s not here. I haven’t got it.”
Zoti turned on him a face serene as the moon, full of benevolent interest, kindness, amiability, any estimable sentiment whatever.
“Mon Capitaine! You have found what you searched? I rejoice.”
Strathdee was taken aback; but he was determined to keep in the open.
“You know very well I have found it. I—found it at yours on Monday morning.”
Zoti, smiling, shook his head.
“Ah, no! It came to you of itself.”
“Came to me——!”
“But yes, mon Capitaine. You had faith. You thought you would get it and so it came to you. It is always so. If there is faith.”
“Doctor! The tree. The birds.”
“You have had a vision, mon Capitaine? Perhaps a pleasant vision? Tell me about it.”
Strathdee brought his hand down with a bang on the table. “Zoti!” he said, for once dropping the “Doctor,” “you had that bottle hidden in the tree in your compound. You know that as well as I do.”
Another beautiful smile and headshake.
“How could that be, mon Capitaine? I never had it. I told you it was lost. Now it has come to you of itself. That is as it should be. Of itself. It was never with Zoti. Never.”
Strathdee’s lip rasped over his moustache; what the devil, he thought, what the devil is his game now? And then suddenly, with a great leap of his heart, he saw it. The boot was on the other foot; it was not Strathdee who was afraid of Zoti: it was Zoti who was afraid of Strathdee. It must not be known—or at any rate it must not be said—that Zoti had had the Thing. Zoti said, still smiling:
“How did you find it, mon Capitaine? Tell me. Tell Zoti.” Strathdee became suddenly aware with a start that he had been looking too long into Zoti’s eyes; in another minute, he thought, I’ll be finding it where he says I found it. Hastily pulling away his eyes, he said:
“Where do you think?”
“I do not know, mon Capitaine. I think perhaps you found it quite suddenly in your hand. Or perhaps on this little table here. Or perhaps in your car. It came to you because you believed it would. What does it matter how you found it? But you had also a vision of how you found it. Perhaps you thought you saw it in a tree. Or on a mountain. Or in a flash of lightning during the hurricane. You must know what you saw, but you do not wish to tell me. Very well. I could make you, but I will not. One day you will come to my house and tell me all about it. Not just now.” He sat back in his chair, beaming.
Strathdee rubbed his moustache hard. You infernal old scoundrel, he thought; you nasty old devil! And now what? He said, to gain time:
“Doctor, let me get you a little glass of rum and some fruit.”
Zoti said it was very kind of him; and Strathdee took a minute or two to collect his tray-load together. Then, pouring the rum, he said:
“I had a vision, Doctor, as you say. It was not pleasant. It was very bad. I would like to forget it. But perhaps I should not forget it. Perhaps I should tell it to the Priest?”
“You do not go to the Priest. You have told me so.”
“Not the Christian Priest. The houngan.”
Zoti shrugged indifferently. “What is the use of telling things to houngans? They can do nothing. They are only horses for the Loas. Horses only.”
“Then you would advise me not to tell him?”
“It is as you please, mon Capitaine. But it could do no good. Far better tell Zoti.”
Strathdee said silkily, “Shall we keep it then a secret between us?”
“You could not keep a secret from me. If I look in your face I can see it.”
“Look in my face,” said Strathdee. “Do you see it?”
Zoti looked; but his eyes were dead; there was nothing in them.
“I see it, mon Capitaine. It is the vision of which you began to tell me.”
“And we shall keep it a secret between us?” said Strathdee patiently.
“It is as you wish. But better perhaps so. There are persons who would misunderstand.”
By God there are! thought Strathdee; the Police for one. He said:
“A little more rum, Doctor? . . . If I keep this a secret between us, it is because we have long been friends. We are friends, Zoti?”
“Undoubtedly we are friends.”
“And friends,” said Strathdee, “should help each other.” He lit a cigarette, feeling better than he had done since Sunday.
“Evidently, mon Capitaine.”
“Well, then!” Strathdee pulled his chair nearer the table. “Do you know where the Thing is now?”
“Yes,” said Zoti calmly—and as usual, it might be a lie and it might not—“but you do not know that.”
“I do not know exactly. But I know it is where it should be. It is all equal. Soon it will be known that our Telemaque has it——”
“Our Telemaque? He does not know of its existence. He would not believe in it. He is a Christian.”
“They are all Christians,” said Strathdee. “Sur le papier. . . . It is becoming known already, I think. And that is one way where you must help. You must make it more known. You can. You will?”
Zoti shrugged. “I go about, mon Capitaine. I talk. It takes time, that. . . . Perhaps some months.”
Strathdee’s heart sank; some months . . . next Wednesday. He said, as cheerfully as he could:
“Well, talk, Zoti. Talk everywhere. . . . But there is another affair. A more important. It is here you help me à merveille. . . . Those foreign people of whom I spoke to you once before—they should go home.”
“Without doubt.”
Strathdee drew his chair still closer; he leant forward.
“Now, Doctor! I want them to go home quickly; very quickly. I want them to go home in such a way that they will not come back.”
Zoti’s eyes flickered for an instant. “It will be easy. I will arrange. Tonight.”
“No, no!” said Strathdee hastily, “I didn’t mean that. But I want them to go in such a way that”—he searched for words—“in such a way that they will not wish to come back. They will be disgusted.” He poured himself a little rum and refilled Zoti’s glass; Zoti was thoughtfully peeling an orange. “Our Lassou, Doctor, it is a very beautiful island.”
“Very beautiful, mon Capitaine.”
“But there are in it also unpleasant things.”
“But horrible.”
“I would like,” said Strathdee, taking off his rum, “I would like that they should see some of these horribles.” He thought a minute. “Not the woman. The man only, this Florian Malmaison. If he could see some of these things. . . . They could be shown to him?”
“Perfectly. They are there. He could be made to see them.”
“And that,” said Strathdee ingratiatingly, “is where I require the help of a friend. A friend like you. . . . If, for instance . . .”
When Zoti had at last been got rid of, Strathdee indulged in an unusually prolonged siesta, from which he awoke in the expectation that another curious and variegated day was substantially over. He was wrong, however; for as he was mixing himself an apéritif and debating whether he would go out for a stroll or not—it was nice to feel able to stroll—Louis Philippe appeared with a visiting- card. It was a large-sized visiting-card of a pale chocolate colour on which the lettering was flowingly inscribed in gold. And it bore the extraordinary name—in all circumtances—of M. Florian Malmaison.
For a moment astonishment held Strathdee prisoner; but there was no good being astonished, and there was only one thing to be done. He nodded to Louis Philippe and in came the Enemy.
Florian was, as ever, magnificent, but under an altered form; he had discarded the russet suit—perhaps he felt it was not very lucky—and presented himself as he had appeared on the day of his arrival at the airport—black riding breeches, grey silk shirt, boots, belt and revolver. My little Nazi! thought Strathdee; no, not that—fascista, avanguardista, balilla. Florian said, in English:
“Mister Stra’dee?”
Strathdee bowed. “M. Malmaison.”
Florian looked round him hastily as if suspecting eavesdroppers. “In what language shall we talk?”
“Spanish?”
“No. English. Fewer will understand. They listen in this place. My English is very excellent indeed. And in any case you are English.”
Strathdee shook his head. “No—Scot. As I told you once before. It makes a great difference.”
“What difference can it make?”
“Well, for one thing, the Scots are the only people who can speak English. . . . What can I do for you?”
Florian hesitated. “You—you have been long in this island?”
“Too damn long,” said Strathdee happily.
“Hein? You would like perhaps to get away?”
“I’m in no hurry.”
“Well. . . . Let us talk of that another time. . . . Now, Mister Stra’dee, you know these people, these Lassoux. They are clods, blocks, animals.” He seemed to realise suddenly that these were unsuitable sentiments in a candidate for Consular election, for he added hastily: “Not that they are not useful and hard-working. But they lie—my God, how they lie! I have come here . . . you know why I have come here.”
“For some reason,” said Strathdee, “you want to be Consul of the clods, blocks and animals. Isn’t that it?”
Florian hesitated again. “That is one reason. But there is another. My father, Mister Stra’dee—my father.” He struck an attitude and his very-excellent-indeed English slipped a little. “I love my father. Como no? And these brutes, these beasts, they kill him.”
Strathdee thought—If this was genuine, I’d be sorry for you. But you didn’t love your father—nobody could have loved your father—and I don’t believe it’s your father that’s brought you here tonight. He murmured some polite condolence.
“Yes; they kill him. And I come to find out who has done it. I ask them. But do they tell me? No. I go to the Police; they say ‘We are investigating, we are following clues.’ But what happens? Nothing. They do not arrest; they do not try . . . Now, Mister Stra’dee, it is said you are a man of honesty. It is for this I come to you tonight. You will help me, I know. Mister Stra’dee, who is it that has done this deed?”
It is not for this that you come tonight, thought Strathdee—though it makes a good enough excuse; he said:
“I haven’t the remotest idea.”
“But you know all these people; you talk with them.”
“Not so well that murderers come to me and tell me what they’ve done. I’m sorry, M. Malmaison, I can’t help you. I doubt if anybody can.”
Florian snapped his fingers. “I shall find out.”
“I doubt it.”
“The Police. You think they know?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Why not ask them?”
“Pah! When I come to power, then it will be easy. And then”—he gave Strathdee what was meant to be a nasty look—“then it will not be so good for those who have shielded——”
Strathdee lit a cigarette. “You may not come to power.”
“How?”
“My friend,” said Strathdee solemnly, “if they could murder your father, they can murder you.” And he added darkly—for it was a good phrase after all—“They’ve got ways.”
Florian’s eyes flickered for a moment; then he laughed very heartily; he tapped the revolver at his belt. “I have this.”
“No doubt . . . Your father had one too. He’d just used it.”
“But there is no one who wishes to murder me. They are my people. In a few days they will elect me Consul.”
“Beginning with the Liberator Boufallon,” said Strathdee, “there have been sixty-three Consuls in Lassou. Twenty-seven of them have been assassinated. . . . If I were you, I’d go back to San Hieronimo.”
Florian laughed again—loudly. But he seemed to be forgetting—rather quickly—about his father’s murderers.
“Ah, no,” he said. “I shall be Consul. That is what I want.”
Strathdee fixed him with his little black eyes. “Why?”
“Why? You ask me that? . . . It—it is my right.” Spluttering a little, he began what was meant to be a dissertation on the Law of Succession, but Strathdee stopped him. “I know all about that,” he said, “we’ll take it as read. But will you just answer me a plain question—would you ever have thought of all that for yourself?”
“For myself?”
“Yes. If there hadn’t been—well, say, La Señora Branzada.”
Florian’s eyes gave a telltale flash. “La Señora Branzada is my friend.”
“God save us from our friends,” said Strathdee piously—and was rewarded by a sidelong speculative glance.
“It is true she is meddlesome . . . But she is my friend.”
“You have a lot of friends, haven’t you?”
“Oh, yes!”
“In San Hieronimo?”
“Yes. And—and in other places.”
“Fine!” said Strathdee. “It’s always a good thing to have friends. One can give oneself so much pleasure in obliging them.”
Florian was offended. “It is not I who oblige them; it is they who oblige me.”
“Better still,” said Strathdee, “you can then oblige them back.”
There was a little silence; what next? Florian had pretended to a desire to talk about Le Zouz’s murder; he evidently had no desire to talk about the friends in San Hieronimo; what did he want to talk about? Strathdee thought he could guess. Looking up, he saw that his visitor was composing his features into an unpleasant grin, in intention at least he was registering charm.
“Mister Stra’dee! I think you are a good man. You are honourable. I wish that you should be my friend.”
Strathdee said carefully, “I am a paid servant at the Palace.” And that, he thought, should bring him to it. It did.
Florian looked hopeful for a moment. “If it were a question of pay, Mister Stra’dee?” . . . The hope faded. “But it is not—not with a man like you, a man of honour. . . . Mister Stra’dee, these people at the Palace. There you can help me.”
Strathdee lit another cigarette. “Indeed?”
“Yes. You know—you know this Telemaque.”
“Naturally.”
“He is a fool.”
“Not always.”
“I think always. But—but”—he wriggled a little in his difficulty but he got it out—“his sister, Mademoiselle Celeste—ah, how charming.”
“She is a delightful girl,” said Strathdee. “So devoted to her brother.”
Florian’s foot began to tap the floor; he spluttered a little, and again his English failed him.
“Impossible! She must see he is fool. . . Mister Stra’dee, here is where you can help me. Mademoiselle Celeste, I want her to be my friend. She too wants. I know it.”
“Well? That seems all right.”
“Yes, but the brother . . . Mister Stra’dee, I wish you to tell the brother he must no longer oppose me there. You must do it.”
Strathdee kept his temper. You wish this, he thought, you wish that; I must do the other thing; I’d like to slap your face! But—it’s brought you here, it’ll bring you back again, it’s valuable. He said, with an appearance of craft:
“It will be difficult.”
“Difficult? Poof! Mister Stra’dee, you must get Mademoiselle Celeste to be my friend. I desire it.”
Strathdee bit back an explosion. “And what would I get out of that?”
Florian forgot his manners. “Ah! Now you are talking. Perhaps—when I am Consul—perhaps there might be a post in the Ministry of Education. . . . You will certainly be in need of something . . .”
Strathdee said, “I see . . . Well, I’ll try what I can do.” He studied Florian’s face for a minute, and suddenly changed the subject. “Are you really enjoying yourself here?”
Florian said, rather puzzled, “I am not here to enjoy myself.”
“Nonsense!” said Strathdee. “Enjoyment is the first object of life. A man who doesn’t enjoy himself is an ass. . . . You don’t look too well.”
“I am very well indeed.”
“You don’t feel a bit—repressed?”
Florian considered it. “I am tired. That trip to the mountains . . . oh, my God, that trip to the mountains.”
“It was bad?”
“It was awful.”
“And whose idea was that?”
For a moment Florian seemed on the verge of an impassioned outburst; but he remained—to his credit—loyal. He said, dubiously:
“I think it was a good thing to do. But it has tired me very much. I did not sleep there—not at all. Even now I do not sleep well again. I dream.”
“Bad dreams?”
“Yes. Snakes.”
“You don’t like snakes, eh?”
Florian shuddered violently. “Me? I hate them. It is to me a repugnance—a—a—what is it?”
“Phobia’s the word,” said Strathdee. He threw away his cigarette. “But you know, don’t you, what makes people dream about snakes?”
“Hein? What is that?”
“It’s being too much in the hands of women.”
Florian stared at him. “Women? I am not in the hands of women. They are nothing. Pah!”
“Not even the Señora Branzada?”
“The Señora Branzada is very charming.”
“Yes—but a little ?”
“There is nothing between me and the Señora Branzada.”
“No, no; of course not. She’s like a mother to you, eh?”
“Yes. No. Well——”
“That’s what makes you dream about snakes.”
There was a little silence; then Florian seemed to realise that the conversation had been escaping from his grasp. He sprang smartly to his feet.
“Well! I must go. I have much business. . . . I think, Mister Stra’dee, we understand each other.”
“I think so.”
“You will not forget what I asked?”
“I’ll bear it in mind.”
“And I too will not forget. When I am Consul I will not forget. . . . Adios!”
He gave a quasi-military salute and stamped out of the room, head up, striding out, the Conquistador once more. Strathdee closed the door he had left gaping behind him and then, coming back to the table, poured himself a glass of rum. He drank it reflectively. If I’d had warning of this interview, he thought, I could have made more of it; but anyway I haven’t done so badly. There’s a liaison now—which is more than could ever have been expected; the next time Cecilia gets a bit too much for him, he’ll maybe turn to Strathdee. And Celeste isn’t a total loss, Maman or no Maman. . . . And he dreams about snakes, does he? . . . And Strathdee, after selling the pass, is to have a nice post in the Ministry of Education? . . . You God-damned little Nazi! he thought; if I hadn’t been up against you before, I’d be up against you now. I’m to be your—your pander with Telemaque’s sister and I get a post in the Ministry of Education—maybe. You little——! I’ll sort you!
Antofrino’s guests at the Zirque were always ready with their complaints and had frequent grounds for making them, but on one thing they were agreed—the Hotel was entirely, and in Lassou uniquely, free from vermin. Yet the strange thing was that in the course of forty-eight hours, on the Friday and Saturday of that momentous week, no fewer than seven snakes appeared in Room Twenty-five and at least one other in Strathdee’s room next door.
The first of these—about seven on the Friday morning—was a mere commotion, a throwing of slippers, a banging of sticks, some sotto voce cursing by Florian. The second, an hour later, was taken for a reappearance of the first which had apparently escaped; there were more sticks and slippers. Louis Philippe was called in as reinforcement, there was an organised hunt. This time the snake did not escape; Strathdee, cautiously opening his door, saw Louis Philippe bearing away its corpse draped artistically over a stick. Number Three was Strathdee’s own; he came up rather early for his after-lunch siesta and saw it flickering about in his verandah; he recognised it for a harmless variety and threw a shoe at it; it slithered away somewhere—but in the direction of Room Twenty-five. There Florian, coming up in due course, presently discovered it; Strathdee heard a rather hoarse shout and then the clean, crisp whack of a Lassou cane coming down. This was followed by a triumphant and satisfied silence; the cane—Louis Philippe’s idea, no doubt—had evidently proved effective. So—game sighted, three; kills two—the snakes should have ceased.
They did not, however; the fourth one presented itself while Florian, that model of regular habit, was changing for dinner. It was a runner and gave rise to a spirited hunt. This was opened by Florian, supported presently by Louis Philippe; it was joined by another of the hotel boys and by La Chouie; Strathdee heard her saying, “Honey, what is the matter with you?” and then weighing in with what sounded like a high-heeled slipper. The snake was a lively customer and ran for nearly ten minutes; there were alternations of uproar and grim hunting silence. Finally some article of furniture went over with a crash, there was a crescendo of shouting, one terrific slam and then once more the stillness of death. . . . At dinner Strathdee thought Florian looked unusually sallow and La Chouie was unusually silent; there was a little pucker of anxiety in her forehead, and from time to time she bit her lip in meditation.
The evening was otherwise uneventful save for the passing of Poutin’s first Carnival procession. It was difficult at any time to escape from Poutin in Larcadie; during Carnival it was impossible. At that season of the year his conscience troubled him; he felt that during the past twelve months he had made too much money out of the island—and not all of it altogether blamelessly. To atone for this he made himself the leader of the Carnival spirit, he gave back at least a percentage of his ill-gotten gains in the form of spectacular processions. (If these were at the same time a useful advertisement—well, tant mieux.) This year he had imported from New Orleans, where they had been made to his specification, three monstrous Carnival cars: one was in the form of a bottle of rum, one was a colossal cigar, and the third was a tin of cigarettes. Each car was manned by a party of Poutin’s workpeople in an advanced stage of intoxication; those on the rum bottle were artistically dressed as pirates—or the Lassou conception of pirates—with vast two-handed cardboard and wooden swords; the cigar had a little perspex turret like that of a bomber, from which coloured lights played and streams of coloured water could be fired at the bystanders; the cigarette tin was a miniature pillbox from which dummy machine-guns, protruding grimly, shot cigarettes, nuts, bon-bons, tiny capsules of scent. It cost a lot of money, but it was worth it; as with most other things in Lassou, Poutin had made a corner in Carnivals.
His opening procession—it was the rum-bottle car this time—passed the Zirque just as dinner was coming to an end; Antofrino’s guests, turning with some relief from his omelette surprise, crowded into the verandah to stare down at the rout thundering along the road at the foot of the hill. The rum bottle, carried on an immense timber-drag, lay on its side, its neck thrusting forward like a cannon; it had been painted strikingly in alternate bands of scarlet and silver, and enormous letters announced “Les Gouttes du Ciel; Le Meilleur du Monde.” In its snout, where the cork should have been, it carried a terrific headlight which threw into bold illumination a second lorry with a brass band which preceded it. Behind it, roaring, dancing, drumming, came a vast rabble of pirates perhaps five hundred strong. Every one of them, Strathdee noted, had been fitted out with a brand-new uniform; he remembered hearing that Poutin had been having a good deal of trouble with his labour just lately; he was evidently bent on conciliation on a lavish scale. With hideous din and a certain rather terrifying savagery the procession surged away towards the town; the clientele of the Zirque went back to their cooling coffee. Strathdee went with them—but thoughtfully.
The fifth snake turned up next morning in Florian’s bathroom—conceivably even in his bath. This time there was a quite definite yell of terror—a yell so loud and so intense that it brought out La Chouie in a dressing-gown. (“Florian! Say; what is all this?”) There followed the now familiar clamour of the chase; but the bathroom was a bare and open arena, the snake’s chances were poor, it was rapidly exterminated. Presently came Louis Philippe with Strathdee’s coffee and figues; rather ruffled, breathing a little, in a furious temper.
“Monsieur Sadille! It is insupportable. He says, that one, that I put snakes in his room.”
“Well?” said Strathdee, “and do you?”
“Me? I put snakes in his room? Monsieur, I ask of you——”
Strathdee said it was too bad.
He passed the morning in a round of routine visits—Les Fleuris, the Chief of Police, Bosomworth’s magazin; and a non-routine one—Poutin. To Poutin he took the customary Carnival present—a little wooden figure of the lucky Twins, bought at Bosomworth’s; Poutin expected these little courtesies in return for his largesse to the public, and Strathdee had never failed him. They had an agreeable conversation of some length. In the afternoon Telemaque had a public meeting; he had incidentally met his Ministers on the day of the hurricane but he was reticent as to details; Strathdee could get nothing out of him and was inclined to believe that the affair had been a fiasco. The public meeting was not outwardly much more successful than its predecessors; but there was, Strathdee thought, a sensation of warmth that had previously been lacking; Telemaque’s now standard remarks on the banana trade were greeted with a murmur of assent; the Lib’y and the Musée, if they did not exactly get a hand, at least received a tolerant or expectant grin. Strathdee, wondering “Am I just persuading myself?” was cheered to learn from Soutey that at Florian’s meeting, on the previous evening, there had been for the first time some quite vigorous heckling; someone had even bawled out “A bas les Mozzes!”—a generic Lassou term for the inhabitants of South America, not specifically complimentary. The Council of Affairs, it was said, still intended to meet on Wednesday; what else they intended was anybody’s guess.
The meeting and the subsequent exhortation of Telemaque made Strathdee a little late in returning to the Zirque for dinner; so much so that his arrival coincided neatly with that of snake number six. The snake, in full flight, met him on the wooden stairs, he ascending, it slithering downstairs. Strathdee sidestepped, swiped with his Lassou cane, and got it. It was again, he saw, the harmless variety—a blackish-greenish creature about three feet long. Picking it up by the tail, he presented it to the hunt which was by this time surging out on to the landing; Florian palely loitered in the rear. La Chouie, flushed and exceedingly cross, opened fire.
“Say, Misser Stra’dee! Are you in on this?”
Strathdee dropped the snake on the floor. “In on what?”
“Planting serpents. In Florian’s room.”
“How the hell,” said Strathdee reasonably, “could I have planted any serpent in anybody’s room? I’ve only just got back from the town.”
“Well, somebody is.”
“Oh, I don’t know. How many does this one make?”
“Search me. Five. Maybe six.”
“Must be a brood of them,” said Strathdee. “They get like that sometimes.”
“Sometimes!” said La Chouie. “I guess somebody’s being funny round here.” They both looked at Florian’s face; quite evidently it was not funny at all.
It was still less funny a few hours later. Strathdee was in a long chair on his verandah turning over the pages of his Calderon which he had recovered that morning from a still chastened and morose Celeste; he was vaguely conscious that a light had sprung up in the room next door where Florian—tired no doubt by the stresses of the chase—was presumably seeking an early bed. Suddenly there was a second yell of terror; the door of Florian’s suite crashed open, his voice was heard on the landing, loud and shrill. “Au secours! Au secours!” It was the cry of a man tried beyond the limit of his endurance; Strathdee threw down Calderon and rushed out. There stood Florian in his shirt and bare legs, his mouth open, his face ghastly.
“Mister Stra’dee. There is a snake in my bed. In my bed!”
Strathdee had foreseeingly armed himself with his cane. He said, “That’s easy. Come on; I’ll settle it.” For the first time he invaded Florian’s bedroom: it reeked of Spanish cigarettes and of Florian’s hair-oil; every possible light was blazing. And sure enough on the edge of Florian’s pillow a snake was coiled. But it was not greenish-blackish; it was not three feet long; it was scarlet and short and fat. Strathdee, advancing to the attack, jumped back hastily.
“Look out! It’s a clix. Stand back!”
Florian not only stood back; he leapt.
“I’ll get my shotgun,” said Strathdee. “Keep still. Don’t move.” He raced to his room, cannoned into La Chouie on the landing, said “Stay where you are,” and got back with the gun. The room rocked with the explosion; the clix became a mess on Florian’s pillow. Strathdee, wiping his brow, said “Deadly!” and thought, My God! That was going too far. Florian said, “He—he is dead?” and Strathdee “Dead as nails.” He saw La Chouie’s face in the doorway—puzzled and wretched, and was suddenly smitten with compassion. “It’s all right,” he said, “it’s dead.” Louis Philippe appeared, peering, behind her. Strathdee said, “I’ve killed it. Tell everybody it’s all over. It was a clix.” He sat down on a chair, shaken.
La Chouie came into the room; she looked at the mess on the pillow.
“Say! That’s a new kind. It’s red.”
“It’s a clix,” said Strathdee, “that’s why.”
“Can kill you?”
“Can kill you all right.” He glanced at Florian. “And it’s agony. An hour’s agony. I saw a man once——”
La Chouie stared at him; she was half undressed under her dressing-gown and really, he thought, rather bewitching.
“Honest to God, Colin—are you in this?”
“Honest to God, Cecilia, I’m not.”
“Somebody’s putting them——”
Nobody’s putting them, thought Strathdee; that’s the awful thing; they’re coming. Somebody’s sending them, if you like. . . . Oh, shucks! I’m going mad. He said:
“It isn’t me, anyway.”
“Well, then, that room-boy——”
“It isn’t him.”
“Well, who the hell?”
“I don’t know.” But I know, he thought, only too well. Zoti. Yet how——
La Chouie bit her thumb, and Strathdee’s heart turned over within him. She said:
“Florian, honey, it’s all over. You better get to bed. I’ll call that boy to change the pillow.”
Florian spoke for the first time; he said, staring wildly at Strathdee:
“You said I see snakes because I have no mother, hein?”
Strathdee, aware of La Chouie’s eyes upon him, said uneasily:
“I didn’t say quite that. Anyway, forget it. That wasn’t this. That was dreams.”
Florian said, rather pitiably and as if entranced:
“Snakes. I do not like.” He began to shiver all over.
Strathdee said, “Nobody likes. Cheer up; it’s maybe the last of them.” La Chouie came forward and put an arm round Florian’s shoulder. She said to Strathdee—and really she looked in her distress uncommonly attractive:
“You’d better beat it, Colin. I’ll cope with this. You an’ me’ll talk another time. . . . You’ve been saying something to him . . .”
Strathdee stood irresolute; waves of compassion, waves of something stronger than compassion, went flooding and surging through him. La Chouie’s bare arm on Florian’s shoulder . . . Then he hardened his heart. Come on, Strathdee! he thought; either you’re in this or you aren’t; you’re one side or the other. He said shortly, “All right; put your baby to bed.” He went back to his Calderon.
But the measured Spanish cadences could not hold him; presently he threw down the book, switched off the verandah light and lay gazing out and up once more at the Cross and the Centaurs. Between him and their steely brilliance rose a gross and unpleasing vision; Poutin as he had seen him that morning; Poutin immense and prosperous, sprawling in his office chair; Poutin listening to Strathdee, hearing his proposals, taking them in, chuckling, hiccuping, bursting at last into a volcano of gigantic mirth.
Poutin persuaded, Poutin bellowing, “Ah, Sadille, Sadille! Voilà du rigolo! Mais oui! Mais oui! Celà s’arrange.” . . . Well, it was done now; and damn it, it was rightly done; Telemaque for ever! But what a life this is, thought Strathdee; you do a thing deliberately and the results depress you, you plan and you’re sorry for it, you win and you hate winning. Oh, Christ!
The vision of Poutin took itself away; in its place the stars were blotted out by the face of Cecilia, La Chouie; disappointed, puzzled, worried, frightened, on the verge of tears . . .
Centaurs and Cross faded in due course; dawn rose on the first Sunday of the Carnival season. Such a day was normally a festival of St. Poutin, and on this occasion it was so quite memorably.
It began, so far as Poutin was concerned, on the previous day with a threatened strike at his rum factory. The Lassoux did not normally strike—perhaps because they did not normally work; if you felt like turning up at the factory, you did; if not, you sat about and chewed sugarcane. A declared abstention from labour for political purposes was no part of their ideas. But just recently there had filtered in some sort of backwash from the labour unrest that was shaking the whole Caribbean; there must have been some returned emigrant who had been listening to Bustamente in Jamaica or Butler in Trinidad and had imbibed some novel notions. At all events, on the Saturday, Poutin’s men at the rum factory had demonstrated vigorously: they had refused to work and had demanded certain concessions. Poutin, driving down at leisure in an immense de Soto from his fleet, had not been seriously perturbed; he had met the trouble—as he met all troubles—with a distribution of rum, clothes and tobacco, and with the promise of a super-Carnival that would run for weeks. It worked; the disciple of Bustamente had protested that this was no good, but he had been shouted down; Poutin’s answer to his arguments was another barrel of rum—and he could go on with such answers indefinitely. The trouble, as he knew himself, was postponed, not settled; but at all events the baser sort of Larcadie were put in fine fettle for the first Carnival Sunday. Many who had nothing to do with Poutin’s industry participated in the nourishing dividend of Gouttes du Ciel. Vive Poutin! Vive les Travailleurs! Vive le Mardi Gras!
On the Sunday afternoon Florian had advertised a public meeting in the Centenary Market. This was ill-advised; it was not a day for public meetings in Larcadie in any case, and as a result of Strathdee’s confidential talk with Poutin it was even more unsuitable than Florian could have supposed. He discovered this when half-way through his speech—which was duller and less confident than usual—an appalling din was heard approaching along the Avenue Boufallon. Poutin’s cigar and cigarette-tin cars came to a halt outside the Centenary Market and the place was almost immediately overrun by a mob of violent lunatics to the number of about one thousand. They burst into it in three parallel columns each headed by drummers, buglers and performers on the long Lassou cow-horns; they thrust their way through the audience like bulldozers, upsetting benches and starting free fights in every direction. Many of them were in fancy dress; they appeared as bats, devils, pirates, Red Indians, wild-men-of-the-woods; they danced continuously with a vigour and agility which only those who have seen a Carnival procession in Lassou could credit. Florian, cut off in mid-stream, stood half furious, half frightened; his supporters on the platform simply vanished. Their places were promptly filled, however, by a couple of grotesques, one of whom was evidently Florian and the other—quite disgracefully and indecently—La Chouie; at these howling maniacs the mob proceeded to discharge in frolic anything throwable. There was always a useful collection of debris lying in and about the Centenary Market: rotten fruit and decaying vegetables, old banana-stalks and dog-ends of sugar-cane began to fly through the thickening air. An over-ripe papaya burst just above Florian’s head with the effect of a grenade, spattering him lavishly; the object that was so abominably La Chouie came capering up to him doing a sort of can-can. He stood a minute irresolute fingering the big revolver in his belt and wondering what to do; but there was nothing to do. Boufallon the Liberator himself could have done nothing—except bolt. Florian, rather white about the gills, put down his head and ran for it by the back entrance. . . . He arrived presently at the Zirque, shouting for a bath. This was about five p.m.
The business of beating up the Centenary Market and dancing it out there occupied Poutin’s brigade for some little time. Once he starts dancing, your Lassoux simply cannot stop; he will go on with it tirelessly by day and by night, expending thereon an amount of energy which he would never dream of devoting to anything so banal as work. Whoever was leading him at the Centenary Market—and there seems no doubt that some capable person was leading—made allowance for this: the revelry continued there for about an hour. At the end of that time, however, when the madhouse was just warming up, the cigarette-tin car threw on all its lights and all its several sirens; as at some word of command, spoken or unspoken, there was a concerted move out of and away from the Market. Someone, somewhere, bawled suddenly “A bas les Mozzes!”; someone else took it up; then ten were shouting it, then fifty, then a hundred. Few troubled about its meaning; enough that, accentuated in a certain manner, it fitted well with the drum-beats and the dancing-steps. In a delirium of enjoyment and gathering fresh adherents at every lane and byway, the entire rout headed slowly for the Zirque.
They arrived there just as dinner was ending and Antofrino’s clientèle were repairing to their coffee in the downstairs verandah. The more nervous of these—or the more experienced—recognising the uproar when it was still some distance off, abandoned their refreshment and fled hastily to their rooms; others—including Florian, Strathdee and La Chouie—held their ground. Once Poutin’s car drew up at the gate there was little time for argument one way or another; his shock-troops came racing up the steep drive like a battering-ram; the first of them, monstrous with drum and bugle, were up the verandah steps before anyone had time to think even once; before anyone could think twice, two or three hundred of them were dancing round and round the dining-room—on, under and over the tables. Even Strathdee—who had some reason to expect it—was taken aback; the hellish noise, the surge of black faces—and very unpleasant faces some of them—the leaping, gesticulating bodies, the grotesque and frequently hideous costumes, the whole suggestion of brute strength and fury let loose, would have daunted a bigger and a bolder man. Florian saw a mill-race of faces full of menace and hate, open, roaring mouths, discoloured teeth; he stood in a reek of sweat and rum and primeval Lassou. The drums crashed, the bugles howled, and out of those faces came—they had got into it now and it had the effect of a well-drilled college yell—one steady roar of “A bas les Mozzes! A bas les Mozzes!” (It might just as well, by this time, have been anything; but Florian was not to know that.) He stood again irresolute; then he found Strathdee on one side of him and La Chouie on the other. Strathdee said, with the hiss of a snake—yes, of a snake—“Beat it, you fool; quick! They’re after you.” La Chouie said, “No, Florian; stay!” but he was half-way up the stairs before she had finished. La Chouie folded her arms and backed up against a pillar; Strathdee put one arm round her and the other round the pillar, and held on while the wave hit them. The wave broke, the pillar stood. La Chouie said with a sob in her voice, “Oh gee, Colin, oh gee!” and Strathdee said, “I told you he’d let you down. You see?” She said, “What is it all, Colin? I don’t get this”; and he, “You’ve lost, sister, that’s what it is; you’ve lost.” He had to shout in her ear; she may have heard him or she may not. “A bas les Mozzes! A bas les Mozzes!” Rub-dub. Rub-dub. “A bas les Mozz‘.” She said, “Where’s Florian?” and Strathdee, “In his bed. Or under it. I told you.” A fresh wave came in like an avalanche, nearly tearing them asunder. “A bas les Mozz’! A bas les Mozz’,” and a cowhorn like the last trump. Strathdee yelled in her ear, “Stairs! Come on! We’ll make it.” Turning himself into a battering-ram he cut through the necessary few yards, pulling La Chouie after him. Still pulling her, he reached his own verandah; she tumbled into his long chair and put her face in her hands. Downstairs the riot climaxed in pandemonium.
But the Zirque was not the Centenary Market; it was no place for dancing—not real dancing. Poutin’s battalions—and the horde of friends they had picked up on the way—poured like a river through the dining-room, poured out through the kitchen and the side verandahs, poured back down the drive. For a time, viewed from Strathdee’s verandah, it was like a column of ants, some going, some coming, all in intricate motion like the ripple of a snake. But perhaps Poutin’s Chief of Staff and Brigade Major was aware that Antofrino was telephoning frantically for the Garde; telephoning in Larcadie took time, there was no hurry, but—better be going. The cigarette-tin car opened up again with its lights and sirens; it began very slowly to move away; like a rushing river the rabble, dancing indomitably, followed in its wake. The uproar dwindled; there fell something that was almost like silence.
La Chouie took her head from her hands. She said:
“Well . . . I reckon that’s that.”
Strathdee said, “Yes,” and instantly regretted it. For it seemed, as he spoke, that the diminuendo was changed to a crescendo and at the same time a light like the rising moon began to play on the facade of the Zirque. Looking out, he saw the rum-bottle car approaching from the opposite direction; almost in a matter of minutes the scene was repeating itself—the mob charging up the drive, the drums, the bugles, the cow-horns, “A bas les Mozz’!” This time, however, they did not come in; they lined up on the gravel sweep outside the front door; a sea of upturned faces, a roar of—yes, you would have said it—of hate and fury. My God! thought Strathdee, if this was real! And then, his heart leaping, It is real—partly. He wondered if Florian was peering fearfully from his verandah; perhaps he was, for a couple of empty rum bottles came crashing into it like bombs. (Damnation! thought Strathdee, that wasn’t in the contract.) Then the rum-bottle car blew its siren and like a wall collapsing, like an avalanche going down a mountainside, the roaring mass below fell down the slope into the road. The car moved off and the din with it; this time there was—or you could say that there was—silence. Strathdee thought, I said “Frighten him” . . . If it hasn’t . . . My God, it even frightened me. . . .
La Chouie had sat through this second invasion with her chin cupped in her hands; now she got up slowly, smoothed out her skirt, patted her hair. Her face was grim. Strathdee said:
“Where are you going?”
La Chouie said, in a voice that was rather more alarming than all Poutin’s demonstration:
“That boy Florian. I wanna word with him.”
“I wouldn’t,” said Strathdee mildly. “He’s had about enough to go on with.”
“He’s got a bit more coming to him,” said La Chouie. “He gets a chance to do something and what does he do? He runs under his bed. Well! . . .” She swung out through Strathdee’s bedroom.
Strathdee sat down and lit a cigar; he felt he deserved it. It was a six-incher and he smoked it slowly; but he had thrown the stump over the verandah long before the voices next door—or rather, the voice next door—had reluctantly died away.
That same humorist who thought of “Asylum Island” had a name also for its inhabitants, the Lassoux: he called them the “Rum-Drum Indians.” Give them a sufficiency of rums and drums, he said, and there was no knowing where they would stop. And no doubt it is an easier thing at times to cast on your hounds, to bait them and hie them forward, than to call them off half-satisfied. Hence no doubt the ensuing twenty-four hours now known in Lassou—and likely to be long known—as Lundi Rouge.
It will be remembered that at the Centenary Market demonstration the cigarette-tin car which played such a distinguished part in the subsequent proceedings was accompanied by the cigar-car—which played no part in them at all. Among the cigar-car’s crew and followers—not less numerous or excitable than those of the cigarette-tin or the rum-bottle—this rankled. The car itself was driven by one of the more disgruntled and disaffected of Poutin’s employees, a negro called Pelée, who had seen a bit of life overseas. It seemed to Pelée that he should have been given a leading part in the Sunday’s programme; whereas he had been fobbed off on what was quite certainly the third-best car. The cigar-car was in fact a re-build from a previous year; Poutin had scamped it and it was the compeer of the other two neither in appearance nor equipment. It had been told off to play second fiddle at the Centenary Market and then go home to the rum factory. A quantity of the Drops of Heaven there awaited all hands; but what are Drops of Heaven to a disappointed artist? An insult. So at least thought Totu Pelée.
For some time Pelée drove the cigar-car up and down the Grande Rue and the Avenue Boufallon, and round and round the Place de la Liberté; in the course of this some five or six hundred stragglers—desirous only of an all-night non-stop dansant and seeing their opportunity—added themselves to the original posse of the car. But presently Pelée turned the snout of his cigar towards the harbour, and somewhere in the adjacent slums the équippe was joined by two other Carnival processions. Not all Carnival processions in Larcadie were as joyous and innocent as the tourists, viewing them from the verandahs of the Zirque or the Café Miramar, were persuaded to believe; there were some which it was advisable not to encounter for they were a pretty tough lot. Such were these which now attached themselves to the lengthening tail of Pelée. They were dressed in the costume known to Lassou Carnivals as “Wild Indians”—such Indians as may indeed be wild but are unknown to ethnological students. Their distinguishing equipment consisted of heavy orange-wood clubs and—this was prohibited by the Police by-laws and was therefore inevitable—flaming torches of fibre soaked in tar.
From flaming torches to a bonfire of old boxes and rubbish on the jetty is no great distance; from one bonfire to another is a lesser distance still. To rum and drum add the intoxicating madness of fire and what have you? In Larcadie that Sunday night you had a riot.
The Customs Warehouse at the harbour went up just after midnight; there was, as usual, very little in it, and as a conflagration it was disappointing. Two small shops in an alleyway behind the Cathedral followed it—but that was probably an accident. But the Magazin of the Mulâtre Jean Sordou—he who had supplied Mrs. Bosomworth with those disappointing cannas—was no accident and this time it was a rewarding spectacle. There was a fire brigade in Larcadie; it was called and some of it came. But it was badly hampered in its movements by the fact that the street was blocked by a dancing, howling mob of maniacs and by the three enormous Carnival cars—for the cigarette-tin and rum-bottle, their appetites so far only whetted, had now joined the main body of the rebels. Mercifully M. Sordou’s Magazin was a solitary building disconnected from its neighbours, but it burned beautifully till dawn. After its roof fell in the three cars trundled back to the rum factory with a now greatly augmented assortment of revellers—half the population of Larcadie; out came the Gouttes du Ciel; and presently—whether by accident or design of Pelée—up went one of Poutin’s rum godowns. That was a blaze—though marred unfortunately by the encroaching daylight. It put the seal on an enjoyable night—and on the determination of the celebrants not to be stopped by anything so negligible as day. The bright sun, swinging up out of the ocean, shone upon a Larcadie which was now quite distinctly out of hand.
Which of Telemaque’s adherents first gave the thing a political twist will never be known; it was thought to have been the Chief of Police himself, but it may equally well have been the General commanding the Garrison (three hundred) or the Marshal of the Air Force (sixty-seven). Or it may have come from quite a different set of people altogether—those at the Tête Cassée. At all events, as the morning wore on, the prowling bands began to desist from dancing, to adopt more military formations and to parade the main streets with increasingly political cries. “A bas les Mozzes” which had served so well during the hours of darkness gave place to a more familiar strain—“A bas les Mulâtres.” As variants one heard “Vive les Nègres” and of course “Vive la Liberté!”—till some genius discovered that “Te-le-maque!” was a far better war cry than either of them and, with a slight change of the rhythm, could be made to fit very well into the beat of the Carnival drums. Strathdee, venturing down as far as the edge of the Place de la Liberté, heard the name of his protégé, like the clamour of the Earl of Moray, go sounding through the town; he went home satisfied. Neither Florian nor La Chouie ventured even as far as the downstairs of the Zirque until lunchtime; perhaps Florian was so relieved at the apparent cessation of snakes about his person that he did not greatly care.
The detailed history of Lundi Rouge need not detain us; both Le Quotidien and Le Mardi, though from differing political angles, gave it a very full account; their files may be consulted. While hardly amounting to a Revolution—nobody was actually killed—it was a good rousing knockabout Lassou day. One or two prominent Mulâtres were caught and lightly beaten; one or two Mulatto shops looted; the office of Le Mardi was somewhat disarranged; and a Mulâtresse of doubtful reputation was chased into Bosomworth’s Magazin. For a time it was a toss-up which way the temper of the crowds would go; but by early afternoon—perhaps still under the Carnival spirit—they were clearly setting towards good humour and goodwill. An immense company marched up the hill to Les Fleuris and demonstrated as well as the cramped nature of the premises would permit. Telemaque came out and goggled at them from the verandah; Celeste, in her element, threw kisses and nosegays; but the hit of the day was scored by Maman who had hastily attired herself in the fullest possible mourning complete with black ostrich plumes—in which attire, statuesque as La Patrie and maternal as the everlasting goddess of Earth, she more or less stole the show. . . . A second mob—still under the influence of Carnival—accorded a similar ovation to Poutin, who distributed ten thousand cigarettes of a quality he kept for the purpose. Yet a third body, for reasons obscure to everybody except Bosomworth, serenaded the British Consulate, acclaiming Bosomworth’s appearance with cheers which might almost have been heard—as they certainly should have been heard—in Whitehall. His Rosa—who had no idea whatever that anything unusual was afoot—found her car almost bodily carried along by a roaring multitude of admirers; she sat placidly with her hands in her lap and when Bosomworth fought his way to her side, asked him what it was all about. . . . And at one point or another, no doubt, the members of the Council of Affairs looked upon the events and made up their minds about Wednesday.
At the Zirque Antofrino had at last established telephone communication with the Garde Headquarters; about half a platoon, armed with rifles which might or might not be supplied with ammunition, were lying about under the cabbage-palms playing cards and smoking. That they did well not to excite themselves was confirmed by the fact that, throughout the long day, nobody came near the Zirque at all—or at any rate no nearer than the earth-shaking roar of the demonstration heading for Les Fleuris. (“Te-le-maque! Te-le-maque!”) La Chouie was puzzled; Florian, when he stopped biting his nails and thinking about airports, was puzzled; even Strathdee was a little surprised.
The three met en passant in the verandah after lunch, with polite but distant bows. La Chouie looked grim, Florian hare-eyed and distrait. La Chouie said:
“Well, Colin, when do we see the boys around here again?”
“Never. Or let’s hope so, anyway.”
“Hope? Howzat?”
“Because you’re a back number already—that’s how. You know what happens to back numbers in this place. If they come again they’ll come for you.”
Florian said, with some bravado, “So what? On Wednesday the Council of Affairs——” And Strathdee, fixing him with his little black eyes like boot-buttons:
“I wouldn’t wait till Wednesday if I were you.”
“Nonsense! Me, I do not run. I stay.”
“Death or glory,” said Strathdee admiringly. “That’s the stuff. Death or glory. Glory or——”
Florian stamped off upstairs—but a shade paler.
Night fell. Even in Larcadie it would have been called noisy—anywhere else on earth it would have been pandemoniac; but after the events of Sunday it seemed peaceful and quiet. At the Zirque everybody went to bed early, including Strathdee and Florian. Florian may or may not have slept; Strathdee certainly did. He was awakened somewhere in the region of two by a powerful torch blazing in his face. A voice so hoarse as to be unfamiliar said:
“Mister Stra’dee! Mister Stra’dee!”
Strathdee—you will remember that he dispensed with pyjamas—reached hastily for a dressing-gown. The torch was lowered and he was relieved to see that his visitor was not La Chouie but Florian. He said crossly:
“And what the hell’s up with you now?”
“Please come to my room. Please.”
“Snakes?”
“No. Not snakes. Please come.”
Strathdee, with the memory of that clix still fresh in his mind, slipped his feet into shoes, picked up his cane and followed into Florian’s bedroom. As before, it reeked and blazed. Wrinkling his nose he said:
“Well, what is it?”
“Will you look in the verandah, please.”
The verandah lights were also fully on; there was nothing in the verandah but a jug of orange juice and a table littered with papers. He saw the title of one of them—ready printed—”Installation du Consul Florian Malmaison. Règlement des——” He said over his shoulder:
“Damnation, man; what is it?”
“You see nothing? There is nobody there?”
“No.”
Florian came and stood in the verandah doorway, peering timidly.
“Mister Stra’dee, there was a man in my room.”
“A man? What kind of a man?”
“A very bad man.”
“How do you know?”
Florian said, his English failing him as usual under emotion—and he was very much under emotion—
“Mister Stra’dee, he come to my bed. He look at me. His face it is very bad.”
“Uh?”
“It is—I think he is a leper. It—his face—it is holes. Mister Stra’dee, he looks at me. Close. He has the scarlet eyes.”
A tiny finger of ice traced its way down Strathdee’s spine, but he said brusquely:
“Scarlet eyes? You’ve been dreaming. How could there be a man with scarlet eyes——”
“I do not know. But I do not dream. I do not sleep. Now I never sleep. The man he has come. Close. I smell him; it is very bad. I think perhaps he is dead. . . . And Mister Stra’dee!”
“Yes?”
“There is something else in the room.”
“My God!” said Strathdee, shuddering despite himself, “first it’s snakes. Then it’s dead lepers with scarlet eyes. And still you have to have something else. And what might that be?”
Florian’s voice broke, it ran up the scale glissando.
“I do not know. I do not know. I do not know! . . . I think it’s a bat. It is not a bat. It goes round and round. I do not see. It is there. Something.”
The icy finger caressed Strathdee’s spine again. He said:
“And what do you expect me to do about it?”
Florian looked at him rather pitiably; he rested one hand on the lintel of the door, his chest went up and down, he seemed ready to burst into tears.
“You have ever seen such things?”
“Thank God, no!”
“Then what am I to do?”
Strathdee leant back against the opposite side of the door; his eyes were very small and black and bright. In the harsh light he saw the muscles in Florian’s cheeks beneath the lower eyelids twitching up and down. He thought, he’s pretty nearly through; I don’t blame him. There was quite a little silence; it was Florian who broke it.
“Mister Stra’dee! You think these things are real?”
“If you saw them. If you weren’t dreaming.”
“Me, I do not dream. If they are real . . . Do you think they will come again?”
Strathdee gave him a hard look; his mouth shut like a trap.
“Yes. And worse.”
“Mister Stra’dee. You said . . . you said . . . ‘they’ve got ways’ . . .”
I did, thought Strathdee, and God bless Bozzy for the useful phrase. And now I think you’re just about ripe for it. Here goes. He said, still staring at Florian under the unmerciful electric light:
“And they have too. . . . Look here, I’ll tell you something. If you go on the way you’re going, you’ll not leave this island alive.” (And that’s no lie, he thought; you’ll die of funk.) “Now listen. I want you out of this. Pronto. I’m not doing this out of kindness——”
Florian said eagerly—too eagerly—
“I have money.”
“God blast your money. If you say another word about money to me, I’ll walk out and leave you to it, and if scarlet lepers come out of their graves and eat you up, so much the bloody better!”
Florian moistened his lips. “Go on . . . please.”
“That’s better. Now listen. I don’t care what you do. I don’t care what becomes of you. Not one damn. But—I want you away; right away; out of the road. Now, you’ve lost. You’re up the spout. They’re out to get you—you can see that for yourself. And I’ll tell you this: I, and I alone, can get you out of this island alive.”
The shot was fired; Strathdee leant back and folded his arms; thought suddenly of Cecilia; unthought her. Emotions chased themselves over Florian’s face; rage, a remnant of hope, humiliated pride, dislike of Strathdee, dislike of himself and—funk, funk, funk. In the end the funk won. He said, with an enormous chest-heaving sigh:
“Bueño! . . . Fix it.”
Strathdee replied equably, in the langue internationale:
“O.K.”
After Red Monday, Black—or at any rate Grey—Tuesday; there was inevitably a reaction all round.
The mood of Larcadie was torpid; there was almost a coma, it was dead as the ashes of Sordou’s magazin and Poutin’s godown. Strathdee felt he too would have enjoyed a little torpidity; on the contrary he must be up and doing particularly early and with particular vigour. The iron of Florian’s surrender must be struck while it was hot; he too would have reactions—especially if La Chouie could get at him. Because after all, what had scared him away; what did it amount to? A few hours of Carnival madness which were now over and forgotten; a few snakes; a nightmare. Dressing in the clear sane light of Tuesday’s dawn, with the sun shooting gold arrows along the placid Caribbean Sea, Strathdee had to tell himself that there could have been nothing more; to think otherwise was Asylum Island indeed. A brood of snakes must have hatched somewhere about the Zirque—of the black-and-green kind; the clix must have been fortuitous or at the most, lucky. Florian’s unsavoury and scarlet-eyed visitor must have been as much his own nerves as the thing that flew round his room and wasn’t a bat. I dare not, thought Strathdee, believe otherwise—even though, in my heart. . . . No, no—these were the hallucinations of midnight, not morning—and so Florian would in all probability see them. And it was otherwise desirable to get Florian out of the island as quickly as possible; tomorrow the Council of Affairs would meet and, despite all that had happened, one could not say with exact confidence just how that would go. Two of its members had been bosom cronies of the late lamented Le Zouz; his party was strong on it; there were at least two unpredictable wobblers who had been—according to Bosomworth and La Chouie—squared. There would be a lot of money going—endless money. Yes, it was quite on the cards that the Council of Affairs might even yet put in Florian; in which case there would have to be a lot more trouble, real Revolution, bloodshed, God knew all what. There was no rest therefore for the weary; the iron must be hammered and hammered; the pressure must not slacken. Not yet.
Strathdee was out in his car driving through the lovely morning before seven o’clock; thank God, he thought, this is a country where people get up early; you can start with the sun. He called—in that order—on the Air Marshal, the Chief of Police and the now inevitable Poutin. The Air Marshal had the curious name of Hompou; he was one of the stupidest negroes in the island and owed his high office less to his knowledge of flying than to the fact that he was a second cousin of Hippolyte. It took quite a long time to make him understand that one of the Air Force’s two de Havillands must be ready to fly that afternoon over the short sea miles to South America. The Chief of Police was—as ever—more mentally alert; it was also possible to make him understand more readily that there was money in it. He undertook to co-operate heartily. Poutin of course was easy; he rolled about in his chair—he was having coffee and figues on his verandah—and said, “Ah, mon Dieu, Sadille! Toujours en farceur; toujours sur la scène!” He gave Strathdee a hundred cigars and just stopped short of embracing him.
Strathdee made such good progress with his arrangements and had gained such a flying start that he arrived back at the Zirque as Florian was putting the final touches to his elaborate morning toilet. He had no compunction now in barging straight into Florian’s room; nor in coming straight to the point when he got there.
“Good morning, Monsieur Florian! All set. You’ll take off at two o’clock.”
Florian was dabbing his face with an aromatic aftershave lotion; he looked up sulkily. Strathdee saw that his misgivings had been justified.
“I do not think I should go so soon.”
Strathdee whistled. “You don’t?”
“No. Tomorrow the Council will meet. I should wait for that.”
“You won’t get any good out of that.”
“That is to be seen. What if they elect me Consul?”
“They won’t.”
“She”—he nodded in the direction of Room Twenty-six—”she says they will.”
Strathdee shrugged amiably. “Well—make up your mind one way or another. You trust me or you trust her. I know this island; she doesn’t. But I can tell you one thing. They’ve elected a good many odd Consuls in Lassou but they’ve never yet elected a corpse.”
“A—how?”
“A corpse. They won’t elect you tomorrow because by this time tomorrow you’ll be dead.”
Florian was obviously shaken; but his mouth set obstinately.
“I should stay.”
Strathdee shrugged again. “All right . . . Come into the verandah for a minute.” His will prevailed; Florian followed him. Strathdee pointed to the detachment of the Garde still sprawling under the cabbage palms, with their rifles across their knees.
“You see these chaps? What d’you think they’re there for?”
The Garde was there of course because it was comfortable and because the Commandant had been too preoccupied—or too lazy—to recall them; but to Florian that was not necessarily obvious. To Strathdee’s delight one of the unkempt figures caught sight of them on the verandah; grinning pleasantly, he raised his rifle and took a jesting sight on Florian’s head. It was unpremeditated but effective; Florian stepped back, rather paler.
“I am—I am a prisoner?”
“Depends,” said Strathdee. “They’ve probably been told to shoot at sight, but they’re damned slow. We could probably dodge them. But—there’s others. I’ve seen them about. Not so easy.”
“You think——”
“You can please yourself. But I’ll just remind you of one thing. Between today and tomorrow there’s tonight. You know what last night was like.”
“It was—it was une crise de nerfs. I am sure of it.”
“I wish I was. . . . All right. Have it your own way. . . . In that case I’d better countermand that plane.”
He turned briskly towards the door; he was half-way to it when Florian called him back.
“Perhaps it would be wiser—if they elect, I could come back.”
Strathdee halted. “It’d be wiser all right . . . Of course you could come back. Meantime”—his voice hardened—“once and for all, Florian, is it on or off?”
“Well . . . on.”
“O.K. Then we’re all set. There’s just one thing.” He jerked his head towards Room Twenty-six where La Chouie could be heard singing softly to herself. “You’ll have to fix up—her.”
Florian—understandably—blanched. “It will be difficult.”
“You’re telling me!”
“What am I to say?”
“Whatever you think fit. That’s your funeral. . . . But tell her to be at the airfield some time between one and two. She’ll find Poutin’s car waiting down below. That’s fixed. You’ll travel in mine.”
“Why that?”
“Because if you don’t,” said Strathdee firmly, “you’ll never see the airfield at all. That’s why.” He moved resolutely to the door and turned with his hand on the knob.
“You’ll settle with La Señora?”
Florian grunted.
“You won’t funk it?”
“I do not funk, me! She will do as she is told.”
“I hope so,” said Strathdee, “for your sake.” He went out.
The journey of the Consul-candidate Florian Malmaison to the airfield of Larcadie was as dramatic as that of any in the long list of distinguished persons bolting from Lassou. At half-past one he lunched briefly in his room where Strathdee—who had been out all the forenoon on business—insisted on serving him with his own hands. (“I’m not letting anybody get at your food, my lad—not now.”) To Florian’s unspoken question he said briefly, “They’re about. We’ll make it. With luck.” Florian gobbled up his cold meat and salad and his banana fritters; the condemned man, thought Strathdee, made a hearty meal. He said, “You’ve fixed—her?” and Florian replied, “Yes, yes, it is fixed. She is gone.” Strathdee said, “Trouble?” and Florian feelingly, “Oh, my God!” Presently he said, “My luggage?” and Strathdee told him to take something in his hand; “You’ll have to leave the rest; what d’you think this is—Pan-American Airways?” Florian—he was in the black breeches and grey silk shirt, very imposing—picked up a small suitcase. Strathdee said, “Now for it. Courage!” He led the way—on tiptoe.
There were two staircases in the Zirque—the main one for the guests, and a corkscrew affair at the back for the servants; Strathdee led down the latter. Half-way down it was a little landing; on this there stood smiling a negro Sous-officier of the Lassou Police. He came forward, still smiling, and said to Florian, “Pardon, Monsieur, I have here a warrant for your arrest.” Strathdee said, in a whisper and without checking his stride, “A hundred dollars. Quick!” And as Florian fumbled with the notes, “American, man; American.” The Sous-officier saluted and stepped back; Strathdee, pelting on down the stairs, thought What fun this would be if it was real; well, the dollars were real, anyway. Outside the little doorway to the Bar his car was standing; he pushed Florian into the back, told him to sit on the floor, started his engine with a roar and made a spectacular descent of the Zirque’s two hairpins. Florian, crouching on the floor and hurled from side to side, heard a commotion, shouts, a cry of “Halte!” a couple of shots; then the car took the gateway turn on two wheels with such force that he banged his head stunningly on the door. But he heard Strathdee say, over his shoulder, “I told you they were slow. We’ve done them. Now, for God’s sake keep down; I’m going to drive.” It was nine minutes to two.
From the Zirque to the airfield was a very short mile; but in that mile quite a number of things happened; it was a pity, thought Strathdee, that Florian could not really see them. In the first place the traffic constable at the crossroads made a determined—or you would have said it was a determined—effort to stop them; Strathdee, to add a little realism, put in a racing turn and went round him; he hit the Leon Bras Fountain, but not to matter. There followed a fairly open piece of road; but in the narrow gut of the Sugar-Cane Bazaar they were met by what seemed to Florian, who could judge only by sounds, a mob of at least ten thousand persons. Some of them were shouting “Te-le-maque!” and some “A bas les Mozzes!” and some of them items of a more personal nature. Strathdee said, again over his shoulder, “Look out! We’ll have to go round,” and swung his car into the appalling rutted and potholed byways he had already tested out that morning. The car lurched and bumped and leapt and staggered; Florian was tossed up and down like a cork till he was almost sick. At several points a person or persons rushed out shrieking abuse and hurling missiles that were now familiar—banana stubs, sugar cane, cabbage roots; but they all seemed to go wide. Left turn, then left again, and they were back in the main road, apparently behind the mob in the Bazaar. Florian raised himself cautiously to peer over Strathdee’s shoulder but went down again much more quickly, for from the gateway of a villa there stepped out a nicely-dressed young man who fired six revolver shots straight at the car; the young man was a nephew of Poutin’s and the cartridges he used were blanks, but Florian was not to know that, he could only thank God that somehow or other the young man had missed. They came to the airfield buildings baking in the sunshine, and Strathdee pulled up with a screech of brakes; Florian was out of the car before him and another young man (it was a natural son of Poutin’s this time—one of all too many) got up from behind a bush twenty yards away and aimed another revolver at his head. He heard Strathdee yelling, “Run, you fool! Run for it!” and threw himself at the open doorway of the airport waiting-room: bang! bang! bang!—miss, miss, miss—and somehow he was through the building and out upon the tarmac, and there was the de Havilland in front of him with its airscrew revolving gently and the uniformed pilot in the cockpit smoking a cigarette. Home!
Florian had been told to run and he certainly ran; he was making a straight dash for the plane when Strathdee grabbed his arm and pulled him to a standstill.
“Hold on! Where’s that damned woman?”
Florian said, gasping for breath, his chest going up and down:
“She is not here?”
“You can see that for yourself, blast you!” And indeed there was nobody there, and nothing; only the tarmac hot in the sun and the airfield shimmering; no Chouie; no Poutin’s car; only the plane and the pilot and Florian and Strathdee.
“God damn and blast it!” said Strathdee in a fury. “This has bitched everything. Where is the woman?” He turned suddenly on Florian. “You—you did tell her?”
“Yes. Yes. I have said. She has heard.” But his voice rang false and his face was tell-tale.
“You damned skunk!” said Strathdee. “So you funked it after all. I might have known.” (But I funked her myself, he thought, I funked her myself; it serves me right.) His grip on Florian tightened. “All right, my boy; then you don’t go either.”
Florian’s free hand went to the big, ivory-handled revolver in his belt; there is no knowing what might have happened, but in that moment there burst upon their ears, above the noise of the aircraft’s engines which were revving up, a sound Strathdee had expected but Florian had not—the roar of an angry mob approaching down the road from the town. Round the corner of the airport buildings they could be seen all too clearly; there were a great many of them and they were coming, and they were coming fast. Strathdee had a moment’s irresolution and it was his undoing; Florian hit him smartly on the side of the head, wrenched himself free and dashed for the de Havilland; with the leap of an athlete he was into it. The pilot had had his orders, he had had them again and again—take off immediately. He had not been prepared for those interesting antics on the tarmac but it was not his business to consider them; for aught he knew they might all be part of the schedule. He spun round his aircraft and taxied away down the shining runway; his engines roared into life; he was up; he was airborne; he was off; he was gone. Away over the cactus hedge, away over the fields of Poutin’s sugar cane; away and away and away.
Strathdee stood alone—very much alone—and impotently gaping; perhaps the thought crossed his mind that it was almost precisely four weeks since he had stood there—but not alone—and watched another aircraft take off on that selfsame course. Then, with the oath of his life, he walked back through the airfield building and confronted a crowd of grinning, sweating and strong-smelling Lassoux under the leadership of Pelée, the cigarette-tin driver, and the foreman of Poutin’s rum factory, who were certainly expecting—as they certainly deserved—largesse.
Florian’s escape had gone with such a bang that Strathdee, glancing at his watch as he drove slowly back through the gateway of the Zirque and up the hairpins, was astonished to see that it still lacked eighteen minutes of three; in so short an interval can victories be won and situations fundamentally changed. But at the Zirque there was no change: the Garde still lay about under the cabbage-palms as idly as ever—though the Sous-officier was going round apparently distributing small sums of money. Well, thought Strathdee, they’ve earned it, they played their little part very nicely; if the whole thing has gone to hell, it isn’t their fault. Then, with first a leap and then a drop of his heart, he remarked one new feature in the landscape: Poutin’s Cadillac was parked under a tree, its driver asleep as usual in the back seat. If the Cadillac had returned, La Chouie could not in all probability be very far away; I’ll bet a hundred dollars, thought Strathdee, she’s sitting up in my verandah. He went slowly up the staircase and—she was. She was wearing the costume of her first arrival at the airport; her short skirt and the deep-seated chair showed off her admirable legs; her brown tricorne hat lay on the floor by her side. She looked most desirably miserable.
Strathdee said, “Well?”
“Well?”
“Your boy friend’s skedaddled.”
“Yep . . . I guessed he had.”
“Too bad.”
“Oh, shucks! I must be losing my grip. Fancy being double-crossed by that. Me! Give me a cigarette, Colin. And don’t say again you told me; we’ll take that bit as read.”
Strathdee gave her a cigarette and a light. He said, “Have some rum.”
“O.K.” He poured two glasses and they drank morosely. She said, with a gallant attempt at jauntiness:
“Well? When do I face the firing party?”
“Why didn’t you come to the airfield? As you were told.”
She gaped at him in obviously genuine surprise. “I was told?”
“You were to go to the airfield in Poutin’s car and wait for us.”
“I was, was I? And who thought that bit up?”
“I did.”
“Bully for you. But I reckon the boy friend thought different. He sent me out in Poutin’s car all right. But I was to go and see two of these guys on the Council. And then I had a stack of cypher telegrams to get off at the Post Office. And of course that hick nigger Postmaster was asleep. And then he wouldn’t send them. Not till I paid him. . . . I was hours.”
“Like he meant you to be.”
“Like he meant me to be.”
“And he’s got away, too. Hell! What was in the telegrams?”
“Oh, nothing much. Just that the Council was meeting tomorrow and he was going to be elected. And he would have been, too.”
“Like hell he would.”
“He would, Colin. They were squared. I had them fixed.” But she said, with a weariness that went to his heart, “Oh well, it don’t matter now. . . . And see here, Colin, it’s no use pretending you weren’t in on all this.”
“In on all what?”
“Getting me sent all round the town doing chores and getting me left behind. I suppose that was the bargain he made—if he got away, they could have me.”
Strathdee swore bitterly. “If you think I wanted you kept on in this island another hour——”
She laughed at last. “My, my! Like that, is it? Well, here I am anyway; what you goin’ to do with me? Is Little Black Jumbo goin’ to have me shot or deported or is it life or fifteen years or what?”
Strathdee finished his rum. He said flatly:
“I’m damned if I know. What to do with you, I mean. I’m damned if I know.”
“What would you like to do?”
“That isn’t the point.”
“Why not, Colin? It’s you and me. It’s Lassou. If you’re not goin’ to hand me over to the firing party . . . Even if you are, couldn’t we have an evening together first? We could take in a movie; it’s Laurel——”
Strathdee said savagely:
“It’s all very well to laugh——”
“Who’s laughing?”
“You are. . . . Look here, Cecilia, I’ll tell you what’s going to happen to you. There’s another de Havilland in the Lassou Air Force and it’s taking you back to San Hieronimo tomorrow morning.”
She said thoughtfully, “We’ll have to talk about that. . . . So you weren’t in it, Colin? This morning, I mean.”
“I’ve told you that already. I don’t work that way.”
“Then you’re different from most of the men I’ve dealt with. Oh, say! if I’d only had you to work with instead of that dumb Dago. I’m still a bit like a girl that’s been picked out of an automobile smash asking ‘What hit me?’ But I reckon it was you, really.”
“It was,” said Strathdee oracularly, “and it wasn’t.”
“More was than wasn’t. Though how you did it I just don’t see; I thought we had it taped.” She said again—and again Strathdee’s heart went out to the defeat in her voice—“Anyhow, it don’t matter now. Give me another cigarette; . . . Colin, was all that true that you told me. About that wife of yours.”
“What’s she got to do with it? Yes. It was.”
“All that bit about how you married her because you wanted money for your—business?”
“Yes. Of course. You can’t do business without money. Not even in Britain.”
“You sure can’t—not anywhere. That darn Postmaster soaked me two hundred and fifty cold this morning. It was the last I had.”
“It’s the last he’ll get, anyway.”
“We hope. . . . So you didn’t care about her?”
“About who?”
“What’s-her-name. Lucy.”
“Oh, Lucy. I won’t say I never did. But she soon stopped that. God! how she kept on at me.”
“Anyway, you don’t now?”
“How the hell would I be here if I did?”
La Chouie bit her finger. “And that’s all true?”
“Too true. True enough, anyway. Anyway, you needn’t talk about truth. How many lies have you told me about your marriage?”
She said unblushingly, “What was the latest instalment, honey?”
“You said you were divorced and then you said you weren’t, that he’d left you. And I don’t suppose that was true either.”
“Strictly speaking, it wasn’t. Strictly speaking, it was me left him. He—he wasn’t nice to me.”
“What way?”
“I’ll tell you when I know you a bit better. Ways I wouldn’t like to say.” Suddenly she flung away her cigarette. “Colin, be your age! How the hell can I go back to South America?”
There it was on the table between them: how the hell could she? Strathdee’s lip began to rub over his moustache.
“What would they do to you?”
“Oh, them. I don’t suppose they’d do anything much. Of course I’m just finished as far as they’re concerned. I’ve made a black over this business once for all. And I was so hopeful. . . . They’d just chuck me out. And then I’d have nothing to live on. And then——”
“Well? And then?”
“And then my Emilio would get after me. My God, Colin, the way that man wants me. It’s like nothing on earth.”
“I can understand it,” said Strathdee drily. “Well—looks like he’ll have to get you. Whom God has joined——”
“Colin!” She laid a hand on his arm; mechanically his other hand closed over it. “You’re not facing the facts. Look at here. I’m your prisoner. I surrender. I do any damn thing you say. But I’m your prisoner. You’ve got to do something with me. I don’t care what it is but you’ve got to do something. And get this once and for all, I’m not going back to South America. I’ll shoot myself first. I’ve carried poison for years. I’ll take it. Oh, gee, Colin”—and the tears welled up again in the big green eyes—“I’ve got my pride. I just couldn’t.”
Strathdee withdrew his hand. Shoot—no, he thought; poison—I wouldn’t wonder. I can see how it is with her. He said slowly, “Well, what do you suggest?” But I see it coming, he thought; and it came.
“What about the States, honey? You and me.”
Strathdee got up and went to the edge of the verandah, looking towards the sea. It was that odd hour when the set of the day seems to change, veering away from noon, settling towards evening and night. Like Strathdee the day stood balanced between alternatives. And as if within Strathdee some tide moved in sympathy with the earth’s rotation, he felt himself softening. Behind lay battle; ahead was evening, moonrise, and waves and rays of sentiment coming out of them to engulf Colin Strathdee. As usual. . . . He heard Cecilia saying behind him, still with that luring note of defeat:
“You’ve got to get me out of this place somehow, somewhere. Oh, honey, why not string along? You and me, we could go places. . . . You’ve got nobody that matters to you—that’s what I was getting at just now. I’ve got nobody that matters to me. . . . Colin, honey, it’s the hand of God . . . Or isn’t it?”
He turned and said—as he had had no intention of saying—
“I don’t know a soul in the States.”
“You said you’d been there once.”
“It wasn’t true.”
“Well, forget it. I know plenty. I’ll look after you. Colin!”
“Yes?”
“When two folks like you and me meet, they didn’t ought to lose each other again.”
Strathdee, watching the evening advance, feeling it advance all through his body, thought—That’s true. If she goes away from here I’ll never see her again. She’ll never come back to Lassou any more than Florian will; you can come back to a place you’ve been kicked out of, not to a place you’ve been laughed out of. Do I want never to see her again? I don’t. Like hell I don’t. She’s grown into me these last days. And it’s true I can’t leave her to it; I just can’t. It’s true she’s my prisoner and I’m responsible and I’ve got to do something about her. He said, with the most frightful half-heartedness:
“I couldn’t leave my work here. I couldn’t get away.”
“Oh, Colin, honey, we’d skipped that bit. Don’t go back to it.”
“It’s the God’s truth.”
“It isn’t. You’ve just got to say ‘Go’ and you’re off. Say ‘Go,’ Colin.”
“What the hell could we do in the States?”
“What the hell couldn’t we? I’ll show you. It’s Colin and Cecilia—and he asks me, what could we do? . . . Colin, could I give you a swell time or could I not?”
Strathdee came back from the verandah rail. “Maybe you could.” With a sense of falling over a precipice, he said, “But I don’t see how to do it. How are we to get out of this? I could try to fix up a plane-——”
“What’s wrong with Pan-American?”
“You couldn’t go Pan-American. They wouldn’t have you. Not after all this. . .. Have you an American passport?”
“Honey, I’ve got all kinds of passports under the sun. Blue ones and green ones and piebald and tartan. You’ll need a visa anyway.”
“I—I got one. Just the other day.”
“Oh-oh! So you weren’t so sure of yourself after all. Anyway, we’re all set. Oh, Colin, I’m so excited!”
“I’ve got to get a plane yet.”
“You should worry. . . . Colin, I’ll be a good girl to you; I swear I will. You and me’ll go places. Oh, Colin—it’ll be swell.”
“Swell,” said Strathdee. He stooped and kissed her lightly on the cheek; felt a sudden overwhelming urge to go further—much further; mastered it. He said, falling unconsciously into imitative Americanisms:
“I’d better get cracking. Right now. And you beat it out of this verandah before Antofrino comes after you. Go to your own room and get into bed and stay there . . . till I come back.”
He took a step away from the verandah and then he heard behind him a strangled something that might have been “Colin!” He looked round and Cecilia had sprung from her chair and was standing by the little table with her arms spread wide.
“Colin! Jus’ in case you don’t get back . . .”
Strathdee was but human. . . . He had imagined that La Chouie in one’s arms would be a pleasurable sensation; he saw now that he had not deceived himself.
But Strathdee did not go that evening to enquire about aeroplanes; he went instead to Fort Boufallon and climbed the old mossy stairs and sat on the crumbling ramparts where he had sat so often—and so happily. It was still February, the finest month in the Lassou year, that month when the elements and the earth made a Carnival that turned Poutin and all his works to a laughing-stock. To say that this particular evening was gold as honey, scented as a garden of flowers, quiet as sleep and kind as God must have meant to be—all that was to waste words upon an impossible task. There was something that came out of the evening—as it came so often out of the Lassou evening to Strathdee—that passed all words, that almost passed sensation, that killed thought, that annihilated time and life and trouble and happiness. If it was anything that could be humanly expressed at all, it was an enormous horizon-wide statement of the single word—peace.
Asylum Island? Yes, thought Strathdee as he had often thought before, but there is a word there which has two meanings. Madhouse—no doubt; but also—Refuge.
Wednesday morning at last; and the Council of Affairs meeting early, no doubt, in order to dispose of what must now be in the nature of a Hobson’s choice. . . . The Chief of Police, however, displayed no undue astonishment at Strathdee’s enquiries in regard to planes for the United States of America; there were several excellent reasons why Strathdee, taking the result of the election as now a foregone conclusion, should temporarily carry off the deserted but desirable Señora Branzada—if not to the U.S.A., then anywhere else with a reasonably well-found hotel. Long experience of Lassou had not encouraged the Chief of Police to search beyond the obvious motive or indeed the lowest; it was generally the right one. He said, however:
“It is droll, M. Sadille, that you come to me about this today.”
Strathdee said, “I astonish myself, Monsieur. How we spend our existences doing things we never intended!”
The Chief of Police said somewhat absently, “In effect!” He drew a little aeroplane on his blotting-paper and eyed Strathdee sideways. “Would you object, Monsieur, to a fellow-passenger?”
“Why should I?”
A jest on the subject of honeymoons quivered on the tip of the Chief of Police’s tongue, but he suppressed it; there was something in Strathdee’s face that did not accord with the idea of either honeymoons or jests. Though, of course, one never knew with these British—so cold, so reserved. He said:
“It will not then derange you to fall in with certain arrangements that one has already made?”
“If it will make things easier—au contraire. . . . Who is then this traveller?”
“It will make things greatly easier; it will save much time. . . . He is—he is a good friend of the late Minister of the Interior.”
And a good friend of you, no doubt, thought Strathdee. He asked:
“Do I know him?”
“I think not.”
“What’s his name?”
“He is a M. Gouzon.”
Strathdee shook his head. “I do not know the name. . . . And so he goes by plane to the United States. When?”
“This afternoon.”
Strathdee whistled. “Celà s’arrange! And, what, M. le Chef, is his actual destination?”
The Chief of Police shaded in the wing of his blotting-paper aeroplane. “As for that, it is not yet exactly settled. He awaits a cable from his business friends. . . . Have you yourself any preference?”
“The Southern States, perhaps——”
“Ah, well, it will be somewhere in Florida. Perhaps Miami, perhaps a little further north. But I must explain to you, M. Sadille, just what is arranged. The plane that we have chartered it comes only from Cuba; it goes back there only.”
“Havana?”
“No. Camaguey. At Camaguey there waits a second plane; it will have come from the United States, but of the exact airport I am not sure. It completes the journey by returning itself there.”
Strathdee said slowly, “It does seem rather a piece of luck.”
“It is of the most fortunate.”
“But what about this M. Gouzon? What will he say?”
“He has nothing to say. He travels under orders, that one. He does business for the Government. To him it is all one.”
Strathdee thought: They’re taking a great deal of trouble over this gentleman; he must be a person of some importance; yet—Gouzon? Gouzon? I don’t know the name. Probably he’s got another one. And “business for the Government,” eh? Smuggling, probably—or currency. It may land us in trouble; still, no use looking gift horses; God knows when we might get a plane otherwise; it’s now or never—what Cecilia would call the hand of God. . . . He said:
“In that case, Monsieur . . . At what hour do we start?”
“At three. From the airfield.”
“It is now eleven. There is not much time.”
“But enough, perhaps?”
“Si. Very well, M. le Chef, at the airfield at three . . . And—the tickets? The price?”
The Chief smiled his most beautiful smile.
“There will be no price, Monsieur Sadille—to you there will be no price at all. You have done so much. . . . Of course, if with your customary goodness you so desire—a little present to the pilot . . . Ah, Sadille, it is at your discretion entirely. We are friends, is it not?”
Strathdee got up. “Planes may crash,” he said, “the pilot may never survive to enjoy his present. His family . . . if you would be so very kind . .
He planted a little bundle of notes on the table and went out. As he reached the street he was shaken by a sudden terrific detonation from the direction of the Place de la Liberté; he thought, for a moment, Bombers! Bombers after all; that’s torn it! But as a second explosion followed the first, together with some confused yelling at a distance, he realised that it was not bombers; it was the saluting cannon at the Palace. So the election result was out? The office of Le Quotidien was only a few doors down the street; he strolled into it thinking—What fun it will be if they’ve elected Poutin; I wouldn’t be able to get away then. But in the Quotidien office Soutey was rushing about like a madman, and one glance at Soutey’s face was sufficient to show that whoever they had elected it was certainly not Poutin. Strathdee said:
“Allo, Soutey! It is Telemaque?”
“Ah, Sadille, our Telemaque! Our Consul Telemaque. What a day of joy for us all! It is the beginning of a new age for our beloved island. Boy! I feel like a million dollars.”
Strathdee, regaining the street, thought, If that’s the last bit of news I ever hear in Lassou, it could have been worse.
Strathdee and La Señora Branzada drove to the airfield in a common taxi with one suitcase each. An hour ago Strathdee had left his car at the Garage Granger with instructions to jack it up and store it till further advice; it seemed a hundred to one against his ever seeing it again, but at such short notice there was nothing else to be done. Thank God, he had thought, I live in a Hotel—no house or servants to struggle with; just Antofrino’s bill to pay, some papers to tear up, a line to Bozzy to prevent him from starting a search-party, a chit for Lucienne with a hundred dollars (Lassou), three cheers for the Consul Telemaque and—hey, presto!—freedom. How easy it is to tear up one’s roots if one takes care always to have none. Cecilia had endured the process of deracination with equal nonchalance; she had cheerfully jettisoned four-fifths of her luggage: “You can get me some more, Colin honey, when we get there.” She looked beautiful and radiant, commanding and content. And, considering the alternatives that had faced her a short twenty-four hours earlier, so she well might.
Strathdee, conscious of an unaccountable nervousness and a tendency to babble which had kept him so far absolutely mute, said:
“It’s a lovely day. It ought to be a nice flight, anyway.” Cecilia shook her head.
“I ought to have told you, honey, I just don’t go with airplanes. I’m just sick right through the show. I start getting sick when he winds up the engine and I don’t stop till he’s touched down. Sometimes not then.”
Strathdee—he seemed to be incapable of any remark that did not sound idiotic—said that was just too bad.
“Oh, it’s O.K., really. I take some dope and go bye-bye. ’Smatter of fact, I’ve taken it already. Say! we gotta change somewhere, haven’t we?”
“So they say. Camaguey in Cuba.”
“Well, you’ll just about have to wake me up when we get there.” She yawned. “Oh, come on, Colin, let’s get on board, and then you can tuck me up good and comfy.”
There was no send-off at the airport; indeed there was no one there at all but a Sous-officier of Police and their pilot. The former, Lassou to the last, did nothing; the latter, a saturnine Cubano with a huge red scar across one bone-coloured cheek, asked to see their passports, grunted, spat away a cigarette end and led the way to the aircraft. It was a very nice little five-seater; Strathdee thought, a Douglas; M. Gouzon was certainly doing himself—or being done—uncommonly well. Their fellow-passenger, a very dark negro, was already on board, occupying a back seat with an air of wishing to efface himself: Strathdee bowed punctiliously and said, “M’sieu!” and M. Gouzon bowed and said, “M’sieu et ’Dame!” in return. Strathdee found his face vaguely—but very vaguely—familiar; it associated itself with some species of uniform, but then so did half the faces in Lassou. The Garde? The Air Force? The Police? The Coastguards? The Fire Brigade? . . . He couldn’t remember.
Strathdee was one of those people who enjoy flying; however often he went up, he was always able to renew the thrill of that first moment when the machine lost touch with earth and from then onwards he had a mounting exhilaration. It was immaterial whether he flew over land or sea; he never tired of the high air itself, the clarity in the sunshine, the floor of cotton-wool cloud, jostling and heaving and marching steadily against the forward thrust of the plane. He could have spent his whole life soaring about at anything from four to fourteen thousand feet; he was intensely sorry for people like Cecilia whose stomachs were unable to enjoy it.
Yet from the first, this flight was in some way a failure. The plane was comfortable and fast, the pilot seemed capable, if a little slapdash in his methods, the afternoon was perfect; yet somehow it was all wrong. For the first time in his life Strathdee regretted that he had not provided himself with something to read; for now there was nothing to do but stare out at the bright sky and the bright sea, and think and think and think. For the first half hour he was still too excited for any mental coherence, but as the endless miles of the Caribbean tailed away below him, shining and void and dauntingly unlimited, his thoughts began to coalesce. The sun crept over the sky; presently it beat warm and strong through the window on Strathdee’s side; slowly it moderated to a volcanic sunset of red and gold and purple. Strathdee sat forward, just behind the pilot, and could look both ahead and sideways; and in either direction there was nothing but sea, wide as possibility, endless as the future. Cecilia sat behind him; she was having a wretched time, poor girl, as he could hear only too well. Gouzon, further back still, was motionless as an alligator; he was presumably sound asleep. And there sat Strathdee, gazing with his little black eyes and thinking with his too-unresting mind; and the burden of his thought became more and more unbearably, “Why the hell am I doing this?”
Lassou. There it lay, the odd, happy little microcosm, a hundred—two hundred—three hundred miles behind. Asylum Island; madhouse or sanctuary, it was flying away from him with every flick of the dashboard clock. On its back rode that queer company of oddities that had been Strathdee’s life for the last two years. What would they be doing now? Telemaque was probably turning out a wooden toy on his lathe; he should of course have been driving in triumph round and round Larcadie; but he won’t have the sense, thought Strathdee, and I’m not there to make him. Antofrino would be sitting in his noisome little den, working out his accounts and muttering to himself in that language nobody but himself had ever understood. Bosomworth would be closing his shop and moving over to the Consulate for that hour of self-enthronement in which he too found happiness. Poutin, Soutey, the Chief of Police—all those crows that sat no longer upon the wall but were now flapping and cawing in the air above it—would in all probability be drinking rum; there would be much rum drunk in Larcadie that night. Celebration, thought Strathdee, victory; and here sit I, who won it, heading away for God knows what in God knows where. Why? Because I have fallen for a young woman—well, a woman—who is at this moment being sick again in the seat behind me: oh, incomparable world of surprises, deceptions and the unexpected! . . . I never even said good-bye to the place, he thought miserably; I never even had a proper farewell look at it. When we took off I was thinking of this fellow Gouzon; I saw nothing but the whirl of the airfield, a corner of Les Myosotes, the chimney of Poutin’s rum factory standing on its head as we banked for the climb. Here I sit and it is all racing away from me and I shall never see it again. Asylum Island . . . God! what a nice life it was . . .
And from Asylum Island Strathdee’s thoughts moved towards and hovered over and finally concentrated on the subject of woman. The eternal fraud, the eternal double-crosser, the female creature that devours her mate. There was a man called Colin Strathdee who let himself in for a foolish marriage with a woman who, having once caught him and nailed him down, proceeded to make his life a hell for him. Lucy; a too-tall woman who looked down on him; hideously beautiful. “Why can’t you be more like Gladdy, Colin?” . . . “Colin, why don’t you “ . . . So this fellow Strathdee, when he could stand Woman no longer, he made a bolt for it and hid himself; and with more luck than he deserved, he found a hidey-hole that was lax and comfortable and idle and interesting. “God bless the thoughtful islands . . . that give a man a home . . . that keep us from our kin.” God bless them indeed; but this fellow Strathdee, having found this refuge, had he the sense to stick to it? No sir! The very first time another woman dangled her lures in front of him, away he went hell-for-leather, his tongue hanging out, his eyes goggling, all eager for what he knew damn well—or ought to know, anyway—he would never get. Quo vadis, Strathdee? To what fresh world of questions and quarrels and woman’s ambition and woman’s tongue and man’s whipped and grudging effort? . . . Already Lassou is another fifty miles astern; and at this moment, at Benachie or Fort Boufallon, the evening is creeping down from the hills, creeping in from the sea. And Strathdee is sitting in a plane, heading for—Good God!—Miami!
Cecilia was still being sick; it was wonderful, bethought, how she could go on doing it, hour after hour. Inexhaustible as a dog in an avenue of lamp-posts. . . . Well, she couldn’t help that, poor girl. No, but there were other things she couldn’t help too. Strathdee, gazing down at a sea which had turned leaden with the approach of night but still expanded as relentlessly as life, allowed his memory to present him with some pictures he had resolutely been excluding from its screen. La Chouie, he thought; that first evening at dinner at the Zirque, sitting over her Florian, gingering and lecturing and exhorting while the poor devil was trying to eat; that’s what women are like. La Chouie and her bombers; and if it had been left to her, by God we’d have had them—and Larcadie smashed up, and the Lassoux, who’d never done anybody any harm except just by being Lassoux, flung battered and bleeding and headless and limbless this way and that. That’s what women are like. La Chouie letting Florian have it; tongue-lashing her man in three languages; that’s what they’re like. La Chouie telling lie after admitted lie—and God knows how many that are still taken to be truth; that’s what they’re like. And then she’s in a jam and out come the lures and the coloured lights and the mayflies; and the poor fish, the poor unwarnable fish, gapes and leaps and swallows. . . .
Lovely creature; enchantress; but—— . . . Even on this very journey: “You can get me some more luggage, honey, when we get there”; “you can tuck me up good and comfy.” You can get yourself the Headmastership of that Prep School; you can get yourself the Professorship of English Literature; if Gladdy can do it, why can’t you; Colin, why can’t you . .. That’s what they’re like. . . . And Lassou—the Zirque, the idle day, the dreamless night, Lucienne the honest little utility, Fort Boufallon . . . Oh, Strathdee, Strathdee!
Well—it’s too late now. En avant; forward; Excelsior. “Vers la grande lumière, échauffante et fécondante, des États Unis.” Hail Columbia!
It was blue moonlight now; but down below there was the moving fan of a coastwise light, there was a string of twinkles dancing in and out like stars. The pilot, sprawling at his controls, swung round and jerked his head. Cuba. Down into the little bare airfield of Camaguey, with the open grass pampas all round it and the shining black road running away to the town, down came the Douglas and the pilot and Strathdee and Cecilia and M. Gouzon. Down they sank into the familiar whistling bump, the uncanny silence of arrival.
Out of the moonlight there stepped a tall thin man with a rasping voice. He said:
“I’m your pilot. . . . Say, folks, had you gotten a drag tied on to your tail, or what? I thought you was never coming. I’m just impossibly glad to see you, but—let’s go.”
Cecilia said, “I’ve got to go inside for a bit. You’ll have to wait.” She went away into the little airport building. It was brilliantly lit and there was quite a crowd of people in it; for on the tarmac, huge and shining like a steel whale, there stood a Pan-American Clipper. The tall thin man said to Strathdee:
“Gets sick, does she? . . . You Mister Gooz’n?”
Strathdee said, “No. He’s here.” And he was too, very unobtrusively holding a little despatch-case in his hand. The American pilot said grumblingly:
“Hop on board, Mister Gooz’n. . . . Say, I hope that dame of yours can step on it in there. I wanna get away before that southbound Pan-American.”
Strathdee said, “Southbound?”
“Yep. Lassou, San Hieronimo, Rio. If your lady’ll hurry, we can just make it.”
Strathdee thought, Lassou! Oh, hell; it’s too much. He went into the airport building and bought himself a Havana cigar in a little aluminium torpedo of its own; he lit it absently. It was a very good cigar. It was also a very beautiful night, richly moonlit, with the strange peace that descends on airfields when the engines are quiet. On an impulse he strolled across towards the Pan-American liner, but a hard American voice said, “Hey! No smokin’ here, buddy!” and he turned back again. The crew of the liner were drinking coca-cola at the airport bar; he sat down beside them and said, for the sake of saying something, “When do you take off?” One of them said carelessly, “’Bout twenty minutes. Gee! I don’ know why we do this run; ship’s half empty.” Something in Strathdee’s mind said to him, jeering, “Did you hear that? Lassou, San Hieronimo, Rio; and the ship’s half empty; God thinks out good jokes, doesn’t He?” Cecilia came out of the Ladies’ Room, not very certain on her feet, and at the same moment the tall thin American reappeared; he said, “Say! . . . Oh, you’re ready. Come on. Let’s go.” Strathdee put an arm round Cecilia and led her across the tarmac; he said, “How goes it?” and she said, “Awful; just awful.” He said, “Cheer up; last lap.” He helped her into the plane—a smaller one and not nearly so comfortable—where M. Gouzon was already sitting; he tucked her coat very carefully round her legs. She said, dopily, “Say, Colin honey, first thing when we get there, I’m going to make you——”
He said, “You’re going to make me what?” But she seemed to be asleep.
Outside it was still beautiful blue moonlight, still very peaceful and quiet. The Pan-American liner shone in it like a sea-beast dripping silver.
Ten minutes after the little American plane had taken off, someone moved in it from the back seat towards the front. Cecilia, stirring in her seat said drowsily:
“That you, Colin?”
The figure said, in English, “No; it is me. Gouzon . . . Madame!”
“Uh?”
“Your ’usban’; I think he has miss the bus.”
“Uh?”
“He is not here.”
Cecilia said, “Tha’s funny,” and fell deeper into the slumber of the doped who have been sick for hours on end.
M. Gouzon hesitated for a moment; then, shrugging, he went back to his seat. It was no business of his; and he had no desire to delay his journey by a return to Camaguey; quite the reverse. Looking downward, he saw another chaplet of winking lights falling rapidly astern: the coast of Cuba disappearing Lassou-ward, into the rear. The sight gave him a good deal of pleasure. He took out his passport to make sure it was there, and gazed at it for a minute in solemn contemplation. It bore his name—or a name—very distinctly in neat capitals: Theophile Gouzon. Smiling a little, he put it back in his pocket.
That distinguished negro Officer, Colonel Bouc, has not appeared very frequently in the course of this narrative; but he played a reasonably effective part in the events with which it began. He was a very good shot, was Colonel Bouc; even in the dark, even in the small hours of the morning, even after a Réunion Fraternelle.