IN WHICH CRAVEN JOICEY IS OVERCOME BY A SUDDEN INDISPOSITION, AND HARTLEY, WITHOUT LOOKING FOR HIM, FINDS THE MAN HE WANTED

It seemed to Hartley that Fate had dealt very hardly with him. He was interested in the case of the boy Absalom, and he felt that the possibility of clearing it up was well within reach, and then he found himself face to face with an unpleasant and painful duty.

All his gregarious sociable nature cried out against any act that would cause a scandal in Mangadone, the magnitude of which he could hardly gauge but only guess at; and yet, wherever he went, the thought haunted him. His feelings gave him no rest, and he remained inactive and listless for several days after his ride with Mrs. Wilder. If she had told him that she implored him personally to drop the case he could not have felt more certain that she desired him to do so. She worked indirectly upon his feelings, a much surer way with some natures than a direct appeal, and the thought brought something akin to misery into the mind and heart of the police officer.

Absalom had gone, leaving no visible footprint to indicate whither he had vanished, but the inexorable detail of circumstance after circumstance led on to a very definite conclusion. The wooden figure outside the curio dealer's shop pointed up his master's steps, and did no one any wrong, but the awful fixed finger of changeless fact indicated the creeper-covered bungalow of the Rev. Francis Heath.

Hartley sat in his room, his elbows on the writing-table, and stared out before him. A sluicing shower had come up suddenly, obscuring all the brightness of the day, and the eaves of the veranda dripped mournfully with a sound like the patter of a thousand tiny feet; the patter sounded like the falling of tears, and he wondered if Heath, too, listened to the light persistent noise, and read into it the footsteps of departing hopes and lost ideals, or merely all the terrible monotonous detail that preceded an act that was a crime.

Hartley had dealt considerably with criminal cases, but never with anything the least like the case of the boy Absalom, and the speculations that came across his mind were new to him. He realized that a criminal of the class of the Rev. Francis Heath is a criminal who is driven slowly, inch by inch, into action, and each inch given only at the cost of blood and tears. It was little short of ghastly to consider what Heath must have gone through and suffered, and what he still must suffer, and must continue to suffer as he went along the dark loneliness of the awful road into which he had turned.

People who have pity and to spare for the murdered body, or for the dupe who has suffered plunder, think very little of the agony of mind and the horror of the man who has held a good position, secure and honoured, and who falls into the bottomless abyss of crime and detection. Hartley had never considered it before. He was on the side of law and order, and he was incapable of even dimly visualizing any condition of affairs that could force him into illegal action, and yet he felt in the darkness after some comprehension of the mind of the Rector of St. Jude's Parish Church.

The rain passed over, and the veranda was crossed with strips of yellow sunlight, the pale washed sunlight of a wet evening, and still the drip from the eaves fell intermittently with its melancholy noise, so softly now, as hardly to be heard, and Hartley got up, and, putting on his hat, walked across the scrunching wet gravel, and out on to the road, making his way towards the Club.

Far away, gleams of light lay soft over the trees of the park, the green sad light that is only seen in damp atmospheres. There was no gladness in the day, only a sense of deficiency and sorrow, even in its lingering beauty; and the lake that reflected the trees and the sky was deadly still, with a brooding, waiting stillness. Hartley stopped as he went towards the further gates of the park, and watched the glassy reflections with troubled eyes. No breeze touched the woods into movement, and the long, yellow bars of evening light were full of dim stillness. The very lifelessness of it affected Hartley strangely. Except where, here and there, a flash of the low sunset caught the water, the whole prospect was motionless, and he stood like a man spellbound by the mystery of its silence.

Hartley had chosen the less frequented road through the Park, and there was no one in sight when he had stopped to look at the pale sheet of water with its mirrored reproduction of tree and sky. It held him strangely, and he felt a curious tension of his nerves, as though something was going to happen. The thought came, as such thoughts do come, out of nowhere in particular, and yet Hartley waited with a sense of discomfort.

When he turned away angry at his own momentary folly, he stooped and picked up a stone and threw it into the motionless beauty of the water, breaking it into a quick splash, marring the clearness, and confusing the straight, low band of gold cloud which broke under the widening circles. As he stooped, a man had come into sight, walking with a slow, heavy step, his eyes on the ground and his head bent. He came on with dragging feet and a dull, mechanical walk, the walk of a man who is tired in body and soul. He did not look at the lake, nor did he even see Hartley, who turned towards him at once with sudden relief.

When Hartley hailed him cheerfully, Joicey stopped dead and looked up, staring at him as though he were an apparition. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead.

"Where did you spring from, Hartley?" he asked. "I did not see anyone just now." There was more irritation than warmth in his greeting of the police officer.

"I was moonstruck by the edge of that confounded lake. It was so still that it got on my nerves."

"Nerves," said Joicey abruptly. "There's too much talk of nerves altogether in these days."

Joicey, like all large men with loud voices, was able to give an impression of solidity that is very refreshing and reviving at times, but, otherwise, Joicey was not looking entirely himself. He passed his handkerchief over his face again and laughed dully.

"You're going to the Club, I suppose?"

"I was going there, but now I'll join you and have a walk, if I may. It's early for the Club yet."

He turned and walked on beside the Banker, who appeared, if anything, less in the humour for conversation than was usual with him. They left the lake behind them, now a pallid gleam flecked with wavering light in a circle of deep shadows that reached out from the margin.

"Any news?" asked Hartley without enthusiasm.

"Not that I have heard."

Silence fell again, and they walked out on to the road. Pools of afternoon rain still lay here and there in the depressions, but Joicey took no heed of them, and splashed on, staining his white trousers with liquid mud.

"By the way," he said, clearing his throat as though his words stuck there, "have you heard anything more in connection with the disappearance of that boy you were talking of the other evening?"

Hartley did not reply for a moment, and just as he was about to speak, Mrs. Wilder's car passed, and Mrs. Wilder leaned forward to smile at the Head of the Police; a small buggy followed with some more friends of Hartley's, and then another car, and the road was clear again.

"I believe I am on the right track, but I don't like it, Joicey. I'm damned if I do."

"Why not?"

"It comes too close to home,"—Hartley spoke with a jerk. "A hateful job—I thought I'd tell you—" He spoke in broken sentences, and his words affected the Banker very perceptibly.

"Can't you drop it?"

Joicey came to a standstill, and his voice was lowered almost to a whisper.

"I wish to Heaven I could, but it's a question of duty,"—he could hardly see Joicey's face in the gathering gloom. "I suppose you guess what I'm driving at, Joicey, though how you guess, I don't know."

"I think I'll say good night here, Hartley,"—the Banker's voice was unnatural and wavering. "I can't discuss it with you. It's got to be proved," he spoke more heatedly. "What have you got? Only the word of a stinking native. I tell you it's monstrous." He stopped and clutched Hartley's arm, and seemed as though he was staggering.

"What has come over you, Joicey; are you ill?"

"I'll sit down here for a moment,"—Joicey walked towards a low wall. "Sometimes I get these attacks. I'm better after they are over. Better, much better. Leave me here to go back by myself, Hartley. You need have no fear, I'm over it now; I'll rest for a little and then go my way quickly. Believe me, I'd rather be alone."

Very reluctantly, Hartley quitted him. He felt that Joicey was ill, and might even be beginning the horrible phase of "breaking up," which comes on with such fatal speed in a tropical climate. He went back after he had gone a mile along the road, but Joicey was no longer there. It was too late to think of going to the Club, for the road that Joicey and Hartley had followed led away from the residential quarter of Mangadone, and he disliked the idea of going back to his own bungalow and waiting through the dismal hour that lies across the evening between the time to come in and the time to dress for dinner.

Had there been a friendly house near, Hartley would have gone in on the chance of finding someone at home, but as there was not, he made the best of existing circumstances and took his way along the road towards his own bungalow. He could not deny that his walk with Joicey had only served to depress his spirits, and he was sorry to think that his friend was so obviously in bad health. The world seemed an uncomfortable place, full of gloomy surprises, and Hartley wished that he had a wife to go back to. Not a superb being like Mrs. Wilder, who was encircled by the halo of High Romance, but just an ordinary wife, with a friendly smile and a way of talking about everyday things while she darned socks. Somewhere in his domestic heart Hartley considered sock-mending a beautiful and symbolic act, and yet he could not picture Mrs. Wilder occupied in such a fashion.

A man with a wife to go back to is never at the same loose end as a man who has no need ever to be punctual for a solitary meal, and Hartley walked quickly because he wanted to get clear of his depression, rather than for any reason that compelled him to be up to time.

The gathering darkness drew out the flare over the city, and, here and there, lamps dotted the road, until, turning up a short cut, he was into the region of trams once more. The lighted cars, filled with gay Burmese and soldiers from the British Regiment, and European-clad, dark-skinned creatures of mixed races, looked cheerful and encouraged to better thoughts. Hartley crossed the busy thoroughfare below the Pagoda steps and went on quickly, for he recognized the outline of Mhtoon Pah on his way to burn amber candles before his newly-erected shrine. He was in no mood to talk to the curio dealer just then, and he avoided him carefully and plunged down a tree-bowered road that led to the bridge, and from the bridge to the hill-rise where his own gate stood open.

It pleased him to see that lamps were lighted in the house, and he felt conscious that he was hungry, and would be glad of dinner; he made up his mind to do himself well and rout the tormenting thoughts that pursued him, and to-morrow he would see Francis Heath and have the whole thing put on paper once and for all. He even whistled as he came along the short drive and under the portico, where a night-scented flower smelt strong and sweet. His boy met him with the information that there was a Sahib within waiting. A Sahib who had evidently come to stay, for a strange-looking servant in the veranda rose and salaamed, and sat down again by his master's kit with the patience of a man who looks out upon eternity.

Hartley hardly glanced at the servant. Visitors, tumbling from anywhere, were not altogether unusual occurrences. Men on the way back from a shoot in the jungles of Upper Burma, men who were old school friends and were doing a leisurely tour to Japan and America, men of his own profession who had leave to dispose of; all or any of these might arrive with a servant and a portmanteau. Whoever it was, Hartley was predisposed to give him a welcome. He had come just when he was wanted, and he hurried in, a light of pleasure in his blue eyes.

Near the lamp, a book of verses open on his knee, sat Hartley's unexpected guest. He was slim, dark, and vital, but where his arresting note of vitality lay would have been hard to explain. No one can tell exactly what it is that marks one man as a courageous man, and another as a coward, and yet, without need of any test, these things may be known and judged beforehand. The man whose eyes followed the lines:

was as distinctive as he well could be, and yet his face was not expressive. His dark, narrow eyes were dull, and his finely-cut features small and perfect, rather than bold and strong; his long hands were the hands of a woman more than those of a man, and his figure was slight to boyishness.

When Hartley let his full joy express itself in husky, cheery words of surprise, his visitor said very little, but what he did say was spoken in a pleasant, low voice.

"Coryndon," said Hartley again. "Of all men on earth I wanted to see you most. You've done what you always do, come in the 'nick.'"

Coryndon smiled, a languid, half-amused gleam of mirth.

"I am only passing through, my job is finished."

"But you'll stay for a bit?"

"You said just now that I was here in the 'nick'; if the nick is interesting, I'll see."

"I'll go and arrange about your rooms," said Hartley, and he appeared twice his normal size beside his guest, as a St. Bernard might look standing by a greyhound. "We will talk afterwards."

Coryndon watched him go out without change of expression, and, sliding back into his chair, took up his book again.

Coryndon leaned back and half closed his eyes; the words seemed potent, as with a spell, and he called up a vision of the forsaken Palace where wild things lived and where revels were long forgotten—solitude and ruin that no one ever crossed to explore or to see—with the eyes of a man who can rebuild a mighty past. Solitude in the halls and marble stairways, ruin of time in the fretted screens, and broken cisterns holding nothing but dry earth. Nothing there now but the lion and the lizard, not even the ghost of a light footfall, or the tinkle of glass bangles on a rounded arm.

Coryndon had almost forgotten Hartley when he came back, flushed and pleased, and full of a host's anxiety about his guest's welfare.

"I hope you haven't been bored?"

"No," said Coryndon, touching the book, "I've been amusing myself in my own way," and he followed Hartley out of the room.

XI