uring
languidly. Some of the _Lombock's_ passengers were there, notably a
smallish man with shiny skin and bulbous eyes, glittering and predatory,
who bowed effusively to De Haan and received a cool nod. Gliding here
and yon, and jiggling a tray to serve the general need, went a
waxen-faced manikin. Glasses shone and sparkled. White garments showed
fresh and span. And farther back, amid the shadows under the big palm,
could be seen the vague figure of the presiding genius of the place, the
huge red ape, huddled in the attitude of meditation.

"All ze same, hey?" said De Haan. "Still we remain a liddle. Perhaps we
hear somesing. And you, my dear fallow, drink zis."

He chose a table in the arbor near a magnificent rhododendron and poured
a measure of golden yellow liquid from a ready bottle, and the mate had
need of the same. Nivin was paying the penalty just then for
unprofessional weakness and the mellower streak of his nature, as those
of his type have often to pay here below. He remembered that he alone
had guided Tunstal. He could not acquit himself for whatever ill had
befallen. And he remembered something else--another evil he had done
nothing to check that day--the passage of the cinnabar boat with her
ruddy devils and suspected errand....

"What is ze matter wit' zat beast?" rumbled De Haan, frowning over his
shoulder. "He don' yell good to-night. He acts like sick. And alzo he
haf no roll' us yet one single cigarette. Yet here is plenty tobacco
too--"

With his foot he pushed within the circle of the chain a little lacquer
box and a packet of leaves, but when he turned again the kindly
official saw that his attempt to set up a diversion had failed. Nivin
looked leaner and more leathery than ever, and his eyes had lighted with
an almost fanatic gleam which was only partly due to arrack--that
potential drink. "It's no use, Mister Controller," he said. "And I thank
you for meaning well. But you can't keep from me that something awful
has happened to the boy I sent from the _Lombock_ so free and careless."

De Haan squirmed through all his thick bulk. "Don' speak so wit' a pain,
my dear fallow," he urged. "I do not admit it. We haf yet to see."

"I can see. You try to tell me certain crimes are spared you here. I
take it you mean such deviltry as grows where foreigners have rotted a
native country?"

"Yes," said De Haan.

"And that's true; they do rot it. I always thought this place was clean,
just as you