Kitabı oku: «The Argus Pheasant», sayfa 4
Peter Gross bowed his head.
"God help me, I will," he vowed.
"But see that she does not seduce you, Vrind Pieter," the old man entreated earnestly. "You are both young, she is fair, and she is a siren, a vampire. Hold fast to your God, to your faith, to the oath you take as a servant of the state, and do not let her beauty blind you – no, nor your own warm heart either, Pieter."
Sachsen rose. There were tears in his eyes as he looked fondly down at the young man that owed so much to him.
"Pieter," he said, "old Sachsen will pray for you. I must leave you now, Pieter; the governor desires to talk to you."
CHAPTER VI
The Pirate League
As Sachsen left the room the governor snapped shut the silver cap on the porcelain bowl of his pipe and regretfully laid the pipe aside.
"Nu, Mynheer Gross, what troops will you need?" he asked in a business-like manner. "I have one thousand men here in Java that you may have if you need them. For the sea there is the gun-boat, Prins Lodewyk, and the cutter, Katrina, both of which I place at your disposal."
"I do not need a thousand men, your excellency," Peter Gross replied quietly.
"Ha! I thought not!" the governor exclaimed with satisfaction. "An army is useless in the jungle. Let them keep their crack troops in the Netherlands and give me a few hundred irregulars who know the cane and can bivouac in the trees if they have to. Your Amsterdammer looks well enough on parade, but his skin is too thin for our mosquitoes. But that is beside the question. Would five hundred men be enough, Mynheer Gross? We have a garrison of fifty at Bulungan."
Peter Gross frowned reflectively at the table-top.
"I would not need five hundred men, your excellency," he announced.
The governor's smile broadened. "You know more about jungle warfare than I gave you credit for, Mynheer Gross," he complimented. "But I should have known that the rescuer of Lieutenant de Koren was no novice. Only this morning I remarked to General Vanden Bosch that a capable commander and three hundred experienced bush-fighters are enough to drive the last pirate out of Bulungan and teach our Dyaks to cultivate their long-neglected plantations. What say you to three hundred of our best colonials, mynheer?"
"I will not need three hundred men, your excellency," Peter Gross declared.
Van Schouten leaned back in surprise.
"Well, Mynheer Gross, how large a force will you need?"
Peter Gross's long, ungainly form settled lower in his chair. His legs crossed and his chin sagged into the palm of his right hand. The fingers pulled gently at his cheeks. After a moment's contemplation he looked up to meet the governor's inquiring glance and remarked:
"Your excellency, I shall need about twenty-five men."
Van Schouten stared at him in astonishment.
"Twenty-five men, Mynheer Gross!" he exclaimed. "What do you mean?"
"Twenty-five men, men like I have in mind, will be all I will need, your excellency," Peter Gross assured gravely.
Van Schouten edged his chair nearer. "Mynheer Gross, do you understand me correctly?" he asked doubtfully. "I would make you resident of Bulungan. I would give you supreme authority in the province. The commandant, Captain Van Slyck, would be subject to your orders. You will be answerable only to me."
"Under no other conditions would I accept your excellency's appointment," Peter Gross declared.
"But, Mynheer Gross, what can twenty-five do? Bulungan has more than one hundred thousand inhabitants, few of whom have ever paid a picul of rice or kilo of coffee as tax to the crown. On the coast there are the Chinese pirates, the Bugi outlaws from Macassar and their traitorous allies, the coast Dyaks of Bulungan, of Tidoeng, and Pasir, ay, as far north as Sarawak, for those British keep their house in no better order than we do ours. In the interior we have the hill Dyaks, the worst thieves and cut-throats of them all. But these things you know. I ask you again, what can twenty-five do against so many?"
"With good fortune, bring peace to Bulungan," Peter Gross replied confidently.
The governor leaned aggressively across the table and asked the one-word pointed question:
"How?"
Peter Gross uncrossed his legs and tugged gravely at his chin.
"Your excellency," he said, "I have a plan, not fully developed as yet, but a plan. As your excellency well knows, there are two nations of Dyaks in the province. There are the hillmen – "
"Damned thieving, murdering, head-hunting scoundrels!" the governor growled savagely.
"So your excellency has been informed. But I believe that much of the evil that is said of them is untrue. They are savages, wilder savages than the coast Dyaks, and less acquainted with blanken (white men). Many of them are head-hunters. But they have suffered cruelly from the coast Dyaks, with whom, as your excellency has said, they have an eternal feud."
"They are pests," the governor snarled. "They keep the lowlands in a continual turmoil with their raids. We cannot grow a blade of rice on account of them."
"That is where your excellency and I must disagree," Peter Gross asserted quietly.
"Ha!" the governor exclaimed incredulously. "What do you say, Mynheer Gross?"
"Your excellency, living in Batavia, you have seen only one side of this question, the side your underlings have shown you. With your excellency's permission I shall show you another side, the side a stranger, unprejudiced, with no axes to grind either way, saw in his eight years of sailoring about these islands. Have I your excellency's permission?"
A frown gathered on the governor's face. His thin lips curled, and his bristly mane rose belligerently.
"Proceed," he snapped.
Peter Gross rested his elbows on the table and leaned toward the governor.
"Your excellency," he began, "let it be understood that I bring no accusations to-night; that we are speaking as man to man. I go to Bulungan to inquire into the truth of the things I have heard. Whatever I learn shall be faithfully reported to your excellency."
Van Schouten nodded curtly.
"Your excellency has spoken of the unrest in Bulungan," Peter Gross continued. "Your excellency also spoke of piracies committed in these seas. It is my belief, your excellency, that the government has been mistaken in assuming that there is no connection between the two. I am satisfied that there is a far closer union and a better understanding between the Dyaks and the pirates than has ever been dreamed of here in Batavia."
The governor smiled derisively.
"You are mistaken, Mynheer Gross," he contradicted. "I almost believed so, too, at one time, and I had Captain Van Slyck, our commandant at Bulungan, investigate for me. I have his report here. I shall be glad to let you read it."
He tapped a gong. In a moment Sachsen bustled in.
"Sachsen," the governor said, "Kapitein Van Slyck's report on the pirates of the straits, if you please."
Sachsen bowed and withdrew.
"I shall be glad to read the captain's report," Peter Gross assured gravely. A grimly humorous twinkle lurked in his eyes. The governor was quick to note it.
"But it will not convince you, eh, mynheer?" he challenged. He smiled. "You Yankees are an obstinate breed – almost as stubborn as we Dutch."
"I am afraid that the captain's report will not cover things I know," Peter Gross replied. "Yet I have no doubt it will be helpful."
The subtle irony his voice expressed caused the governor to look at him quizzically, but Van Schouten was restrained from further inquiry by the return of Sachsen with the report. The governor glanced at the superscription and handed the document to Peter Gross with the remark: "Read that at your leisure. I will have Sachsen make you a copy."
Peter Gross pocketed the report with a murmured word of thanks. The governor frowned, trying to recollect where the thread of conversation had been broken, and then remarked:
"As I say, Mynheer Gross, I am sure you will find yourself mistaken. The Dyaks are thieves and head-hunters, a treacherous breed. They do not know the meaning of loyalty – God help us if they did! No two villages have ever yet worked together for a common aim. As for the pirates, they are wolves that prey on everything that comes in their path. Some of the orang kayas may be friendly with them, but as for there being any organization – bah! it is too ridiculous to even discuss it."
Peter Gross's lips pressed a little tighter.
"Your excellency," he replied with perfect equanimity, "you have your opinion and I have mine. My work in Bulungan, I hope, will show which of us is right. Yet I venture to say this. Before I have left Bulungan I shall be able to prove to your excellency that one man, not so very far from your excellency's paleis at this moment, has united the majority of the sea Dyaks and the pirates into a formidable league of which he is the head. More than this, he has established a system of espionage which reaches into this very house."
Van Schouten stared at Peter Gross in amazement and incredulity.
"Mynheer Gross," he finally exclaimed, "this is nonsense!"
Peter Gross's eyes flashed. "Your excellency," he retorted, "it is the truth."
"What proofs have you?" the governor demanded.
"None at present that could convince your excellency," Peter Gross admitted frankly. "All I have is a cumulative series of instances, unrelated in themselves, scraps of conversations picked up here and there, little things that have come under my observation in my sojourns in many ports of the archipelago. But in Bulungan I expect to get the proofs. When I have them, I shall give them to your excellency, that justice may be done. Until then I make no charges. All I say is – guard carefully what you would not have your enemies know."
"This is extraordinary," the governor remarked, impressed by Peter Gross's intense earnestness. "Surely you do not expect me to believe all this on your unsupported word, mynheer?"
"The best corroboration which I can offer is that certain matters which your excellency thought were known only to himself are now common gossip from Batavia to New Guinea," Peter Gross replied.
The governor's head drooped. His face became drawn. Lines formed where none had been before. The jauntiness, the pompous self-assurance, and the truculence that so distinguished him among his fellows disappeared from his mien; it was as though years of anxiety and care had suddenly passed over him.
"This discussion brings us nowhere, Mynheer Gross," he wearily remarked. "Let us decide how large a force you should have. What you have told me convinces me the more that you will need at least two hundred men. I hesitate to send you with less than a regiment."
"Let me deal with this situation in my own way, your excellency," Peter Gross pleaded. "I believe that just dealing will win the confidence of the upland Dyaks. Once that is done, the rest is easy. Twenty-five men, backed by the garrison at Bulungan and the hill Dyaks, will be able to break up the pirate bands, if the navy does its share. After that the problem is one of administration, to convince the coast Dyaks that the state is fair, that the state is just, and that the state's first thought is the welfare of her people, be they brown, black, or white."
"You think twenty-five men can do all that?" the governor asked doubtfully.
"The men I shall choose can, your excellency. They will be men whom I can trust absolutely, who have no interests except the service of Peter Gross."
"Where will you find them, mynheer?"
"Here in Java, your excellency. Americans. Sailors who have left the sea. Men who came here to make their fortunes and failed and are too proud to go back home. Soldiers from the Philippines, adventurers, lads disappointed in love. I could name you a dozen such here in Batavia now."
The governor looked at his new lieutenant long and thoughtfully.
"Do as you deem best, mynheer. It may be God has sent you here to teach us why we have failed. Is there anything else you need, besides the usual stores?"
"There is one more request I wish to make of your excellency," Peter Gross replied.
"And that is – "
"That your excellency cancel the reward offered for the arrest of Leveque's daughter."
Van Schouten stroked his brow with a gesture of infinite weariness.
"You make strange requests, mynheer," he observed. "Yet I am moved to trust you. What you ask shall be done."
He rose to signify that the interview was at an end. "You may make your requisitions through Sachsen, mynheer. God speed you and give you wisdom beyond your years."
CHAPTER VII
Mynheer Muller Worries
Seated in a low-framed rattan chair on the broad veranda of his cottage, Mynheer Hendrik Muller, controlleur, and acting resident of Bulungan, awaited in perspiring impatience the appearance of his military associate, Captain Gerrit Van Slyck.
State regulations required daily conferences, that the civil arm of the government might lay its commands upon the military and the military make its requisitions upon the civil. An additional incentive to prompt attendance upon these was that mynheer the resident rarely failed to produce a bottle of Hollands, which, compounded with certain odorous and acidulated products of the tropics, made a drink that cooled the fevered brow and mellowed the human heart, made a hundred and twenty in the shade seem like seventy, and chased away the home-sickness of folk pining for the damp and fog of their native Amsterdam.
It was no urgent affair of state, however, that made Muller fume and fuss like a washerwoman on a rainy Monday at Van Slyck's dilatoriness. A bit of gossip, casually dropped by the master of a trading schooner who had called for clearance papers an hour before, was responsible for his agitation.
"When does your new resident arrive?" the visiting skipper had asked.
"The new resident?" Muller returned blankly. "What new resident?"
The skipper perceived that he was the bearer of unpleasant tidings and diplomatically minimized the importance of his news.
"Somebody down to Batavia told me you were going to have a new resident here," he replied lightly. "It's only talk, I s'pose. You hear so many yarns in port."
"There is nothing official – yet," Muller declared. He had the air of one who could tell much if he chose. But when the sailor had gone back to his ship he hurriedly sent Cho Seng to the stockade with an urgent request to Van Slyck to come to his house at once.
Van Slyck was putting the finishing touches to an exquisite toilet when he received the message.
"What ails the doddering old fool now?" he growled irritably as he read Muller's appeal. "Another Malay run amuck, I suppose. Every time a few of these bruinevels (brown-skins) get krissed he thinks the whole province is going to flame into revolt."
Tossing the note into an urn, he leisurely resumed his dressing. It was not until he was carefully barbered, his hair shampooed and perfumed, his nails manicured, and his mustache waxed and twisted to the exact angle that a two-months old French magazine of fashion dictated as the mode, that the dapper captain left the stockade. He was quite certain that the last living representative of the ancient house of Van Slyck of Amsterdam would never be seen in public in dirty linen and unwashed, regardless how far mynheer the controlleur might forget his self-respect and the dignity of his office.
Van Slyck was leisurely strolling along the tree-lined lane that led from the iron-wood stockade to the cluster of houses colloquially designated "Amsterdam" when the impatient Muller perceived his approach.
"Devil take the man, why doesn't he hurry?" the controlleur swore. With a peremptory gesture he signaled Van Slyck to make haste.
"By the beard of Nassau," the captain exclaimed. "Does that swine think he can make a Van Slyck skip like a butcher's boy? Things have come to a pretty pass in the colonies when a Celebes half-breed imagines he can make the best blood of Amsterdam fetch and carry for him."
Deliberately turning his back on the controlleur, he affected to admire the surpassingly beautiful bay of Bulungan, heaven's own blue melting into green on the shingly shore, with a thousand sabres of iridescent foam stabbing the morning horizon. Muller was fuming when the commandant finally sauntered on the veranda, selected a fat, black cigar from the humidor, and gracefully lounged in an easy chair.
"Donder en bliksem! kapitein, but you lie abed later every morning," he growled.
Van Slyck's thin lips curled with aristocratic scorn.
"We cannot all be such conscientious public servants as you, mynheer," he observed ironically.
Muller was in that state of nervous agitation that a single jarring word would have roused an unrestricted torrent of abuse. Fortunately for Van Slyck, however, he was obtuse to irony. He took the remark literally and for the moment, like oil on troubled waters, it calmed the rising tide of his wrath at what he deemed the governor-general's black ingratitude.
"Well, kapitein, gij kebt gelijk (you are right, captain)" he assented heavily. The blubbery folds under his chin crimsoned with his cheeks in complacent self-esteem. "There are not many men who would have done so well as I have under the conditions I had to face – under the conditions I had to face —kapitein. Ja! Not many men. I have worked and slaved to build up this residency. For two years now I have done a double duty – I have been both resident and controlleur. Jawel!"
Recollection of the skipper's unpleasant news recurred to him. His face darkened like a tropic sky before a cloudburst.
"And what is my reward, kapitein? What is my reward? To have some Amsterdamsche papegaai (parrot) put over me." His fist came down wrathily on the arm of his chair. "Ten thousand devils! It is enough to make a man turn pirate."
Van Slyck's cynical face lit with a sudden interest.
"You have heard from Ah Sing?" he inquired.
"Ah Sing? No. Drommel noch toe!" Muller swore. "Who mentioned Ah Sing? That thieving Deutscher who runs the schooner we had in port over-night told me this not an hour ago. The whole of Batavia knows it. They are talking it in every rumah makan. And we sit here and know nothing. That is the kind of friends we have in Batavia."
Van Slyck, apprehensive that the impending change might affect him, speculated swiftly how much the controlleur knew.
"It is strange that Ah Sing hasn't let us know," he remarked.
"Ah Sing?" Muller growled. "Ah Sing? That bloodsucker is all for himself. He would sell us out to Van Schouten in a minute if he thought he saw any profit in it. Ja! I have even put money into his ventures, and this is how he treats me."
"Damnably, I must say," Van Slyck agreed sympathetically. "That is, if he knows."
"If he knows, mynheer kapitein? Of course he knows. Has he not agenten in every corner of this archipelago? Has he not a spy in the paleis itself?"
"He should have sent us word," Van Slyck agreed. "Unless mynheer, the new resident, is one of us. Who did you say it is, mynheer?"
"How the devil should I know?" Muller growled irritably. "All I know is what I told you – that the whole of Batavia says Bulungan is to have a new resident."
Van Slyck's face fell. He had hoped that the controlleur knew at least the identity of the new executive of the province. Having extracted all the information Muller had, he dropped the cloak of sympathy and remarked with cool insolence:
"Since you don't know, I think you had better make it your business to find out, mynheer."
Muller looked at him doubtfully. "You might make an effort also, kapitein," he suggested. "You have friends in Batavia. It is your concern as well as mine, a new resident would ruin our business."
"I don't think he will," Van Slyck replied coolly. "If he isn't one of us he won't bother us long. Ah Sing won't let any prying reformer interfere with business while the profits are coming in as well as they are."
A shadow of anxiety crossed Muller's face. He cast a troubled look at Van Slyck, who affected to admire the multi-tinted color display of jungle, sun, and sea.
"What – what do you mean, kapitein?" he asked hesitantly.
"People sometimes begin voyages they do not finish," Van Slyck observed. "A man might eat a pomegranate that didn't agree with him – pouf – the colic, and it is all over. There is nothing so uncertain as life, mynheer."
The captain replaced his cigar between his teeth with a flourish. Muller's pudgy hands caught each other convulsively. The folds under his chin flutterred. He licked his lips before he spoke.
"Kapitein– you mean he might come to an unhappy end on the way?" he faltered.
"Why not?" Van Slyck concentrated his attention on his cigar.
"Neen, neen, let us have no bloodshed," Muller vetoed anxiously. "We have had enough – " He looked around nervously as though he feared someone might be overhearing him. "Let him alone. We shall find some way to get rid of him. But let there be no killing."
Van Slyck turned his attention from the landscape to the controlleur. There was a look in the captain's face that made Muller wince and shift his eyes, a look of cyincal contempt, calm, frank, and unconcealed. It was the mask lifting, for Van Slyck despised his associate. Bold and unscrupulous, sticking at nothing that might achieve his end, he had no patience with the timid, faltering, often conscience-stricken controlleur.
"Well, mynheer," Van Slyck observed at length, "you are getting remarkably thin-skinned all of a sudden."
He laughed sardonically. Muller winced and replied hastily:
"I have been thinking, kapitein, that the proa crews have been doing too much killing lately. I am going to tell Ah Sing that it must be stopped. There are other ways – we can unload the ships and land their crews on some island – "
"To starve, or to be left to the tender mercies of the Bajaus and the Bugis," Van Slyck sneered. "That would be more tender-hearted. You would at least transfer the responsibility."
Muller's agitation became more pronounced.
"But we must not let it go on, kapitein," he urged. "It hurts the business. Pretty soon we will have an investigation, one of these gun-boats will pick up one of our proas, somebody will tell, and what will happen to us then?"
"We'll be hung," Van Slyck declared succinctly.
Muller's fingers leaped in an involuntary frantic gesture to his throat, as though he felt cords tightening around his windpipe. His face paled.
"Lieve hemel, kapitein, don't speak of such things," he gasped.
"Then don't talk drivel," Van Slyck snarled. "You can't make big profits without taking big chances. And you can't have piracy without a little blood-letting. We're in this now, and there's no going back. So stop your squealing."
Settling back into his chair, he looked calmly seaward and exhaled huge clouds of tobacco smoke. The frown deepened on Muller's troubled brow as he stared vacantly across the crushed coral-shell highway.
"You can think of no reason why his excellency should be offended with us, kapitein?" he ventured anxiously.
The controlleur's eagerness to include him in his misfortune, evidenced by the use of the plural pronoun, evoked a sardonic flicker in Van Slyck's cold, gray eyes.
"No, mynheer, I cannot conceive why the governor should want to get rid of so valuable a public servant as you are," he assured ironically. "You have certainly done your best. There have been a few disturbances, of course, some head-hunting, and the taxes have not been paid, but outside of such minor matters everything has done well, very well indeed."
"Donder en bliksem," Muller exclaimed, "how can I raise taxes when those Midianites, the hill Dyaks, will not let my coast Dyaks grow a spear of rice? Has there been a month without a raid? Answer me, kapitein. Have you spent a whole month in the stockade without being called to beat back some of these thieving plunderers and drive them into their hills?"
The sardonic smile flashed across Van Slyck's face again.
"Quite true, mynheer. But sometimes I don't know if I blame the poor devils. They tell me they're only trying to get even because your coast Dyaks and Ah Sing's crowd rob them so. Ah Sing must be making quite a profit out of the slave business. I'll bet he shipped two hundred to China last year."
He glanced quizzically at his associate.
"By the way, mynheer," he observed, "you ought to know something about that. I understand you get a per cent on it."
"I?" Muller exclaimed, and looked affrightedly about him. "I, kapitein?"
"Oh, yes you do," Van Slyck asserted airily. "You've got money invested with Ah Sing in two proas that are handling that end of the business. And it's the big end just now. The merchandise pickings are small, and that is all I share in."
He looked at Muller meaningly. There was menace in his eyes and menace in his voice as he announced:
"I'm only mentioning this, mynheer, so that if the new resident should happen to be one of us, with a claim to the booty, his share comes out of your pot, not mine. Remember that!"
For once cupidity overcame Muller's fear of the sharp-witted cynical soldier.
"Wat de drommel," he roared, "do you expect me to pay all, kapitein, all? Not in a thousand years! If there must be a division you shall give up your per cent as well as I, stuiver for stuiver, gulden for gulden!"
A hectic spot glowed in each of Van Slyck's cheeks, and his eyes glittered. Muller's anger rose.
"Ah Sing shall decide between us," he cried heatedly. "You cannot rob me in that way, kapitein."
Van Slyck turned on his associate with an oath. "Ah Sing be damned. We'll divide as I say, or – "
The pause was more significant than words. Muller's ruddy face paled. Van Slyck tapped a forefinger significantly on the arm of his chair.
"Just remember, if the worst comes to the worst, there's this one difference between you and me, mynheer. I'm not afraid to die, and you – are!" He smiled.
Muller's breath came thickly, and he stared fascinatedly into the evilly handsome face of the captain, whose eyes were fixed on his with a basilisk glare. Several seconds passed; then Van Slyck said:
"See that you remember these things, mynheer, when our next accounting comes."
The silence that followed was broken by the rhythmic pad-pad of wicker sandals on a bamboo floor. Cho Seng came on the veranda, bearing a tray laden with two glasses of finest crystal and a decanter of colorless liquid, both of which he placed on a small porch table. Drops of dew formed thickly on the chilled surface of the decanter and rolled off while the Chinaman mixed the juices of fruits and crushed leaves with the potent liquor. The unknown discoverer of the priceless recipe he used receives more blessings in the Indies daily than all the saints on the calendar. When Cho Seng had finished, he withdrew. Muller swallowed the contents of his glass in a single gulp. Van Slyck sipped leisurely. Gradually the tension lessened. After a while, between sips, the captain remarked:
"I hear you have a chance to pick up some prize money."
Muller looked up with interest. "So, kapitein!" he exclaimed with forced jocularity. "Have you found a place where guilders grow on trees?"
"Almost as good as that," Van Slyck replied, playing his fish.
Finesse and indirection were not Muller's forte. "Well, tell us about it, kapitein," he demanded bluntly.
Van Slyck's eyes twinkled.
"Catch Koyala," he replied.
The captain's meaning sank into Muller's mind slowly. But as comprehension began to dawn upon him, his face darkened. The veins showed purple under the ruddy skin.
"You are too clever this morning, kapitein," he snarled. "Let me remind you that this is your duty. The controlleur sits as judge, he does not hunt the accused."
Van Slyck laughed.
"And let me remind you, mynheer, that I haven't received the governor's orders as yet, although they reached you more than a week ago." Ironically he added: "You must not let your friendship with Koyala blind you to your public duties, mynheer."
Muller's face became darker still. He had not told any one, and the fact that the orders seemed to be public property both alarmed and angered him.
"How did you hear of it?" he demanded.
"Not from you, mynheer," Van Slyck mocked. "I really do not remember who told me." (As a matter of fact it was Wang Fu, the Chinese merchant.)
Muller reflected that officers from the gun-boat which carried Van Schouten's mandate might have told more than they should have at the stockade. But Koyala had received his warning a full week before, so she must be safely hidden in the jungle by now, he reasoned. Pulling himself together, he replied urbanely:
"Well, kapitein, it is true that I have rather neglected that matter. I intended to speak to you to-day. His excellency orders Koyala Bintang Burung's arrest."
"The argus pheasant," Van Slyck observed, "is rarely shot. It must be trapped."
"Nu, kapitein, that is a chance for you to distinguish yourself," Muller replied heartily, confident that Van Slyck could never land Koyala.
Van Slyck flecked the ash from his cigar and looked at the glowing coal thoughtfully.
"It seems to me that you might be of material assistance, mynheer," he observed.
"In what way?"
"I have noticed that the witch-woman is not – er – " He glanced at Muller quizzically, wondering how far he might venture to go – "not altogether indifferent to you."
Muller drew a deep breath. His ruddy face became a grayish purple. His clenched hands gripped each other until the bones crunched and the veins stood in ridges. Drops of perspiration gathered on his forehead, he wiped them away mechanically.
"Kapitein!" he gasped.
Van Slyck looked at him increduously, for he had not dreamed Muller's feelings ran so deeply.
"You think – she – sometimes thinks of me?"
Van Slyck's nimble wits were calculating the value to him of this new weakness of the controlleur. He foresaw infinite possibilities, Muller in love would be clay in his hands.
"I am positive, mynheer," he assured with the utmost gravity.
"Kapitein, do not make a mistake," Muller entreated. His voice trembled and broke. "Are you absolutely sure?"
