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CHAPTER X
Captain Carver Signs
When Peter Gross recovered consciousness fifteen minutes later he found himself in familiar quarters. He was lying on a cot in Captain Rouse's den, commonly designated by that gentleman as "the cabin." Captain Rouse's face, solemn as an owl's, was leaning over him. As he blinked the captain's lips expanded into a grin.
"Wot did I tell ye, 'e's all right!" the captain roared delightedly. "Demmit, ye can't kill a Sunda schooner bucko mate with a little bloodlettin'. Ah Sing pretty near got ye, eh, Peter?"
The last was to Peter Gross, who was sitting up and taking inventory of his various bandages, also of his hosts. There were two strangers in the room. One was a short, stocky young man with a pugnacious Irish nose, freckly face, and hair red as a burnished copper boiler. His eyes were remarkably like the jovial navigator's, Peter Gross observed. The other was a dark, well-dressed man of about forty, with a military bearing and reserved air. He bore the stamp of gentility.
"Captain Carver," Roaring Rory announced. "My old mate, Peter Gross, the best man as ever served under me."
The elder man stepped forward and clasped Peter Gross's hand. The latter tried to rise, but Carver restrained him.
"You had better rest a few moments, Mr. Gross," he said. There was a quiet air of authority in his voice that instantly attracted the resident, who gave him a keen glance.
"My nevvy, Paddy, Peter, the doggonest young scamp an old sea-horse ever tried to raise," Rouse bellowed. "I wish I could have him for'ard with a crew like we used to have on the old Gloucester Maid." He guffawed boisterously while the younger of the two strangers, his face aglow with a magnetic smile, sprang forward and caught Peter Gross's hand in a quick, dynamic grip.
"Them's the lads ye've got to thank for bein' here," Roaring Rory announced, with evident pride. "If they hadn't heard the fracas and butted in, the Chinks would have got ye sure."
"I rather fancied it was you whom I have to thank for being here," Peter Gross acknowledged warmly. "You were certainly just in time."
"Captain Rouse is too modest," Captain Carver said. "It was he who heard the disturbance and jumped to the conclusion you might be – in difficulty."
The old navigator shook his head sadly. "I warned ye, Peter," he said; "I warned ye against that old devil, Ah Sing. Didn't I tell you to be careful at night? Ye ain't fit to be trusted alone, Peter."
"I think you did," Peter Gross acknowledged with a twinkle. "But didn't you fix our appointment for to-night?"
"Ye should have carried a gun," Roaring Rory reproved. "Leastwise a belayin'-pin. Ye like to use your fists too well, Peter. Fists are no good against knives. I'm a peace-lovin' man, Peter, 'twould be better for ye if ye patterned after me."
Peter Gross smiled, for Roaring Rory's record for getting into scrapes was known the length and breadth of the South Pacific. Looking up, he surprised a merry gleam in Captain Carver's eyes and Paddy striving hard to remain sober.
"I'll remember your advice, captain," Peter Gross assured.
"Humph!" Roaring Rory grunted. "Well, Peter, is your head clear enough to talk business?"
"I think so," Peter Gross replied slowly. "Have you explained the matter I came here to discuss?"
"Summat, summat," Rouse grunted. "I leave the talking to you, Peter."
"Captain Rouse told me you wanted some one to take charge of a company of men for a dangerous enterprise somewhere in the South Pacific," Carver replied. "He said it meant risking life. That might mean anything to piracy. I understand, however, that your enterprise has official sanction."
"My appointment is from the governor-general of the Netherlands East Indies," Peter Gross stated.
"Ah, yes."
"I need a man to drill and lead twenty-five men, all of whom have had some military training. I want a man who knows the Malays and their ways and knows the bush."
"I was in the Philippines for two years as a captain of volunteer infantry," Carver said. "I was in Shanghai for four years and had considerable dealings at that time with the Chinese. I know a little of their language."
"Have you any one dependent on you?"
"I am a bachelor," Captain Carver replied.
"Does twenty-five hundred a year appeal to you?"
"That depends entirely on what services I should be expected to render."
Confident that he had landed his man, and convinced from Captain Rouse's recommendation and his own observations that Carver was the very person he had been seeking, Peter Gross threw reserve aside and frankly stated the object of his expedition and the difficulties before him.
"You see," he concluded, "the game is dangerous, but the stakes are big. I have no doubt but what Governor Van Schouten will deal handsomely with every one who helps restore order in the residency."
Captain Carver was frowning.
"I don't like the idea of playing one native element against another," he declared. "It always breeds trouble. The only people who have ever been successful in pulling it off is the British in India, and they had to pay for it in blood during the Mutiny. The one way to pound the fear of God into the hearts of these benighted browns and blacks is to show them you're master. Once they get the idea the white man can't keep his grip without them, look out for treachery."
"I've thought of that," Peter Gross replied sadly. "But to do as you suggest will take at least two regiments and will cost the lives of several thousand Dyaks. You will have to lay the country bare, and you will sow a seed of hate that is bound to bear fruit. But if I can persuade them to trust me, Bulungan will be pacified. Brooke did it in Sarawak, and I believe I can do it here."
Carver stroked his chin in silence.
"You know the country," he said. "If you have faith and feel you want me, I'll go with you."
"I'll have a lawyer make the contracts at once," Peter Gross replied. "We can sign them to-morrow."
"Can't you take me with you, too, Mr. Gross?" Paddy Rouse asked eagerly.
Peter Gross looked at the lad. The boy's face was eloquent with entreaty.
"How old are you?" he asked.
"Seventeen," came the halting acknowledgment. "But I've done a man's work for a year. Haven't I, avunculus?"
Captain Rouse nodded a reluctant assent. "I hate to miss ye, my boy," he said, "but maybe a year out there would get the deviltry out of ye and make a man of ye. If Peter wants ye, he may have ye."
A flash of inspiration came to Peter Gross as he glanced at the boy's tousled shock of fiery-red hair.
"I'll take you on a private's pay," he said. "A thousand a year. Is that satisfactory?"
"I'm signed," Paddy whooped. "Hooray!"
When Peter Gross and his company left Tanjong Priok a fortnight later Captain Rouse bade them a wistful good-bye at the wharf.
"Take care of the lad; he's all I got," he said huskily to the resident. "If it wasn't for the damned plantation I'd go with ye, too."
CHAPTER XI
Mynheer Muller's Dream
The Dutch gun-boat Prins Lodewyk, a terror to evil-doers in the Java and Celebes seas, steamed smartly up Bulungan Bay and swung into anchorage a quarter of a mile below the assemblage of junks and Malay proas clustered at the mouth of Bulungan River. She carried a new flag below her ensign, the resident's flag. As she swung around, her guns barked a double salute, first to the flag and then to the resident. Peter Gross and his company were come to Bulungan.
The pert brass cannon of the stockade answered gun for gun. It was the yapping of terrier against mastiff, for the artillery of the fortress was of small caliber and an ancient pattern. Its chief service was to intimidate the natives of the town who had once been bombarded during an unfortunate rebellion and had never quite forgotten the sensation of being under shell-fire.
Peter Gross leaned over the rail of the vessel and looked fixedly shoreward. His strong, firm chin was grimly set. There were lines in his face that had not been there a few weeks before when he was tendered and accepted his appointment as resident. Responsibility was sitting heavily upon his shoulders, for he now realized the magnitude of the task he had so lightly assumed.
Captain Carver joined him. "All's well, so far, Mr. Gross," he observed.
Peter Gross let the remark stand without comment for a moment. "Ay, all's well so far," he assented heavily.
There was another pause.
"Are we going ashore this afternoon?" Carver inquired.
"That is my intention."
"Then you'll want the boys to get their traps on deck. At what hour will you want them?"
"I think I shall go alone," Peter Gross replied quietly.
Carver looked up quickly. "Not alone, Mr. Gross," he expostulated.
Peter Gross looked sternly shoreward at the open water-front of Bulungan town, where dugouts, sampans, and crude bark canoes were frantically shooting about to every point of the compass in helter-skelter confusion.
"I think it would be best," he said.
Carver shook his head. "I don't think I'd do it, Mr. Gross," he advised gravely. "I don't think you ought to take the chance."
"To convince an enemy you are not afraid is often half the fight," Peter Gross observed.
"A good rule, but it doesn't apply to a pack of assassins," Carver replied. "And that's what we seem to be up against. You can't take too big precautions against whelps that stab in the dark."
Peter Gross attempted no contradiction. The ever increasing concourse of scantily clad natives along the shore held his attention. Carver scanned his face anxiously.
"They pretty nearly got you at Batavia, Mr. Gross," he reminded, anxiety overcoming his natural disinclination to give a superior unsolicited advice.
"You may be right," Peter Gross conceded mildly.
Carver pushed his advantage. "If Ah Sing's tong men will take a chance at murdering you in Batavia under the nose of the governor, they won't balk at putting you out of the way in Bulungan, a thousand miles from nowhere. There's a hundred ways they can get rid of a man and make it look like an accident."
"We must expect to take some risks."
Perceiving the uselessness of argument, Carver made a final plea. "At least let me go with you," he begged.
Peter Gross sighed and straightened to his full six feet two. "Thank you, captain," he said, "but I must go alone. I want to teach Bulungan one thing to-day – that Peter Gross is not afraid."
While Captain Carver was vainly trying to dissuade Peter Gross from going ashore, Kapitein Van Slyck hastened from his quarters at the fort to the controlleur's house. Muller was an uncertain quantity in a crisis, the captain was aware; it was vital that they act in perfect accord. He found his associate pacing agitatedly in the shade of a screen of nipa palms between whose broad leaves he could watch the trim white hull and spotless decks of the gun-boat.
Muller was smoking furiously. At the crunch of Van Slyck's foot on the coraled walk he turned quickly, with a nervous start, and his face blanched.
"Oh, kapitein," he exclaimed with relief, "is it you?"
"Who else would it be?" Van Slyck growled, perceiving at once that Muller had worked himself into a frenzy of apprehension.
"I don't know. I thought, perhaps, Cho Seng – "
"You look as though you'd seen a ghost. What's there about Cho Seng to be afraid of?"
" – that Cho Seng had come to tell me Mynheer Gross was here," Muller faltered.
Van Slyck looked at him keenly, through narrowed lids.
"Hum!" he grunted with emphasis. "So it is Mynheer Gross already with you, eh, Muller?"
There was a significant emphasis on the "mynheer."
Muller flushed. "Don't get the notion I'm going to sweet-mouth to him simply because he is resident, kapitein," he retorted, recovering his dignity. "You know me well enough – my foot is in this as deeply as yours."
"Yes, and deeper," Van Slyck replied significantly.
The remark escaped Muller. He was thrusting aside the screen of nipa leaves to peer toward the vessel.
"No," he exclaimed with a sigh of relief, "he has not left the ship yet. There are two civilians at the forward rail – come, kapitein, do you think one of them is he?"
He opened the screen wider for Van Slyck. The captain stepped forward with an expression of bored indifference and peered through the aperture.
"H-m!" he muttered. "I wouldn't be surprised if the big fellow is Gross. They say he has the inches."
"I hope to heaven he stays aboard to-day," Muller prayed fervently.
"He can come ashore whenever he wants to, for all I care," Van Slyck remarked.
Muller straightened and let the leaves fall back.
"Lieve hemel, neen, kapitein," he expostulated. "What would I do if he should question me. My reports are undone, there are a dozen cases to be tried, I have neglected to settle matters with some of the chiefs, and my accounts are in a muddle. I don't see how I am ever going to straighten things out – then there are those other things – what will he say?"
He ran his hands through his hair in nervous anxiety. Van Slyck contemplated his agitation with a darkening frown. "Is the fool going to pieces?" was the captain's harrowing thought. He clapped a hand on Muller's shoulder with an assumption of bluff heartiness.
"'Sufficient unto the day – ' You know the proverb, mynheer," he said cheerfully. "There's nothing to worry about – we won't give him a chance at you for two weeks. Kapitein Enckel of the Prins will probably bring him ashore to-day. We'll receive him here; I'll bring my lieutenants over, and Cho Seng can make us a big dinner.
"To-night there will be schnapps and reminiscences, to-morrow morning a visit of inspection to the fort, to-morrow afternoon a bitchara with the Rajah Wobanguli, and the day after a visit to Bulungan town. At night visits to Wang Fu's house and Marinus Blauwpot's, with cards and Hollands. I'll take care of him for you, and you can get your books in shape. Go to Barang, if you want to, the day we visit Rotterdam – leave word with Cho Seng you were called away to settle an important case. Leave everything to me, and when you get back we'll have mynheer so drunk he won't know a tax statement from an Edammer cheese."
Muller's face failed to brighten at the hopeful program mapped out by his associate. If anything, his agitation increased.
"But he might ask questions to-day, kapitein– questions I cannot answer."
Van Slyck's lips curled. His thought was: "Good God, what am I going to do with this lump of jelly-fish?" But he replied encouragingly:
"No danger of that at all, mynheer. There are certain formalities that must be gone through first before a new resident takes hold. It would not be good form to kick his predecessor out of office without giving the latter a chance to close his books – even a pig of a Yankee knows that. Accept his credentials if he offers them, but tell him business must wait till the morning. Above all, keep your head, say nothing, and be as damnably civil as though he were old Van Schouten himself. If we can swell his head none of us will have to worry."
"But my accounts, kapitein," Muller faltered.
"To the devil with your accounts," Van Slyck exclaimed, losing patience. "Go to Barang, fix them up as best you can."
"I can never get them to balance," Muller cried. "Our dealings – the rattan we shipped – you know." He looked fearfully around.
"There never was a controlleur yet that didn't line his own pockets," Van Slyck sneered. "But his books never showed it. You are a book-keeper, mynheer, and you know how to juggle figures. Forget these transactions; if you can't, charge the moneys you got to some account. There are no vouchers or receipts in Bulungan. A handy man with figures, like yourself, ought to be able to make a set of accounts that that ferret Sachsen himself could not find a flaw in."
"But that is not the worst," Muller cried despairingly. "There are the taxes, the taxes I should have sent to Batavia, the rice that we sold instead to Ah Sing."
"Good God! Have you grown a conscience?" Van Slyck snarled. "If you have, drown yourself in the bay. Lie, you fool, lie! Tell him the weevils ruined the crop, tell him the floods drowned it, tell him a tornado swept the fields bare, lay it to the hill Dyaks – anything, anything! But keep your nerve, or you'll hang sure."
Muller retreated before the captain's vehemence.
"But the bruinevels, kapitein?" he faltered. "They may tell him something different."
"Wobanguli won't; he's too wise to say anything," Van Slyck asserted firmly. "None of the others will dare to, either – all we've got to do is to whisper Ah Sing's name to them. But there's little danger of any of them except the Rajah seeing him until after the Prins is gone. Once she's out of the harbor I don't care what they say – no word of it will ever get back to Batavia."
His devilishly handsome smile gleamed sardonically, and he twisted his nicely waxed mustache. Muller's hands shook.
"Kapitein," he replied in an odd, strained voice, "I am afraid of this Peter Gross. I had a dream last night, a horrible dream – I am sure it was him I saw. I was in old de Jonge's room in the residency building – you know the room – and the stranger of my dream sat in old de Jonge's chair.
"He asked me questions, questions of how I came here, and what I have done here, and I talked and talked till my mouth was dry as the marsh grass before the rains begin to fall. All the while he listened, and his eyes seemed to bore through me, as though they said: 'Judas, I know what is going on in your heart.'
"At last, when I could say no more, he asked me: 'Mynheer, how did Mynheer de Jonge die?' Then I fell on the ground before him and told him all – all. At the last, soldiers came to take me away to hang me, but under the very shadow of the gallows a bird swooped down out of the air and carried me away, away into the jungle. Then I awoke."
Van Slyck broke into scornful laughter.
"Mynheer, you had enough to worry about before you started dreaming," he said bluntly. "If you're going to fill your head with such foolishness I'll leave you to your own devices."
"But, kapitein, it might be a warning," Muller cried desperately.
"Heaven doesn't send ravens to cheat such rogues as you and I from the gallows, mynheer," Van Slyck mocked. "We might as well get ready to meet our new resident. I see a boat putting off from the ship."
CHAPTER XII
Peter Gross's Reception
When Peter Gross stepped ashore at the foot of the slope on which the fort and government buildings stood, three thousand pairs of eyes, whose owners were securely hidden in the copses and undergrowth for a quarter of a mile in both directions along the shore-line, watched his every movement. With the lightning celerity with which big news travels word had been spread through Bulungan town that the new resident was coming ashore, and every inhabitant possessed of sound legs to bear him had run, crawled, or scrambled to a favorable patch of undergrowth where he could get a first glimpse of the orang blanda chief without being observed.
Perfectly aware of this scrutiny, but calmly oblivious to it, Peter Gross stepped out of the boat and directed the sailors who rowed it to return to their ship. As their oars bit the water he faced the path that wound up the hillside and walked along it at a dignified and easy pace. His sharp ears caught the incessant rustle of leaves, a rustle not made by the breeze, and the soft grinding of bits of coral under the pressure of naked feet.
Once he surprised a dusky face in the bush, but his glance roved to the next object in his line of vision in placid unconcern. As he mounted the rise he made for the controlleur's home, strolling along as calmly as though he were on a Batavia lane.
"Duivel noch toe!" Muller exclaimed as the boat returned to the ship. "He is coming here alone." His voice had an incredulous ring as though he half doubted the evidence of his own senses.
Van Slyck's eyes danced with satisfaction, and his saturnine smile was almost Mephistophelian.
"By Nassau, I was right, after all, mynheer," he exclaimed. "He's an ass of a Yankee that Van Schouten is having some sport with in sending him here."
"There may be something behind this, kapitein," Muller cautioned apprehensively, but Van Slyck cut him short.
"Behind this, mynheer? The fool does not even know how to maintain the dignity due his office. Would he land this way, like a pedler with his pack, if he did? Oh, we are going to have some rare sport – "
Van Slyck's merriment broke loose in a guffaw.
"You-you will not do anything violent, kapitein?" Muller asked apprehensively.
"Violent?" Van Slyck exclaimed. "I wouldn't hurt him for a thousand guilders, mynheer. He's going to be more fun than even you."
The frank sneer that accompanied the remark made the captain's meaning sufficiently clear to penetrate even so sluggish a mind as the controlleur's. He reddened, and an angry retort struggled to his lips, but he checked it before it framed itself into coherent language. He was too dependent on Van Slyck, he realized, to risk offending the latter now, but for the first time in their acquaintanceship his negative dislike of his more brilliant associate deepened to a positive aversion.
"What are we going to do, kapitein?" he asked quietly.
"Welcome him, mynheer!" Again the sardonic smile. "Treat him to some of your fine cigars and a bottle of your best Hollands. Draw him out, make him empty his belly to us. When we have sucked him dry and drenched him with liquor we will pack him back to the Prins to tell Kapitein Enckel what fine fellows we are. To-morrow we'll receive him with all ceremony – I'll instruct him this afternoon how a resident is installed in his new post and how he must conduct himself.
"Enckel will leave here without a suspicion, Mynheer Gross will be ready to trust even his purse to us if we say the word, and we will have everything our own way as before. But s-s-st! Here he comes!" He lifted a restraining hand. "Lord, what a shoulder of beef! Silence, now, and best your manners, mynheer. Leave the talking to me."
Peter Gross walked along the kenari-tree shaded lane between the evergreen hedges clipped with characteristic Dutch primness to a perfect plane. Behind him formed a growing column of natives whose curiosity had gotten the better of their diffidence.
The resident's keen eyes instantly ferreted out Van Slyck and Muller in the shadows of the veranda, but he gave no sign of recognition. Mounting the steps of the porch, he stood for a moment in dignified expectancy, his calm, gray eyes taking the measure of each of its occupants.
An apprehensive shiver ran down Muller's spine as he met Peter Gross's glance – those gray eyes were so like the silent, inscrutable eyes of the stranger in de Jonge's chair whom he saw in his dream. It was Van Slyck who spoke first.
"You were looking for some one, mynheer?" he asked.
"For Mynheer Muller, the controlleur and acting resident. I think I have found him."
The mildness with which these words were spoken restored the captain's aplomb, momentarily shaken by Peter Gross's calm, disconcerting stare.
"You have a message for us?"
"I have," Peter Gross replied.
"Ah, from Kapitein Enckel, I suppose," Van Slyck remarked urbanely. "Your name is – " He paused significantly.
"It is from his excellency, the Jonkheer Van Schouten," Peter Gross corrected quietly.
Peter Gross's tolerance of this interrogation convinced Van Slyck that he had to do with an inferior intelligence suddenly elevated to an important position and very much at sea in it.
"And your message, I understand, is for Mynheer Muller, the controlleur?" the captain inquired loftily with a pert uptilt of his chin.
"For Mynheer Muller, the controlleur," Peter Gross acknowledged gravely.
"Ah, yes. This is Mynheer Muller." He indicated the controlleur with a flourish. "But you have not yet told us your name."
"I am Peter Gross."
"Ah, yes, Pieter Gross. Pieter Gross." The captain repeated the name with evident relish. "Pieter Gross. Mynheer Pieter Gross."
There was a subtle emphasis on the mynheer– a half-doubtful use of the word, as though he questioned Peter Gross's right to a gentleman's designation. It was designed to test the sailor.
Peter Gross's face did not change a muscle. Turning to the controlleur, he asked in a voice of unruffled calm: "May I speak to you privately, mynheer?"
Muller glanced apprehensively at Van Slyck. The fears inspired by his dreams made him more susceptible to ulterior impressions than the captain, whose naturally more acute sensibilities were blunted by the preconceived conviction that he had an ignorant Yankee to deal with. Van Slyck smiled cynically and observed:
"Am I in the way, Mynheer Gross?" Again the ironic accent to the mynheer. He rose to go, but Muller stayed him with the cry:
"Neen, neen, kapitein. Whatever comes from the governor concerns you, too. Stay with us, and we will see what his excellency has to say."
None knew the importance of first impressions better than the captain. If the new resident could be thwarted in his purpose of seeing Muller alone that achievement would exercise its influence on all their future relations, Van Slyck perceived.
Assuming an expression of indifference, he sank indolently into an easy chair. When he looked up he found the gray eyes of Peter Gross fixed full upon him.
"Perhaps I should introduce myself further, captain," Peter Gross said. "I am Mynheer Gross, of Batavia, your new resident by virtue of his excellency the Jonkheer Van Schouten's appointment."
Van Slyck's faint, cynical smile deepened a trifle.
"Ah, mynheer has been appointed resident," he remarked non-committally.
Peter Gross's face hardened sternly.
"It is not the custom in Batavia, captain, for officers of the garrison to be seated while their superiors stand."
For a moment the astonished captain lost his usual assurance. In that moment he unwittingly scrambled to his feet in response to the commanding look of the gray eyes that stared at him so steadily. The instant his brain cleared he regretted the action, but another lightning thought saved him from the folly of defying the resident by reseating himself in the chair he had vacated. Furious at Peter Gross, furious at himself, he struggled futilely for an effective reply and failed to find it. In the end he took refuge in a sullen silence.
Peter Gross turned again to Muller.
"Here are my credentials, mynheer, and a letter from his excellency, the governor-general," he announced simply.
With the words he placed in Muller's hands two envelopes plentifully decorated with sealing-wax stamped with the great seal of the Netherlands. The controlleur took them with trembling fingers. Peter Gross calmly appropriated a chair. As he seated himself he remarked:
"Gentlemen, you may sit."
Van Slyck ignored the permission and strolled to one end of the veranda. He was thinking deeply, and all the while stole covert looks at Peter Gross. Had he been mistaken, after all, in his estimate of the man? Was this apparent guilelessness and simplicity a mask? Were Koyala and Muller right? Or was the resident's sudden assumption of dignity a petty vanity finding vent in the display of newly acquired powers?
He stole another look. That face, it was so frank and ingenuous, so free from cunning and deceit, and so youthful. Its very boyishness persuaded Van Slyck. Vanity was the inspiration for the resident's sudden assertion of the prerogatives of his office, he decided, the petty vanity of a boor eager to demonstrate authority. Confidence restored, he became keenly alert for a chance to humble this froward Yankee.
It was some time before Muller finished reading the documents. He was breathing heavily the while, for he felt that he was reading his own death-warrant. There was no doubting their authenticity, for they were stamped with the twin lions of the house of Orange and the motto, "Je Maintiendrai." The signature at the bottom of each was the familiar scrawl of Java's gamecock governor.
Muller stared at them blankly for a long time, as though he half hoped to find some mitigation of the blow that swept his vast administrative powers as acting resident from him to the magistracy of a district. Dropping them on his lap at last with a weary sigh, he remarked:
"Welcome, Mynheer Gross, to Bulungan. I wish I could say more, but I cannot. The most I can say is that I am happy his excellency has at last yielded to my petition and has relieved me of a portion of my duties. It is a hard, hard residency to govern, mynheer."
"A splendid start," Van Slyck muttered to himself under his breath.
"So I have been informed, mynheer," Peter Gross replied gravely. "Pardon me a moment."
He turned toward Van Slyck: "Captain, I have a letter for you also from his excellency. It will inform you of my appointment."
"It would be better form, perhaps, mynheer, for me to receive his excellency's commands at Fort Wilhelmina," Van Slyck replied suavely, delighted at being able to turn the tables.
"Very true, very true, kapitein, if you insist," Peter Gross agreed quietly. "I hope to visit you at the fort within the hour. In the mean time you will excuse Mynheer Muller and me."
For the second time a cold chill of doubt seized Van Slyck. Was it possible that he had misjudged his man? If he had, it was doubly dangerous to leave Muller alone with him. He resolved to force the issue.
"A thousand pardons, mynheer," he apologized smilingly. "Mynheer Muller just now requested me to remain."
A swift change came into the face of Peter Gross. His chin shot forward; in place of the frank simplicity on which Van Slyck had based his estimate was a look of authority.
"Mynheer Muller cancels that invitation at my request," he announced sternly.
Van Slyck glanced in quick appeal at his associate, but Muller's eyes were already lowering under Peter Gross's commanding glance. Unable to find a straw of excuse for holding the captain, the controlleur stammered:
"Certainly, mynheer. I will see you later, kapitein."
Even then Van Slyck lingered, afraid now to leave Muller alone. But the cold, gray eyes of Peter Gross followed him; they expressed a decision from which there was no appeal. Furious at Muller, furious at his own impotence, the captain walked slowly across the veranda. Half-way down the steps he turned with a glare of defiance, but thought better of it. Raging inwardly, and a prey to the blackest passions, he strode toward the stockade. The unhappy sentinel at the gate, a Javanese colonial, was dozing against the brass cannon.
