"It's bad. We might have known. If only I'd reached him first! By Jove, you must let me fight that beast. Duels? The idiot, n.o.body fights duels any more. I've always--His cuffs are always dirty, too, on the inside!"

Rudolph leaned back, like a man refreshed and comforted, but his laugh was unsteady, and too boisterous.

"It is well," he bragged. "Pistol-bullets--they fly on the wings of chance! No?--All is well."

"Pistols? My dear young gentleman," scoffed his friend, "there's not a pair of matched pistols in the settlement. And if there were, Chantel has the choice. He'll take swords."

He paused, in a silence that grew somewhat menacing. From a slit in the wall the wheel of the punkah-thong whined insistently,--rise and fall, rise and fall of peevish complaint, distressing as a brain-fever bird.

"Swords, of course," continued Heywood. "If only out of vanity.

Fencing,--oh, I hate the man, and the art's by-gone, if you like, but he's a beautiful swordsman! Wonderful!"

Rudolph still lay back, but now with a singular calm.

"It's just as well," he declared quietly.

Heywood loosed a great breath, a sigh of vast relief.

"My word!" he cried, grinning. "So you're there, too, eh? You young Sly-boots! If you're another expert--Bravo! We'll beat him at his own game! Hoist with his own what-d'-ye-call-it! I'd give anything"--He thumped the table, and pitched the cards broadcast, like an explosion of confetti, in a little carnival of glee. "You old Sly-boots!--But are you sure? He's quick as lightning."

"I am not afraid," replied Rudolph, modestly. He trained his young moustache upward with steady fingers, and sat very quiet, thinking long thoughts. A quaint smile played about his eyes.

"Good for you!" said Heywood. "Now let him come, as the Lord Mayor said of the hare. What sport! With an even chance--And what a load off one's mind!"

He moved away to the window, as though searching for air. Instead of moonlight, without, there swam the blue mist of dawn.

"Not a word must ever reach old Gilly," he mused. "Do you hear, Nesbit?"

"If you think," retorted the clerk, stiffly, "I don't know the proper course of be'aviour! Not likely!"

The tall silhouette in the window made no reply, but stood grumbling privately: "A club! Yes, where we drink out of jam-pots--dead cushions, dead b.a.l.l.s--no veranda--fellow that soils the inside of his cuffs first!

We're a pack of beach-combers."

He propped his elbows on the long sill, and leaned out, venting fragments of disgust. Then of a sudden he turned, and beckoned eagerly.

"Come here, you chaps. Look-see."

The others joined him. Gray vapors from river and paddy-field, lingering like steam in a slow breeze, paled and dispersed in the growing light, as the new day, worse than the old, came sullenly without breath or respite. A few twilight shapes were pattering through the narrow street--a squad of Yamen runners haling a prisoner.

"The Sword-Pen remains active," said Heywood, thoughtfully. "That dingy little procession, do you know, it's quite theatrical? The Cross and the Dragon. Eh? Another act's coming."

Even Rudolph could spare a misgiving from his own difficulty while he watched the prisoner. It was Chok Chung, the plump Christian merchant, slowly trudging toward the darkest of human courts, to answer for the death of the cormorant-fisher. The squad pa.s.sed by. Rudolph saw again the lighted shop, the tumbled figure retching on the floor; and with these came a memory of that cold and scornful face, thinking so cruelly among the unthinking rabble. The Sword-Pen had written something in the dark.

"I go find out"; and Wutzler was away, as keen as a village gossip.

"Trouble's comin'," Nesbit a.s.serted glibly. "There's politics afloat.

But I don't care." He stretched his arms, with a weary howl. "That's the first yawn I've done to-night. Trouble keeps, worse luck. I'm off--seek my downy."

Alone with the grunting sleeper, the two friends sat for a long time and watched the flooding daylight.

"What," began Rudolph, suddenly, and his voice trembled, "what is your true opinion? You are so kind, and I was just a fool. That other day, I would not listen. You laughed. Now tell me, so--as you were to die next.

You were joking? Can I truly be proud of--of her?"

He leaned forward, white and eager, waiting for the truth like a dicer for the final throw.

"Of yourself, dear old chap. Not of the lady. She's the fool, not you.

Poor old Gilly Forrester slaves here to send her junketing in j.a.pan, Kashmir, Ceylon, Home. What Chantel said--well, between the two of us, I'm afraid he's right. It's a pity."

Heywood paused, frowning.

"A pity, too, this quarrel. So precious few of us, and trouble ahead.

The natives lashing themselves into a state of mind, or being lashed.

The least spark--Rough work ahead, and here we are at swords' points."

"And the joke is," Rudolph added quietly, "I do not know a sword's point from a handle."

Heywood turned, glowered, and twice failed to speak.

"Rudie--old boy," he stammered, "that man--Preposterous! Why, it's plain murder!"

Rudolph stared straight ahead, without hope, without illusions, facing the haggard light of morning. A few weeks ago he might have wept; but now his laugh, short and humorous, was worthy of his companion.

"I do not care, more," he answered. "Luck, so called I it, when I escaped the militar' service. Ho ho! Luck, to pa.s.s into the _Ersatz!_--I do not care, now. I cannot believe, even cannot I fight.

Worthless--dreamer! My deserts. It's a good way out."

CHAPTER IX

Pa.s.sAGE AT ARMS

"Boy."

"Sai."

"S'pose Mr. Forrester bym-by come, you talkee he, master no got, you chin-chin he come-back."

"Can do."

The long-coated boy scuffed away, across the chunam floor, and disappeared in the darkness. Heywood submitted his head once more to the nimble hands of his groom, who, with horse-clippers and a pair of enormous iron shears, was tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the stubborn chestnut locks still closer. The afternoon glow, reflected from the burnt gra.s.s and white walls of the compound, struck upward in the vault-s.p.a.ces of the ground floor, and lighted oddly the keen-eyed yellow mafoo and his serious young master.

Nesbit, pert as a jockey, sat on the table swinging his feet furiously.

"Sturgeon would take it all right, of course," he said, with airy wisdom. "Quite the gentleman, he is. Netch'rally. No fault of his."

"Not the least," Heywood a.s.sented gloomily. "Did everything he could.

If I were commissioned to tell 'em outright--'The youngster can't fence'--why, we might save the day. But our man won't even listen to that. Fight's the word. Chantel will see, on the spot, directly they face. But will that stop him? No fear: he's worked up to the pitch of killing. He'll lunge first, and be surprised afterward.--So regrettable!

Such remorse!--Oh, I know _him!_"