Beyond the Rim/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
LEILA
CHALMERS stopped half way across the room. It was not his first encounter with death. His newspaper experience had divested it of much of its awe and dignity, but to him there seemed something peculiarly tragic about the sudden withdrawal of life from the man they had come so far to rescue. Possibly the dead captain had been alive when Chalmers had announced the schooner's position in Aku's cabin the night before, and had wondered in his last moments where his own schooner was, and if his men would come before the end.
Chalmers' main impulse was that of sympathy for the going-out of the man without a kindly word or friendly hand to minister to his last needs. He forgot the pearls. The long voyage had failed.
Sayers stood by the table, looking at some dishes that held the remnants of a meal. One platter was practically filled with small flat fish, like flounders, that had been fried in meal.
“He didn't die of starvation, that's a cinch,” he announced.
Tuan Yuck wheeled suddenly from the bed he had approached.
“Don't touch any of that food!” he cried sharply. “The man has been poisoned.”
“Poisoned!”
Tuan Yuck nodded.
“By the same thing that killed off the natives,” he said. “The fish in the lagoon. Probably ate them before, a dozen times, without their hurting him.”
They grouped about the bed. A brief look was sufficient. The dead captain's face, where his beard left it uncovered, was blotched with livid purple. So were the hands, one on his breast, one hanging over the edge of the bed at the full length of the arm. The corpse was fully dressed.
“Must have got him right after he ate them,” said Sayers. “I suppose it isn't catching?” he added suspiciously, drawing back a little.
The rare ejaculation that Tuan Yuck used for laughter escaped him.
“You needn't be afraid, Sayers,” he said. “Unless you are scared of his ghost.” Sayers shrugged his shoulders. “His capacity for good or evil will end with his burial.”
“We've got no time to bother with that,” said the Australian. “The Kanakas can bury him. The question is: where are the pearls?”
He commenced to pull the diving paraphernalia from the sea-chest. Chalmers caught his arm.
“The pearls can wait, Sayers,” he said. “We're going to give this man burial, and find out what we can about who he is and where he comes from. Haven't you any sense of decency?”
Sayers turned upon him, his wide-set, yellow teeth showing between his drawn-back lips in a snarl.
“See here, Chalmers,” he said. “You've been boss of this expedition aboard ship so far, but you're not running it from now on. What you need is to use some common sense of your own, and if you haven't got any I'll show you where to head in.”
Chalmers turned to Tuan Yuck. The Chinaman's mouth was stretched in a mirthless grimace, his eyes gleamed in mockery.
“Dead men neither tell tales nor need pearls, my young friend,” he said. “I see no reason for wasting any unnecessary time on this island. The man has made his second blunder, a frequent one, I grant you; he has died too soon.”
Chalmers looked from one to the other. Sayers' snarl had changed to an open grin; Tuan Yuck stood suavely unemotional. The partnership had dissolved, the pretense of fairness was tossed aside. He was aware that they considered him as but one against two, a youngster incomparably their inferior, whose will was but a small matter to be set aside as if of no consequence compared to their own desires.
But he felt no sense of fear or weakness. His jaw set as his will hardened.
“The man is going to be justly treated, alive or dead. His family is to be considered. It is worse to cheat the dead than rob the living. You two promised me fair play when I went into this deal, and I'm going to see that you live up to the bargain.”
His voice revealed the contempt in which he held them, and told of the action that lay behind the words. Sayers' right hand dropped casually toward his hip where the automatic pistol swung at his belt. At an almost imperceptible move of Tuan Yuck's head he arrested the action.
“Time enough to talk of division when we find the pearls,” said the Chinaman. “If you are so desirous of ceremonial, Chalmers, why don't you superintend the funeral arrangements?”
It was the first time Tuan Yuck had dropped the prefix of “Mr.” in addressing Chalmers, and it appeared to the latter as if the man's whole mask had fallen. A film seemed to have cleared from his eyes, and for a moment his soul looked out, sardonic, sinister, utterly selfish. He moved, giving Chalmers a clear view of the table.
Chalmers had paid no attention to the arrangement of the dishes. Now he saw something that first startled, then reassured him.
“There's one point you two seem to have overlooked,” he said with a little ring of triumph in his voice. “This table is set for two. There is some one else on the island.”
Sayers kneeling by the open sea-chest, tossing its contents on the floor, looked up.
“Why don't you go and find them?” he said.
“I am going to,” answered Chalmers.
He swung out of the room, glad to escape from the sordid company it held. Tuan Yuck stood with his hands folded in his loose sleeves, his eyes still sneering. Sayers laughed as Chalmers went out. It was not until he was free of the house that he realized they had shown no surprise at his announcement. It looked as if the secret Sayers and Tuan Yuck had so evidently shared included knowledge of another besides the captain having been left on the island. If that were the case, they evidently held that person of little importance.
“As they do me,” Chalmers finished the thought bitterly.
The resentment he had so often felt in the presence of the Chinaman's inscrutability changed to a determined hostility. He understood that caution was necessary. Until he could find the unknown, they were two against one. The native sailors were not to be counted on, save by the side apparently in power. It would not do to declare war too hastily, he decided.
AS HE approached the tent, the suggestion came suddenly, that whoever had sat at table with the dead captain was probably also poisoned. That would account for the apparent apathy of Tuan Yuck and Sayers.
He hesitated outside the tent. The canvas was in full sunshine. Any one sleeping there must surely have been aroused. Half reluctantly he raised the flap and looked in. There was a cot bed, empty, a camp-stool, a low bureau and a trunk. Chalmers halted as he took in a survey of the interior and drew a sudden breath. On the trunk was a hat of soft white duck, like a man-of-warsman's, but with a quill in it; something that was unmistakably a woman's skirt, and beside it a pair of shoes, workmanlike, but eminently feminine.
A whirl of emotions possessed him. Who was the woman? The captain's wife—if she was not dead? Sayers and the Chinaman would show scant respect for her sex and weakness.
He squared his shoulders with a fresh sense of responsibility. It was no longer merely a question of a dead man's burial and the rights of a dead man's heirs. The woman might be living, suffering.
There was no trace of any one about the clearing, and Chalmers followed a little trail that led across the open toward the hills.
Just within the brush a spring bubbled up in a little basin that had been built up artificially. The path passed it, leading up-hill through a grove of pandanus. Chalmers followed it, coming out on a plateau covered with long grasses. Beyond this the hills, clothed with denser shrubbery from which sandalwood and koa trees sprang thickly, mounted more abruptly.
As Chalmers gazed, a slender figure, clad in white, came out of the forest toward him, knee-high in the waving grasses. Her hair showed radiant in the sun, but her face was pale and the eyes unseeing as the girl came nearer.
Her arms were filled with great, white waxen blossoms and trailing vines. Chalmers caught the heavy, sickly scent of the flowers twenty feet away. They reminded him of a mortuary and he knew they had been gathered for the dead.
At first he thought her blind, so vacant was the gaze of the eyes that were the deep blue of the open sea. Then, suddenly, she saw him standing there. The soul came back into her glance as if recalled from very far away. Her lips parted, the flowers fell to the ground.
One short-sleeved arm was raised toward him in appeal. Brief as the gesture was, Chalmers noticed the blue veins showing faintly beneath the satiny surface, tanned to pale gold.
“Who are you?” she asked.
Her voice held the quality of a linnet's song. The blue eyes were still a little vacant, the lids stained with grief. It seemed as if she were walking in her sleep.
Chalmers stammered a reply, trying to find phrases that would reassure her, all the chivalry of his nature aroused at the sight of her brave helplessness. But his words halted.
“I—why, I—we came to take you away,” he said.
“To take us away? Why did you stay so long? You are a day too late—just a day too late. If you had only hurried—perhaps”
The life in her eyes died out. Her hands groped toward him. She swayed uncertainly as Chalmers sprang forward and caught her in his arms.
He ran with her to the little spring and bathed her wrists and forehead in the cool water. Her head lay on his knees. In the checkered sunlight her hair was golden-brown and, despite the moisture that turned it to little tendrils on her brow, filled with the iridescence of splintered rainbows. The very ghost of a girl she seemed, Chalmers thought, as she lay slim and pale, her breast barely lifting beneath the white middy blouse she wore.
His manhood warmed at the sight of her utter helplessness. He wondered what relation she was to the dead captain. Probably his daughter, he decided, still working to bring her back to consciousness, already appointing himself her champion. As her protector he felt himself capable of handling a dozen Tuan Yucks, a score of Sayers!
He felt her body relax. A sigh parted her lips to which the color was beginning to return. The upper one drooped in a pendule over the pearly teeth. A faint rose tint came into her cheeks, and long lashes fluttered. A wave of tenderness came over him. He lifted the little hand he had been gently chafing, and raised it to his lips in token of fealty. She shivered a little at the contact and her eyes opened, looking questioningly into his.
There was a slight rustle in the thicket. Chalmers looked up to see Tuan Yuck regarding them, his face expressionless, his eyes inscrutable.
“You have found Miss Denman, I see,” he said. “Our friend Sayers is still looking for—what he will not find in a hurry, I fancy. We are at your service, Miss Denman.”
The girl shrank from him, closer to Chalmers.
“I do not know you,” she faltered. “Where is Butler—and the crew? Did you come in the schooner with them?”
She was trembling violently. Chalmers gently took her arm.
“We'll tell you all about it presently, Miss Denman,” he said. “We are here to help you. Perhaps we had better go down to the house.”
“Yes,” she assented, then started back. “Wait,” she said. “Where are my flowers? I must get my flowers. They are for my father.”
“They are just a little way back,” said Chalmers. “Shall I get them?”
“No!” They went back along the trail together and gathered up the blooms.
“Thank you,” she said. “My name is Leila Denman.”
“And mine, Bruce Chalmers,” he answered.
“I don't quite understand,” she went on. “You say you came here to help me, and I should be very grateful—but—” her eyes filled with tears and she caught her under lip between her teeth—“I have tried to be brave,” she went on, her voice tremulous, “but I could do nothing alone. I could not—even—bury him.”
Chalmers longed to take her into his arms and comfort her as one would a child. Her broken phrases called up the horror of her situation, alone with her dead father, forced, in with her frail strength, to plan crude, helpless methods of disposing of the body. It was horrible. He marveled at the spirit that had kept her from madness.
“It will be all right now, Miss Denman,” he said, conscious of the poverty of his phrase. “We will do all we can. We came to rescue your father. We—I—did not know you were here.”
As he spoke the suspicion came to him that Tuan Yuck and Sayers had been aware of her presence from the first.