IV
THE MURDER OF THE HAWKER
It is a damned and bloody work,
The graceless action of a heavy hand
King John
ONE afternoon, in 1892, a foreign Malay named Lenggang, who made a living by hawking in a boat on the Perak River, left Bota with his usual cargo and a hundred dollars which his cousin, the son of the Penghulu, had been keeping for him. He was alone in the boat and dropped down stream, saying he would call at some of the villages that line at intervals the banks of the river.
The next day this man's dead body, lying partly under a mosquito curtain, was discovered in the boat as it drifted past the village of Pulau Tiga. The local headman viewed it, but saw nothing to arouse his suspicions, fer the boat was full of valuables and a certain amount of money, while nothing in it seemed to have been disturbed, and
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