Windsor Magazine/'It'

by Ralph Stock

"IT"

By RALPH STOCK

AT the far end of Thursday Island's grass-grown main street the pigmy-figure of a man appeared.

Doctor Seaton recognised it on the instant. He would have recognised it amongst a thousand others, for it was Wade—Wade in immaculate drills on shore leave. When he came abreast of the doctor's bungalow, he might glance in its direction out of habit, but, instead of dropping in for a chat and a smoke as of old, would pass on—to the Grahams'. There he would talk as he knew how, perhaps sing in his infernal light baritone, and generally captivate the assembled company for as long as He was allowed, returning to his lugger at last with an air of asinine content.

And why not?

Seaton had never found a satisfactory answer to that question. After a week—perhaps two—of trochas shelling in the neighbourhood of Torres Strait, who was not entitled to a few hours of the best there was in life—which meant Joyce Graham? And after them, what man could help walking with lighter step and an air that some might call asinine?

At this juncture in his reflections Seaton was in the habit of mentally kicking himself and turning his attention to something else. The process had never been easy, though lifelong self-discipline had rendered it almost mechanical. Of late it had become increasingly difficult. And to-night—to-night he found it impossible. With Wade's approach and the welcoming glow of the Grahams' windows, the stage set for an engaging love scene under his very eyes, something went wrong with Seaton's well-ordered mechanism. It refused. Perhaps the controls were worn from over-use, perhaps … In any case, his thoughts took charge and carried him hurtling into the abyss.

Have done for once with everlasting, all-consuming deception, he exhorted himself. Away with the trappings of convention, and what remained? In his own case nothing but the ugly truth that he loathed Wade. Never mind why. He loathed him, and would like to do him a hurt. It was nothing less than a reversion to the instincts of primeval man. Exactly. He, Doctor Donald Seaton, was such a man at that moment, and gloried in it. Instead of tamely watching your rival succeed where you have failed—for be it known that trochas shelling pays better than medicine in Torres Strait—you go out and kill him. He is in the way, so you remove him—or he removes you. What could be fairer, less involved?

Wade was quite close now, loping up the street like a centaur. He was in a hurry. Naturally. The Grahams' windows beckoned. The blood throbbed at Seaton's temples. He grinned. The notion was grotesque according to modern standards, but at that moment he was not a modern. He was a man. He would go out with a club and fight Wade for Joyce Graham in the main street.

He had actually moved—away from the window and across the room to where some Island weapons hung upon the wall—when Wade ran lightly up the verandah steps and entered without knocking.

"Doc!" he called breathlessly.

Seaton's hand, which had been outstretched, fell to his side.

"Yes," he answered mechanically.

"In? Good. Can I see you for a minute?" Wade came into the room without waiting for an answer. He was a small, spruce man, with a quick manner of speech and movement. "Sorry to trouble you, old man, but this is professional."

"Well?" said Seaton.

"It's rather a private matter." Wade glanced toward the open door.

Seaton shut it.

"Fire ahead," he said. "Won't you sit down?"

"No, thanks. It won't take a minute. I came to you because you're a pal as well as a doctor. Don't spare me. I want to know. What's that?"

Wade extended his hand palm upward. In the centre of it was a small, discoloured mark.

"Did it bleed?" Seaton asked.

"No. But it's not that—I didn't feel it."

Wade's quick glance searched Seaton's face for the effect of this statement, but none was visible.

"It went deep, and I didn't feel it," he repeated petulantly. "What d'you make of that?"

"It depends," said Seaton. "Hadn't you better tell me what happened? "

A frown puckered Wade's forehead, the quick frown of a short-tempered man.

"I don't see what that has to do with it," he complained. "It's results I'm after. What have I got?. Can't you diagnose, or whatever you call it? That's your job, isn't it?"

Seaton regarded him with professional tolerance.

"Yes," he said, "it's my job. I should say you've had a jab from a gimlet or some other tool breaking through its handle."

"Yes, but——"

"Just lay your hand on the table," Seaton directed in his soothing monotone. "No, palm up, and behind your back, if you don't mind. Do you feel anything?"

"No."

"Now?"

"No."

"Stay as you are a moment."

Seaton crossed the room and returned. A few silent moments passed, then he took a small square of glass, slipped it under a microscope, and switched on a powerful shaded light. His back was to Wade, but he could hear the other's slight nervous movements of suspense.

In a little while the examination was complete. Seaton knew all it was necessary to know. He looked up from the lens, and had half turned to speak, when the words were snatched from his lips and he stood staring through the open window into the night. Far off in the distant shadows there was a yellow glow, the welcoming glow of the Grahams' windows.

He became aware of Wade. The fellow was plucking at his sleeve, saying something. He wanted to know. It meant everything. Did Seaton understand? Everything! But how could a cold-blooded medico be expected to savvy that? Out with it! All Wade wanted was the truth. Why was Seaton such an infernal time giving it him?

Seaton turned. He did not speak. At the moment he could not. Wade stared into his expressionless face, then crumpled into a chair.

"All right." He sat beating his hands between his knees. "All right, you needn't say it if you don't want to. But you're right, all the same. I've got it—feel it." He shuddered visibly. "And never tell me or anyone else that it's contagious, but not infectious, and all that guff. You don't know anything about it. None of you do. Only the abos (aboriginals) know. Three nights I slept in that cursed hut, though it was taboo—three nights, over a year ago—and this is the result, this. …" Wade was 'n his feet, making impotent little gestures. It seemed that until that moment the full significance of his position had not reached um. Now, of a sudden, it had. Already his eyes were those of the fugitive, the pariah.

It was Seaton's duty to report him, he pointed out with ironic levity: to have him sent South to join the others on their two by four island. Well, rather than that .… But Seaton wouldn't do it. They were friends. Wade could get to China—couldn't he?—where they weren't so particular about it. Or, better still. … Wade paused in his diatribe. It seemed to have occurred to him that he was saying too much.

"I'm off," he jerked out, and made for the door. It was a challenge, and Seaton neither moved nor spoke. "I'm going, and you won't try to stop me. You couldn't, anyway, but you won't try. And let me tell you this"—he raised a menacing fist—"anyone who finds me will die—anyone!"

With that he was gone. The door slammed, there was the staccato clatter of footfalls on the verandah steps, and silence.

Even then it was some time before Seaton moved. It was as though he had been hypnotised. But now it occurred to him to wonder what he had done. Just what had he done? Nothing, he told himself promptly. Wade, with his hurricane methods, had rendered all opportunity of doing anything impossible. And he had gone. He had removed himself, and wasn't that. …?

Seaton went out on to the verandah. Silence, he reflected—what it could do! What it had done for Wade—and himself. But his conscience was clear. He had said nothing—done nothing.

"Nothing," he muttered aloud.

The Grahams' windows still glowed in the distance, but, curiously enough, Seaton could not bring himself to think of them, nor even of what lay behind them. He was thinking of Wade. He could not stop thinking of Wade. …

That was why a little later he was tearing down the main street like a madman. The second turning to the right, a dim vista of tin stores and Chinese odours, brought him out upon the beach, where he stood in the sand, a gaunt, breathless figure, trying to shout. Wade's lugger lay at her moorings under the stars. She had not moved. There was no sign of her moving. Seaton's relief nearly choked him.

"Malita!" he contrived to bawl. "Malita, ahoy!"

After an eternity something moved on deck, came aft, and clambered into the dinghy. But it was not Wade. Why should it be? Naturally, it was his Kanaka mate, who leapt from the bows as the dinghy touched bottom, and stood knee-deep, regarding Seaton with amiable curiosity. Yes, his master had returned to the lugger, but left again almost immediately. How? In the whaleboat. Yes, he had taken things with him, and had set the lugsail because the wind was fair. Where was he going? How should the mate know—or why, for that matter? It was none of his business. He was afraid the crazy white man who walked the beach at midnight, spitting interminable questions, would have to exercise the patience so foreign to his race and wait until the morrow. Were there not plenty of them?

That was not precisely what the mate said, but it was what he meant, and contrived to convey in vivid bêche-de-mer.

Seaton retraced his steps up the beach. He had no notion where he was going, but habit led him back to his own verandah, where he remained, staring before him with wide unseeing eyes, until dawn.

The following day elicited nothing. Wade was adrift on the Coral Sea by now, that was all Seaton knew. He pictured him at the tiller, steering for deep water with his awful knowledge as sole company. The little scene became etched on Seaton's brain. He could not erase it. He could neither sleep nor eat for it. Yet what had he done? Everything, he told himself viciously. There was no iota of excuse for what he had done. His thoughts took hold of him, worried him like a dog. And in the midst of them Joyce Graham called.

Did he know anything about Jim? That was what she had come to ask Seaton, and stood before him with grave, discerning eyes. The Grahams had been expecting him (Jim, of course), but he had not come. According to his mate, he had set sail in the whaleboat late at night for some unknown reason, and now, two days later, a pearling lugger had brought in the Malita's whaleboat. They had come upon it a few miles from the Barrier Reef, bottom up. …

Seaton heard no more.

"I killed him," he said slowly.

Joyce stared into his haggard face. Only the lips moved.

"I killed him," he repeated. "Of course, you would like to hear."

He told her all. In a dull monotone he stated facts without embroidery, without restraint. He might have been dealing with statistics. And when it was done he heard Joyce speak.

"Jim's hasty," she said.

"Hasty!" It never occurred to Seaton that she was seeking an excuse—for him; that she did not ask why he had done this thing; that instead of spurning him as something unclean, her eyes were welling with sympathetic understanding. "I don't think you quite understand," he went on. "It was intentional. I wanted to get rid of him. I got rid of him. Hasty?" He gave a short laugh. "Of course he's hasty. That's what made it all the easier." He went to the verandah rail and stared down the street. "I must go and tell the police," he said shorty.

"Why? What good will it do?" Joyce's hand was on his arm. "As if they would understand—do anything that we can't do I Besides, I don't believe Jim's dead. He's not the kind to do that. The upturned whaleboat was a ruse. He's out there—somewhere." She waved a hand seaward. "Don't lose heart, Don. Don't give up."

Seaton turned on her, his dull eyes flickering to life. If only he could think that, too! If only … "Anyone who finds me will die—anyone!" That was what he had said. Did it sound like the threat of a man who would readily part with life? And the whale-boat.… The hurricane season was past, the Coral Sea like a millpond. … A trifle thin, that upturned whaleboat. …

"If you're right, I'll find him," Seaton said. "Oh, I'll find him for you!"

From that hour he was a man transformed. He had a life-work, a passion—which was to find Wade. Save for that, the world held nothing for Seaton, not even Joyce Graham, though without her he would have been helpless. She knew those seas, had sailed them as a child aboard her father's pearling schooners in the days of the floating station; and now, with charts outspread and little cries of recognition at isle and reef and pass, she and Seaton probed every possibility. The current set N.W. here, they found, which would carry the whaleboat S.E., so—and at an average of two knots for two days from— here, or hereabouts. No, some of the islets were too small to be named on the chart. It was a matter of sifting them as through a sieve, and for that the motor-boat would be necessary. It was Joyce's own, and she could take her anywhere. A cook and an engineer were all they needed. … She intended to come, then? Their eyes met across the chart. Who was Seaton to question such a decision? He must remember that she also was looking for Wade. It was his to work, nothing more.

He worked. His activities became gyroscopic. To cease them would have been to collapse. It was only the thought, the vaguest dream of finding Wade, that sustained his momentum during those feverish flays and nights of preparation.

And with those that followed it was the same. The boat sped through a pass in the Great Barrier as through a portal into a world jewelled with islets, peopled with flying fish and seabird. And still on to the rim of this world, a desolate place of pale green shallows and dark blue depths, where islets dissolved into half-submerged, uncharted reefs, and it was only possible to steer by signal from a look-out in the bows, and to anchor when darkness fell.

Here, as the brazen days passed by with nothing more than bone weariness and disappointment to show for them, something of the futility of such an undertaking would have come home to most men. But not to Seaton. The flame of hope, lit and tended by Joyce Graham, burnt through every gust of adversity. He was looking for Wade. The remainder of his life was dedicated to the search. He would cheerfully kill himself—looking for Wade.

Such fanatical persistency was bound to lead somewhere sometime. It led Seaton to a far-flung fragment of coral, one of a small group and the same as a hundred others he had visited, but showing some sign of human life in the shape of a beached canoe.

He landed, and was soon surrounded by the little band of copra getters who periodically visited it. They had seen no one. Was it likely that they should see anyone, least of all a white man, here on the rim of the world? Seaton admitted that it was not, but continued patient inquiry throughout the day. It was a strange thing, he observed, that they should confine their labours to this island and leave its neighbour untouched. True, the other was smaller, but with his glasses he could see that its palms were laden with nuts, the beaches littered with them. How was that?

He was lucky to get an answer to such a question, but presently it came from one of the older school. The place was taboo. Why? Seaton did not ask. He was sufficiently versed in native lore to know that it might be for a hundred reasons, or for none. It was forbidden, that was all. Most likely because the spirits saw fit to inhabit it. Offerings were probably flung upon its shores by a quaking crew who immediately afterward paddled for its life.

"If the island were not sacred," mumbled the old man in an unguarded moment, "how should we have had proof?"

"Proof!" railed Seaton, with the binoculars to his eyes. "Where are your proofs?"

It was true the white man needed more than most, the old man admitted with admirable tolerance, but for himself it was enough that out of this uninhabited land a thin ribbon of smoke had issued not long since, forming itself into the outline of a man——

His words had a surprising effect. Instead of waiting for the rest, which established the interesting fact that the man's outline had changed to that of a hurricane bird and flown away over the sea, his audience turned on its heel and departed as though chased by devils. In a flash it was aboard its strange craft and heading at incredible speed for the island that was taboo.

"None but ill can befall," wailed the old man, and had the intense satisfaction of seeing his prophecy fulfilled in the presence of his entire family.

Close to the distant beach the craft came to rest with a churning of waters, and a man leapt from the bows. He waded ashore and advanced over the sand, crying aloud. He was midway between the sea and a reed-brake when the spirits very properly showed their disapproval of the intrusion by smiting him where he stood. Of a sudden his lank white figure wilted on to the sand, and a faint sound like a distant clap of thunder—or a rifle-shot—came over the water.

That was all, or so the eye-witnesses of the incident claim to this day, which is probably because they bolted from the scene of wrath. If they had stayed, they would have seen Joyce Graham kneel in the sand at Seaton's side, and a little later Wade appear out of the brake with a rifle under his arm.

"I warned you," he said, "anyone!"

Seaton struggled on to an elbow.

"Don't talk about it," he said faintly. "Shoot again if you feel inclined—but not before I've finished. It wasn't leprosy—just a local paralysis from the wound—nerves—and I let you go thinking that—to get rid of you—shoot again, old man——"

Then he lost consciousness, but there was a smile on his lips.

******

"There's only one thing I don't quite follow," said Wade, as the motor-boat headed for Thursday Island, with Seaton sleeping peacefully below. "He said he did it to get rid of me. There wasn't much need for that, was there?"

Joyce was at the wheel, her eyes on the swaying compass card.

"Was there?" he repeated.

Joyce did not speak, but Wade had his answer. He went forward, whistling.