The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story Part 23

He seemed to s.h.i.+ver all over with irritation. "Oh, d.a.m.n his yellow soul, I'll marry her!" He spat it out--with no sweetness, this time.

Madame Maur swung round to him like a needle to the pole. "You may save yourself the _corvee_. She won't have you. Not if any of the things she has been sobbing out are true. She loves the other man--down by the docks. _Your_ compatriot." She indicated me. Her French was clear and clicking, with a slight provincial accent.

"Oh--" He breathed it out at great length, exhaling. Yet it sounded like a hiss. "Stires, eh?" And he looked at me.

I had been thinking, as we stood on the steps. "How am I to move Ching Po off?" I asked irritably. It had suddenly struck me that, inspired by Madame Maur, we were embarking on sheer idiocy.

"I'll move him," replied Follet with a curious intonation.

At that instant my eye lighted again on the pistol. "Not with that." I jerked my chin ever so slightly in the direction of his pocket.

"Oh, take it if you want it. Come on." He thrust the weapon into my innocent hand and began to pull at my bougainvillea vine as if it were in his way. Some of the splendid petals fluttered about Madame Maur's head.

We reached the Maurs' front porch by a circuitous route--through the back garden and the house itself--and paused to admire the view. Yes, we looked for Ching Po as if we were tourists and he were Niagara.

"He hasn't moved yet." This was Madame Maur's triumphant whimper.

Inarticulate noises somewhere near indicated that French Eva was still in sanctuary.

Follet grunted. Then he unleashed his supple body and was half way to the gate in a single arrow flight. I followed, carrying the pistol still in my hand. My involuntary haste must have made me seem to brandish it.

I heard a perfectly civilized scream from Madame Maur, receding into the background--which shows that I was, myself, acquiring full speed ahead.

By the time Follet reached the gate, Ching Po moved. I saw Follet gaining on him, and then saw no more of them; for my feet acting on some inspiration of their own which never had time to reach my brain, took a short cut to the water front. I raced past French Eva's empty house, pounding my way through the gentle heat of May, to Stires's establishment. I hoped to cut them off. But Ching Po must have had a like inspiration, for when I was almost within sight of my goal--fifty rods ahead--the Chinaman emerged from a side lane between me and it. He was running like the wind. Follet was nowhere to be seen. Ching Po and I were the only mites on earth's surface. The whole population, apparently, had piously gone up the mountain in order to let us have our little drama out alone. I do not know how it struck Ching Po; but I felt very small on that swept and garnished scene.

I was winded; and with the hope of reaching Stires well dashed, my legs began to crumple. I sank down for a few seconds on the low wall of some one's compound. But I kept a keen eye out for Follet. I thought Stires could look out for himself, so long as it was just Ching Po. It was the triangular mix-up I was afraid of; even though I providentially had Follet's pistol. And, for that matter, where was Follet? Had he given up the chase? Gone home for that drink, probably.

But in that I had done him injustice; for in a few moments he debouched from yet a third approach. Ching Po had evidently doubled, somehow, and baffled him.

I rose to meet him, and he slowed down to take me on. By this time the peaceful water front had absorbed the Chinaman; and if Stires was at home, the two were face to face. I made this known to Follet.

"Give me back my pistol," he panted.

"Not on your life," I said, and jammed it well into my pocket.

"What in h.e.l.l have you got to do with it?" he snarled.

"Stires is a friend of mine." I spoke with some difficulty, for though we were not running, we were hitting up a quick pace. Follet was all colors of the rainbow, and I looked for him to give out presently, but he kept on.

"Ching Po, too?" he sneered.

"Not a bit of it. But they won't stand for murder in open daylight--even _your_ friends."

We were very near Stires's place by this time. There was no sign of any one in the yard; it was inhabited solely by the familiar rusty monsters of Stires's trade. As we drew up alongside, I looked through the window.

Stires and Ching Po were within, and from the sibilant noise that stirred the peaceful air, I judged that Ching Po was talking. Their backs were turned to the outer world. I pushed open the door, and Follet and I entered.

For the first time I found myself greeted with open hostility by my fellow countryman. "What the devil are you doing here?" I was annoyed.

The way they all dragged me in and then cursed me for being there! The Chinaman stood with his hands folded in his wicked sleeves, his eyes on the ground. In the semi-gloom of Stires's warehouse, his face looked like a mouldy orange. He was yellower even than his race permitted--outside and in.

"If I can't be of any service to you or Miss Eva, I should be only too glad to go home," I retorted.

"What about her?" asked Stires truculently. He advanced two steps towards me.

"I'm not looking for trouble--" It seemed to me just then that I hated Naapu as I had never hated any place in the world. "She's having hysterics up at Madame Maur's. I fancy that's why we're here. Your yellow friend there seems to have been responsible for the hysterics.

This other gentleman and I"--I waved a hand at Follet, who stood, spent and silent, beside me--"resented it. We thought we would follow him up."

How much Ching Po understood of plain English, I do not know. One always conversed with him in the pidgin variety. But he certainly looked at peace with the world: much as the devil must have looked, gazing at Pompeii in the year '79.

"You can do your resenting somewheres else," snapped Stires. "Both of you."

"I go," murmured Ching Po. He stepped delicately towards the door.

"No, you don't!" Follet's foot shot out to trip him. But the Chinaman melted past the crude interruption.

"I go," he repeated, with ineffable sadness, from the threshold.

The thing was utterly beyond me. I stood stock-still. The two men, Follet and Stires, faced each other for an instant. Then Follet swung round and dashed after Ching Po. I saw him clutch the loose black sleeve and murmur in the flat ear.

Stires seemed to relent towards me now that Follet was gone. "Let 'em alone," he grunted. "The c.h.i.n.k won't do anything but tell him a few things. And like as not, he knows 'em already, the--" The word indicated his pa.s.sionate opinion of Follet.

"I was called in by Madame Maur," I explained weakly. "Ching Po wouldn't leave the road in front of her compound. And--Miss Eva was inside, having hysterics. Ching Po had been with her earlier. Now you know all I know, and as I'm not wanted anywhere, I'll go. I a.s.sure you I'm very glad to."

I was not speaking the strictest truth, but I saw no reason to pour out Madame Maur's revelations just then upon Stires's heated soul. Nor would I pursue the subject of Follet.

Stires sank down on something that had once been an office-chair. Thence he glowered at me. I had no mind to endure his misdirected anger, and I turned to go. But in the very instant of my turning from him I saw tragedy pierce through the mask of rage. The man was suffering; he could no longer hold his eyes and lips to the expression of anger. I spoke to him very gently.

"Has Miss Eva really anything to fear from that miserable Chinaman?"

Stires bowed his head on his hands. "Not a thing, now. He's done his d.a.m.nedest. It only took a minute for him to spit it out."

"Will he spit it out to Follet?"

"You bet he will. But I've got a kind of a hunch Follet knew all along."

"I'm sure he didn't--whatever it is."

"Well, he does by now. They must be nearly back to the ho-tel. I'm kind of busy this morning"--he waved his hand round that idle scene--"and I guess--"

"Certainly. I'm going now." I spared him the effort of polis.h.i.+ng off his lie. The man wanted to be alone with his trouble, and that was a state of mind I understood only too well.

The circ.u.mstantial evidence I had before me as I walked back to my own house led inevitably to one verdict. I could almost reconstruct the ign.o.ble pidgin-splutter in which Ching Po had told Stires, and was even now telling Follet. The wonder to me was that any one believed the miserable creature. Truth wouldn't be truth if it came from Ching Po.

Yet if two men who were obviously prepossessed in the lady's favor were so easily to be convinced by his report, some old suspicions, some forgotten facts must have rushed out of the dark to foregather with it.

French Eva had been afraid of the Chinaman; yet even Follet had pooh-poohed her fears; and her reputation was--or had been--well-nigh stainless on Naapu, which is, to say the least, a smudgy place.

Still--there was only one road for reason to take, and in spite of these obstacles it wearily and doggedly took it.

Joe, of course, was still absent; and though I was never more in need of food, my larder was empty. I would not go to Dubois's and encounter Follet and Ching Po. Perhaps Madame Maur would give me a sandwich. I wanted desperately to have done with the whole sordid business; and had there been food prepared for me at home, I think I should have barricaded myself there. But my hunger joined hands with a lurking curiosity. Between them they drove me to Madame Maur's.

The lady bustled about at once to supply my needs. Her husband was still away, and lunch there was not in any proper sense. But she fed me with odd messes and endless cups of coffee. Hunger disappeared leaving curiosity starkly apparent.

"How's Eva?" I asked.