Contango (Ill Wind) Read Free Page B

they touched upon the future of Naung Lo, still in the Sultan’s
prison in connection with the Morrison affair. The Sultan had been deeply
perturbed by the tragedy, and was willing, indeed eager, to behead somebody.
Gathergood described his continuing investigations, adding: “It still
doesn’t seem to me that the case has been proved.”
    The Sultan inclined his head. “Very well, Tuan. He shall
wait.”
    Then Gathergood outlined, as well as he could, the difficulties that might
arise out of unrest in the kampong. He suggested that the Sultan should
increase the native police force, put an extra tax on the sale of gin, and
issue an official edict denouncing the doctrines of Russian and Chinese
communism. The Sultan, who had been very pro-British during the War, and
whose habit of mind was inclined to be fixed, could not entirely escape the
conviction that he ought at once to arrest and behead the crew of a German
sailing-ship loading cutch in the estuary; but at the end of
Gathergood’s explanation he signified an earnest and cordial agreement
with all the main points.
    After that, as the old man was obviously fatigued, Gathergood made to
depart. But there was one other matter which the Sultan broached with almost
a child’s shyness. “Tuan,” he croaked, holding
Gathergood’s hand again, “I have some pictures for you.” He
took out of his jacket pocket a small Kodak, from which, with a smile, the
Agent removed the used film. It was the Sultan’s principal hobby, and
though many of his snapshots tended to be either obscure or obscene was
always ready to oblige by developing them in his little improvised dark-room
at the bungalow. “I will bring them to you next week,” he
answered, and the Sultan responded, with conventional courtesy: “Good
night, Tuan Bezar. Your visit has made me very glad.”
    Events, however, prevented Gathergood from keeping his promise. That very
night, while he was asleep under his mosquito-net, a score or more planters,
fully armed, marched on the Sultan’s palace, forced an entrance,
kidnapped Naung Lo from his prison-cell, and hanged him from a tree in the
jungle less than a mile away.
    Gathergood did not hear of this till the morning, when his house-boy
brought him the sensational news. He was, for him, immensely disconcerted. He
was even, when he had begun to consider it, appalled. In all that the
Morrison case had so far meant to him, there had been simply the question of
the accused man’s probable guilt or innocence. Of the tangled interplay
of motive, racial and political, that might lie beyond that straightforward
issue, he had been remotely aware, but he had shrunk from it; he lacked
intricacy of vision, and his instinct was always to ignore the intangible.
Now, at a stroke, the merely judicial question had been transformed into a
matter of vaster significance which he took some time to comprehend. He sat
for over an hour before his office-desk, thinking things out with an entire
absence of personal passion that concealed, nevertheless, a growing inward
uneasiness. The day was warming up; clammy and so far sunless, it sent hardly
a ripple of sea moving over the sandbars of the estuary, and the tops of the
rubber-planted foothills soared into a creamy haze. Towards midday he sent a
boy with written messages to all the planters, asking them to meet him in the
club-house during the afternoon. That done, he deliberately wrote business
letters as usual and gave the daily orders to his Chinese cook; after which,
having taken a drink and a sandwich, he walked up the hill to the
club-house.
    The planters awaited him there in a mood of sultry, half-shamed
truculence. It was possible that already, in the light of day, their exploit
seemed less wholly estimable. But this reaction was itself counterbalanced by
an intensifying of their feeling towards the Agent; sprawling over the chairs
and tables, they faced him as if whatever might