The Argus Pheasant

"A good rule, but it doesn't apply to a pack of assassins," Carver replied. "And that's what we seem to be up against. You can't take too big precautions against whelps that stab in the dark."

Peter Gross attempted no contradiction. The ever increasing concourse of scantily clad natives along the shore held his attention. Carver scanned his face anxiously.

"They pretty nearly got you at Batavia, Mr. Gross," he reminded, anxiety overcoming his natural disinclination to give a superior unsolicited advice.

"You may be right," Peter Gross conceded mildly.

Carver pushed his advantage. "If Ah Sing's tong men will take a chance at murdering you in Batavia under the nose of the governor, they won't balk at putting you out of the way in Bulungan, a thousand miles from nowhere. There's a hundred ways they can get rid of a man and make it look like an accident."

"We must expect to take some risks."

Perceiving the uselessness of argument, Carver made a final plea. "At least let me go with you," he begged.

Peter Gross sighed and straightened to his full six feet two. "Thank you, captain," he said, "but I must go alone. I want to teach Bulungan one thing to-day – that Peter Gross is not afraid."

While Captain Carver was vainly trying to dissuade Peter Gross from going ashore, Kapitein Van Slyck hastened from his quarters at the fort to the controlleur's house. Muller was an uncertain quantity in a crisis, the captain was aware; it was vital that they act in perfect accord. He found his associate pacing agitatedly in the shade of a screen of nipa palms between whose broad leaves he could watch the trim white hull and spotless decks of the gun-boat.

Muller was smoking furiously. At the crunch of Van Slyck's foot on the coraled walk he turned quickly, with a nervous start, and his face blanched.

"Oh, kapitein," he exclaimed with relief, "is it you?"

"Who else would it be?" Van Slyck growled, perceiving at once that Muller had worked himself into a frenzy of apprehension.

"I don't know. I thought, perhaps, Cho Seng – "

"You look as though you'd seen a ghost. What's there about Cho Seng to be afraid of?"

" – that Cho Seng had come to tell me Mynheer Gross was here," Muller faltered.

Van Slyck looked at him keenly, through narrowed lids.

"Hum!" he grunted with emphasis. "So it is Mynheer Gross already with you, eh, Muller?"

There was a significant emphasis on the "mynheer."

Muller flushed. "Don't get the notion I'm going to sweet-mouth to him simply because he is resident, kapitein," he retorted, recovering his dignity. "You know me well enough – my foot is in this as deeply as yours."

"Yes, and deeper," Van Slyck replied significantly.

The remark escaped Muller. He was thrusting aside the screen of nipa leaves to peer toward the vessel.

"No," he exclaimed with a sigh of relief, "he has not left the ship yet. There are two civilians at the forward rail – come, kapitein, do you think one of them is he?"

He opened the screen wider for Van Slyck. The captain stepped forward with an expression of bored indifference and peered through the aperture.

"H-m!" he muttered. "I wouldn't be surprised if the big fellow is Gross. They say he has the inches."

"I hope to heaven he stays aboard to-day," Muller prayed fervently.

"He can come ashore whenever he wants to, for all I care," Van Slyck remarked.

Muller straightened and let the leaves fall back.

"Lieve hemel, neen, kapitein," he expostulated. "What would I do if he should question me. My reports are undone, there are a dozen cases to be tried, I have neglected to settle matters with some of the chiefs, and my accounts are in a muddle. I don't see how I am ever going to straighten things out – then there are those other things – what will he say?"

He ran his hands through his hair in nervous anxiety. Van Slyck contemplated his agitation with a darkening frown. "Is the fool going to pieces?" was the captain's harrowing thought. He clapped a hand on Muller's shoulder with an assumption of bluff heartiness.

"'Sufficient unto the day – ' You know the proverb, mynheer," he said cheerfully. "There's nothing to worry about – we won't give him a chance at you for two weeks. Kapitein Enckel of the Prins will probably bring him ashore to-day. We'll receive him here; I'll bring my lieutenants over, and Cho Seng can make us a big dinner.

"To-night there will be schnapps and reminiscences, to-morrow morning a visit of inspection to the fort, to-morrow afternoon a bitchara with the Rajah Wobanguli, and the day after a visit to Bulungan town. At night visits to Wang Fu's house and Marinus Blauwpot's, with cards and Hollands. I'll take care of him for you, and you can get your books in shape. Go to Barang, if you want to, the day we visit Rotterdam – leave word with Cho Seng you were called away to settle an important case. Leave everything to me, and when you get back we'll have mynheer so drunk he won't know a tax statement from an Edammer cheese."

Muller's face failed to brighten at the hopeful program mapped out by his associate. If anything, his agitation increased.

"But he might ask questions to-day, kapitein– questions I cannot answer."

Van Slyck's lips curled. His thought was: "Good God, what am I going to do with this lump of jelly-fish?" But he replied encouragingly:

"No danger of that at all, mynheer. There are certain formalities that must be gone through first before a new resident takes hold. It would not be good form to kick his predecessor out of office without giving the latter a chance to close his books – even a pig of a Yankee knows that. Accept his credentials if he offers them, but tell him business must wait till the morning. Above all, keep your head, say nothing, and be as damnably civil as though he were old Van Schouten himself. If we can swell his head none of us will have to worry."

"But my accounts, kapitein," Muller faltered.

"To the devil with your accounts," Van Slyck exclaimed, losing patience. "Go to Barang, fix them up as best you can."

"I can never get them to balance," Muller cried. "Our dealings – the rattan we shipped – you know." He looked fearfully around.

"There never was a controlleur yet that didn't line his own pockets," Van Slyck sneered. "But his books never showed it. You are a book-keeper, mynheer, and you know how to juggle figures. Forget these transactions; if you can't, charge the moneys you got to some account. There are no vouchers or receipts in Bulungan. A handy man with figures, like yourself, ought to be able to make a set of accounts that that ferret Sachsen himself could not find a flaw in."

"But that is not the worst," Muller cried despairingly. "There are the taxes, the taxes I should have sent to Batavia, the rice that we sold instead to Ah Sing."

"Good God! Have you grown a conscience?" Van Slyck snarled. "If you have, drown yourself in the bay. Lie, you fool, lie! Tell him the weevils ruined the crop, tell him the floods drowned it, tell him a tornado swept the fields bare, lay it to the hill Dyaks – anything, anything! But keep your nerve, or you'll hang sure."

Muller retreated before the captain's vehemence.

"But the bruinevels, kapitein?" he faltered. "They may tell him something different."

"Wobanguli won't; he's too wise to say anything," Van Slyck asserted firmly. "None of the others will dare to, either – all we've got to do is to whisper Ah Sing's name to them. But there's little danger of any of them except the Rajah seeing him until after the Prins is gone. Once she's out of the harbor I don't care what they say – no word of it will ever get back to Batavia."

His devilishly handsome smile gleamed sardonically, and he twisted his nicely waxed mustache. Muller's hands shook.

"Kapitein," he replied in an odd, strained voice, "I am afraid of this Peter Gross. I had a dream last night, a horrible dream – I am sure it was him I saw. I was in old de Jonge's room in the residency building – you know the room – and the stranger of my dream sat in old de Jonge's chair.

"He asked me questions, questions of how I came here, and what I have done here, and I talked and talked till my mouth was dry as the marsh grass before the rains begin to fall. All the while he listened, and his eyes seemed to bore through me, as though they said: 'Judas, I know what is going on in your heart.'

"At last, when I could say no more, he asked me: 'Mynheer, how did Mynheer de Jonge die?' Then I fell on the ground before him and told him all – all. At the last, soldiers came to take me away to hang me, but under the very shadow of the gallows a bird swooped down out of the air and carried me away, away into the jungle. Then I awoke."

Van Slyck broke into scornful laughter.

"Mynheer, you had enough to worry about before you started dreaming," he said bluntly. "If you're going to fill your head with such foolishness I'll leave you to your own devices."