The Pointing Man. Marjorie Douie
dark, no relief from the brooding, sultry heat. It was no hotter than many nights in any break in the rains, but the guests invited by Mrs. Wilder felt the languor of the air, and felt it more profoundly because their hostess herself was affected by it.
Mrs. Wilder was a dark, handsome woman of thirty-five, usually full of life and animation, and her dinners were known to be entertainments in the real sense of the word. Draycott Wilder was no mate for her in appearance or manner, but Draycott Wilder was marked by the Powers as a successful man. He took very little part in the social side of their married life, and sat in the shadow near the lighted door, listening while his guests talked. The party was in no way different to many others, and it would have ended and been forgotten by all concerned if it had not been for the fact that an unusual occurrence broke it up in dismay. Mrs. Wilder complained of the heat during dinner, and she had been pale, looking doubly so in her vivid green dress; her usual animation had vanished, and she talked with evident effort and seemed glad of the darkness of the veranda.
Suddenly one of those strange silences fell over everyone, silences that may be of a few seconds' duration, but that appear like hours. What they are connected with, no one can guess. The silence lasted for a second, and it was broken with sudden violence.
"My God," said the voice of Hartley, the Head of the Police, speaking in tones of alarm. "Mrs. Wilder has fainted!" She had fallen forward in her chair, and he had caught her as she fell.
Very soon the guests dispersed and the bungalow was still for the night. One or two waited to hear what the doctor had to say, and went away satisfied in the knowledge that the heat had been too much for Mrs. Wilder, and, but for that event, the dinner-party would have been forgotten after two days. Hartley was the last to leave, and the sound of trotting hoofs grew faint along the road.
By an hour after midnight nearly the whole white population can be presumed to be asleep; day wakes early in the East, and there are few who keep all-night hours, because morning calls men from their beds to their work, and even this hot, sultry night people lay on their beds and tried to sleep; but in the small bungalow where the Rev. Francis Heath lived with a solitary Sapper officer, the bed that he slept in was smooth and unstirred by restless tossing inside the mosquito net.
The Rev. Francis was out, sitting by the bed of a dying parishioner. He watched the long hours through, dressed as he had been in the afternoon, in a grey flannel suit, his thin neck too long and too spare for his all-around collar, and as he watched sometimes and sometimes prayed, he too felt the pressure of the night.
The woman he prayed beside was dying and quite unconscious of his presence. Now and then, to relieve the strain, he got up and stood by the window, looking at the lights against the sky and thinking very definitely of something that troubled him and drew his lips into a tight, thin line. He was a young man of the type described usually as "zealous" and "earnest," and a light that was almost the light of fanaticism shone in his eyes. A dying parishioner was no more of a novelty to Mr. Heath, than one of Mrs. Wilder's dinner-parties was to her guests, and yet the woman on the bed appealed to his pity as few others had done in his experience.
When the doctor came he nodded to the clergyman and just touched the hand on the quilt. He was in evening dress, and he explained that he had been detained owing to his hostess having been taken suddenly ill.
"Where is Rydal himself?"
He asked the question carelessly, dropping the pulseless wrist.
"Who can tell?" said the Rev. Francis Heath.
"He'd better keep out of the way," continued the doctor. "I believe there's a police warrant out for him. Hartley spoke of it to-night. She will be gone before morning, and a good job for her."
The throbbing hot night wore on, and July the 29th became July the 30th, and Mangadone awoke to a fierce, tearing thunder-storm that boomed and crashed and wore itself out in torrents of heavy rain.
II
TELLS THE STORY OF A LOSS, AND HOW IT AFFECTED THE REV. FRANCIS HEATH
Half-way up a low hill rise on the far side of the Mangadone Cantonment was the bungalow of Hartley, Head of the Police. It was a tidy, well-kept house, the house of a bachelor who had an eye to things himself and who was well served by competent servants. Hartley had reached the age of forty without having married, and he was solid of build and entirely sensible and practical of mind. He was spoken of as "sound" and "capable," for it is thus we describe men with a word, and his mind was adjusted so as to give room for only one idea at a time. He was convinced that he was tactful to a fault, nothing had ever shaken him in this belief, and his personal courage was the courage of the British lion. Hartley was popular and on friendly and confidential terms with everybody.
Mangadone, like most other places in the East, was as full of cliques as a book is of words, but Hartley regarded them not at all. Popularity was his weakness and his strength, and he swam in all waters and was invited everywhere. Mrs. Wilder, who knew exactly who to treat with distant condescension and who to ignore entirely, invariably included him in her intimate dinners, and the Chief Commissioner, also a bachelor, invited him frequently and discussed many topics with him as the wine circled. Even Craven Joicey, the banker, who made very few acquaintances and fewer intimates, was friendly with Hartley; one of those odd, unlikely friendships that no one understands.
The week following upon the thunder-storm had been a week of grey skies over an acid-green world, and even Hartley became conscious that there is something mournful about a tropical country without a sun in the sky as he sat in his writing-room. It was gloomy there, and the palm trees outside tossed and swayed, and the low mist wraiths down in the valley clung and folded like cotton-wool, hiding the town and covering it up to the very top spires of the cathedral. Hartley was making out a report on a case of dacoity against a Chinaman, but the light in the room was bad, and he pushed back his chair impatiently and shouted to the boy to bring a lamp.
His tea was set out on a small lacquer table near his chair, and his fox-terrier watched him with imploring eyes, occasionally voicing his feelings in a stifled bark. The boy came in answer to his call, carrying the lamp in his hands, and put it down near Hartley, who turned up the wick, and fell to his reading again; then, putting the report into a locked drawer, he drew his chair from the writing-table and poured out a cup of tea.
He had every reason to suppose that his day's work was done, and that he could start off for the Club when his tea was finished. The wind rattled the palm branches and came in gusts through the veranda, banging doors and shaking windows, and the evening grew dark early, with the comfortless darkness of rain overhead, when the wheels of a carriage sounded on the damp, sodden gravel outside. Hartley got up and peered through the curtain that hung across the door. Callers at such an hour upon such a day were not acceptable, and he muttered under his breath, feeling relieved, however, when he saw a fat and heavy figure in Burmese clothing get out from the gharry.
"If that is anyone to see me on business, say that this is neither the place nor the hour to come," he shouted to the boy, and returning to the tea-table, poured out a saucer of milk for the eager terrier, now divided between his duties as a dog and his feelings as an animal.
The boy reappeared after a pause, bearing a message to the effect that Mhtoon Pah begged an immediate interview upon a subject so pressing that it could not wait.
Hartley listened to the message, swore under his breath, and looked sharply at Mhtoon Pah when he came into the room. Usually the curio dealer had a smile and a suave, pleasant manner, but on this occasion all his suavity was gone, and his eyes, usually so inexpressive and secret, were lighted with a strange, wolfish look of anger and rage that was almost suggestive of insanity.
He bowed