The Pointing Man. Marjorie Douie
the Head of the Police and began to talk in broken, gasping words, waving his hands as he spoke. His story was confused and rambling, but what he told was to the effect that his boy, Absalom, had disappeared and could not be found.
"It was the night of the 29th of July, Thakin, and I sent him forth upon a business. Next morning he did not return. It was I who opened the shop, it was I who waited upon customers, and Absalom was not there."
"What inquiries have you made?"
"All that may be made, Thakin. His mother comes crying to my door, his brothers have searched everywhere. Ah, that I had the body of the man who has done this thing, and held him in the sacred tank, to make food for the fishes."
His dark eyes gleamed, and he showed his teeth like a dog.
"Nonsense, man," said Hartley, quickly. "You seem to suppose that the boy is dead. What reason have you for imagining that there has been foul play?"
"Seem to suppose, Thakin?" Mhtoon Pah gasped again, like a drowning man. "And yet the Thakin knows the sewer city, the Chinese quarter, the streets where men laugh horribly in the dark. Houses there, Thakin, that crawl with yellow men, who are devils, and who split a man as they would split a fowl—" he broke off, and waved his hands about wildly.
Hartley felt a little sick; there was something so hideous in the way Mhtoon Pah expressed himself that he recoiled a step and summoned his common sense to his aid.
"Who saw Absalom last?"
"Many people must have seen him. I sat myself outside the shop at sunset to watch the street, and had sent Absalom forth upon a business, a private business: he was a good boy. Many saw him go out, but no one saw him return."
"That is no use, Mhtoon Pah; you must give me some names. Who saw the boy besides yourself?"
Mhtoon Pah opened his mouth twice before any sound came, and he beat his hands together.
"The Padre Sahib, going in a hurry, spoke a word to him; I saw that with my eyes."
"Mr. Heath?"
"Yes, Thakin, no other."
"And besides Mr. Heath, was there anyone else who saw him?"
Mhtoon Pah bowed himself double in his chair and rocked about.
"The whole street saw him go, but none saw him return, neither will they. They took Absalom into some dark place, and when his blood ran over the floor, and out under the doors, the Chinamen got their little knives, the knives that have long tortoise-shell handles, and very sharp edges, and then—"
"For God's sake stop talking like that," said Hartley, abruptly. "There isn't a fragment of evidence to prove that the boy is murdered. I am sorry for you, Mhtoon Pah, but I warn you that if you let yourself think of things like that you will be in a lunatic asylum in a week."
He took out a sheet of paper and made careful notes. The boy had been gone four to five days, and beyond the fact that the Rev. Francis Heath had seen and spoken to him, no one else was named as having passed along Paradise Street. The clergyman's evidence was worth nothing at all, except to prove that the boy had left Mhtoon Pah's shop at the time mentioned, and Mhtoon Pah explained that the "private business" was to buy a gold lacquer bowl desired by Mrs. Wilder, who had come to the shop a day or two before and given the order. Gold lacquer bowls were difficult to procure, and he had charged the boy to search for it in the morning and to buy it, if possible, from the opium dealer Leh Shin, who could be securely trusted to be half-drugged at an early hour.
"It was the morning I spoke of, Thakin," said the curio dealer, who had grown calmer. "But Absalom did not return to his home that night. He may have gone to Leh Shin; he was a diligent boy, a good boy, always eager in the pursuit of his duty and advantage."
"I am very sorry for you, Mhtoon Pah," said Hartley again, "and I shall investigate the matter. I know Leh Shin, and I consider it quite unlikely that he has had anything to do with it."
When Mhtoon Pah rattled away in the yellow gharry, Hartley put the notes on one side. It was a police matter, and he could trust his staff to work the subject up carefully under his supervision, and going to the telephone, he communicated the principal facts to the head office, mentioning the name of Leh Shin and the story of the gold lacquer bowl, and giving instructions that Leh Shin was to be tactfully interrogated.
When Hartley hung up the receiver he took his hat and waterproof and went out into the warm, damp dusk of the evening. There was something that he did not like about the weather. It was heavy, oppressive, stifling, and though there was air in plenty, it was the stale air of a day that seemed never to have got out of bed, but to have lain in a close room behind the shut windows of Heaven.
He remembered the boy Absalom well, and could recall his dark, eager face, bulging eyes and protuberant under-lip, and the idea of his having been decoyed off unto some place of horror haunted him. It was still on his mind when he walked into the Club veranda and joined a group of men in the bar. Joicey, the banker, was with them, silent, morose, and moody according to his wont, taking no particular notice of anything or anybody. Fitzgibbon, a young Irish barrister-at-law, was talking, and laughing and doing his best to keep the company amused, but he could get no response out of Joicey. Hartley was received with acclamations suited to his general reputation for popularity, and he stood talking for a little, glad to shake off his feeling of depression. When he saw Mr. Heath come in and go up the staircase to an upstairs room, he followed him with his eyes and decided to take the opportunity to speak to him.
"What's the matter, Joicey?" he asked, speaking to the banker. "You look as if you had fever."
"I'm all right," Joicey spoke absently. "It's this infernally stuffy weather, and the evenings."
"I'm glad it's that," laughed Fitzgibbon, "I thought that it might be me. I'm so broke that even my tea at Chota haziri is getting badly overdrawn."
"Dine with me on Saturday," suggested Hartley, "I've seen very little of you just lately."
Joicey looked up and nodded.
"I'll come," he said, laconically, and Hartley, finishing his drink, went up the staircase.
The reading-room of the Club was usually empty at that hour, and the great tables littered with papers, free to any studious reader. When Hartley came in, the Rev. Francis Heath had the place entirely to himself, and was sitting with a copy of the Saturday Review in his hands. He did not hear Hartley come in, and he started as his name was spoken, and putting down the Review, looked at the Head of the Police with questioning eyes.
"I've come to talk over something with you, Heath," Hartley began, drawing a chair close to the table. "Can you remember anything at all of what you were doing on the evening of July the twenty-ninth?"
The Rev. Francis Heath dropped his paper, and stooped to pick it up; certainly he found the evening hot, for his face ran with trickles of perspiration.
"July the twenty-ninth?"
"Yes, that's the date. I am particularly anxious to know if you remember it."
Mr. Heath wiped his neck with his handkerchief.
"I held service as usual at five o'clock."
Hartley looked at him; there was something undeniably strained in the clergyman's eyes and voice.
"Ah, but what I am after took place later."
The Rev. Francis Heath moistened his lips and stood up.
"My memory is constantly at fault," he said, avoiding Hartley's eyes and looking at the ground. "I would not like to make any specific statement without—without—reference to my note-book."
Hartley stared in astonishment.
"This is only a small matter, Heath. I was trying to get round to my point in the usual way, by giving no actual indication of what I wanted to know. You see, if you tell a man what you want, he sometimes imagines