Chapter XV: A Second Victim

Arnold Trevor--left to his own devices at Jelandang--remained leaning over the verandah-rail, staring at that black patch in the trees through which his companions had vanished.

He who had played an important rôle in the first and second acts of the drama at Bukit-Serang had been dropped out of the third act altogether--and he was feeling pretty miserable about it. One of the least pleasant points of his character--and one which Moberly had tried vainly to eradicate--was a brooding sense of injustice, and as he gazed now into the blackness that sense came uppermost.

After all, he argued to himself, it was he who had discovered the body of the dead planter, noticed the similarity between the mark on Moberly’s face and the pendant, and accompanied Mrs. Battiscombe to Armourer’s house. And now, just because he came next below Vance on the estate pay-roll, he was expected to knuckle under and remain as a sort of moral support to a couple of women! Vance, who had done comparatively nothing, was pandered to by everybody. Because he was gloomy and depressed they had taken him out to dinner and included him in the expedition against Abu-Samar; though for the life of him Trevor could not see what Vance had to be gloomy about at all. Moberly was dead. From a purely sentimental point of view, it was a rotten business; but, looking facts in the face, it was an extraordinarily good thing for Vance. He would be manager now, with a substantial increase in salary and sundry fat bonuses tacked on to it, while he--Trevor--was by no means certain of being promoted to first assistant. He had seen fellows skipped over before.

He dropped his last cigarette-end into space and turned in search of one from Armourer’s store.

There was a table under the swinging oil-lamp, and on it, arranged there by the magistrate’s servant, all the after-dinner comforts the bungalow could offer. In the immediate vicinity, piled with faded cushions, reposed a long cane chair, and curled up at ease on the cushions were Armourer’s two terriers.

Trevor stood for some moments, looking down at them, and gradually the frown vanished from his forehead. Even the dogs appeared to realise that he was only second assistant at Bukit-Serang and therefore didn’t count for much! In spite of himself, he laughed aloud. He was still smiling when Joyce came from her room.

“I was so sorry to have to leave you all alone,” she said, “but my patient was restless. She seems quieter now. Why don’t you sit down?”

He pointed to the chair.

“They won’t let me!”

She ran past him and fell on her knees.

“The darlings! Aren’t they just adorable!--And you hadn’t the heart to turn them out?”

Trevor shook his head.

“They looked so jolly comfortable. What’s he call them?”

“Mac and Mick,” returned Joyce promptly. “The one that’s looking out of the corners of his eyes is Mick. He knows he oughtn’t to be there.”

Trevor rested his hands on his hips.

“What are we going to do about it?”

She glanced to the far end of the verandah.

“There are other chairs, you know.”

He fetched a couple and arranged on one of them all the cushions that were not in actual occupation.

“I don’t think I want all these,” said Joyce.

The man laughed.

“Well, I’m sure I don’t. D’you mind if I have a whisky?”

“Not in the least.”

She noticed the condition of the decanter.

“You don’t mean to tell me this is your first?”

“Absolutely.”

“Isn’t that rather remarkable.”

“It is; but I was feeling fed to the teeth and didn’t notice it was there.”

Joyce sat down.

“I knew there must be some explanation,” she declared.

He passed over the tin.

“Do you smoke?”

“Sometimes; but I won’t have one now, thank you. I wonder when they’ll be back.”

“Heaven only knows. If they find their quarry at home they might be here any time now; if they have to go and look for him they may be hours. I don’t know what to make of this Samar business. He seemed harmless enough in all conscience; but I suppose Battiscombe knows what he’s doing.”

Joyce was stroking Mick’s ear.

“It’s been an exciting day.”

“It has. That confounded butterfly appears to have been responsible for an entire upheaval of everything. I suppose we _shall_ settle down into a normal way of living again! D’you know, I just loathed being left behind here.”

“What a compliment to me!”

“Oh, I didn’t mean it in that way. Besides, you were occupied with Mrs. Battiscombe and it looked as if I should have to muck about out here alone. I felt as if somebody had taken me to the top of a big hill, and then deliberately pushed me over. There were all sorts of queer things in the air and I had to be content with disconnected fragments of news and half-baked theories. But until they dumped me here I _was_ in the picture. Now the fun’s all shifted to Abu’s place--and I’m bang out of it.”

She picked up the nearest terrier bodily and dropped it into her lap.

“I don’t see that you’ve anything to grumble about,” she retorted. “I like adventure too--and I’m left to tend the sick and wounded! You’ve had half-truths told you--while I know nothing. Mr. Trevor, would you be guilty of a very serious indiscretion if you told Mickie and me about the butterfly?”

Trevor grinned.

“I’ll tell Mickie after you’ve turned in for the night, and he can use his own doggy discretion as to how much he divulges in the morning.”

She pouted.

“Meaning that you don’t think I can keep a secret.”

He sat down.

“I don’t know that there’s very much to be secret about. How much do you know already?”

She uttered a deep sigh.

“I know that daddy chased a big red butterfly across Mr. Moberly’s estate this morning----”

“Anything else?”

“And that Mr. Moberly’s dead and that Mr. Armourer is anxious to learn what Mrs. Battiscombe may say in her delirium about butterflies----”

“Has she said anything?”

“Nothing very important. Sometimes she feels her throat and murmurs something about a crimson butterfly. Once she caught my hand while I was bending over her and held it hard. I had had fever patients before and so the look in her eyes didn’t startle me. ‘I am a goddess,’ she said--‘and my kiss is death!’ The poor dear hadn’t the least notion what she was talking about.”

He stared at her so hard that she felt embarrassed.

“You are sure she said that?”

“Oh, yes. Mr. Armourer asked me to put down everything in writing--and I did.”

He shook his head.

“Her kiss was death, all right!” he muttered. “Lord! I wonder how much she really knows!”

A hand fell on his sleeve.

“Mr. Trevor, you are not suggesting that she had anything to do with Mr. Moberly’s death?”

He moved uncomfortably.

Joyce Standen was a singularly attractive woman, and he found it difficult to refuse her the information she sought. It occurred to him that if Armourer had wanted her to know he would have told her himself. Perhaps, he decided, it would be better to wait until he had seen either the magistrate or Vance. The thought of these two men brought back the old grievance. They hadn’t troubled to consider him--either of them.

“Look here,” he announced presently, “I’ll tell you as much as there is to tell, but you must promise not to breathe a word of it to anybody. The butterfly your father saw wasn’t a proper butterfly. It was a poisonous bug of some sort and it killed Moberly. It left a mark on him--as if the creature was all sting, like a jelly-fish. Mrs. Battiscombe had been a great friend of Dick Moberly’s and had sent him back a ruby ornament on a chain. We found this ornament near Dick when he died. It was a butterfly and was shaped so like the mark on Moberly’s face that it did set us wondering. Mrs. Battiscombe rode over, saw the mark on his cheek, murmured something about a crimson butterfly and fainted. Ever since then a lot of idiots in a much clearer state of mind than Mrs. Battiscombe have been babbling nonsense about butterflies and native charms and heaven knows what. It’s getting quite a disease--like malaria; just when you think you’ve cured yourself of it--it crops up again. When you appeared just now I’d decided once and for all that the _ju-ju_ business was bunkum; and then you set the old idea working again by mentioning Mrs. Battiscombe’s remark about goddesses and death. It is rubbish, of course, but there’s a rotten under-current beneath all this that I neither understand nor like. I shall be glad when it’s morning again and we have some clean, fresh air to inhale.”

He emptied his glass.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “It was rotten of me to make you tell me; but I did so want to know. And this expedition to-night is merely a side-issue; it has really nothing to do with the affair of this afternoon?”

“Nothing whatever, as far as I know. If you lived out here long you’d get used to this sort of business. Nothing happens for months on end and then we may have half-a-dozen exciting incidents in a week. I expect the Commissioner’s had his eye on Abu-Samar for a long time.”

She started.

“What was that?”

He looked back over his shoulder.

“Only Mai-Heng moving about in Armourer’s room. He’s late to-night, but we were six at dinner, you know, and I imagine he’s had his work cut out to get through.”

He remained for some moments, listening.

“Mai-Heng!” he called.

For answer there came from the magistrate’s bedroom a peculiar gurgling noise and something crashed heavily to the floor.

They came to their feet together.

“Stop where you are, Miss Standen. I don’t suppose it’s anything.”

He threw open the door.

As he did so, something as large as a bat brushed his ear and flew past him on to the verandah.

The room was in darkness and, feeling his way across it, his toe kicked against something soft. He struck a match and dropped on his knees beside the lifeless form of Armourer’s cook-boy.

Mai-Heng lay on his back, a hurricane-lamp with a broken chimney at his side. His arms were above his head, his singlet open at the top, and across his dark chest was the sign of the Crimson Butterfly.

The match burned out, and Trevor, with trembling fingers, fumbled for another.

A second inspection of the dead servant revealed that he held the pendant in his left hand, its chain of gold filigree trailing across the floor.