Chapter II: The Crimson Butterfly

He looked up at her from the foot of the steps.

“Good-bye, little woman. Give my regards to Moberly. Perhaps it’s just as well you couldn’t come. The Commissioner sent word this morning that he wanted to see me, and I expect we shall indulge in a long pow-wow.”

“Don’t be late,” said Mrs. Battiscombe, perhaps just a little anxious to know how late her husband would be.

When considering a question of time, however distant, the magistrate instinctively sought enlightenment in the dial of his watch. He did so now.

“I’m counting on Matthews to fix me up with a trolly. Unless I’m delayed, it should bring me back by about ten. Cheerio!”

She watched his great form amble across the clearing and disappear presently where the path wound between the trees. She returned to her chair and sat for some moments, her hands clasped in front of her, gazing into space. Presently she arose and went with quick determined steps to her room.

As she regarded herself in the long mirror of the wardrobe Jim Battiscombe had taken so much trouble to import for her, she found time to reflect that, after all, there were consolations even for having married a fool. She had once calculated on there being other consolations, but these had been speedily modified by the suddenly revealed meanness of James Battiscombe senior and his only too evident intention of living to a ripe old age.

She bit her lip. In spite of the easy way in which he laughed things off, an inborn instinct told her that doubts were beginning to form in her husband’s slow-working brain, and these germs, once firmly seated, had an unpleasant habit of increasing with an alarming rapidity. The thought made her angry. She had contemplated a pleasant afternoon in Moberly’s bungalow at Bukit-Serang--and now all those cherished moments would have to be devoted to a tiresome review of their respective positions.

A second survey of her own image in the glass gave her food for further reflection.

Drop Dick Moberly! It wasn’t quite such a stupid suggestion after all. It would have to come to an end sooner or later, and there were times when his incessant protestations bored her intensely. Vary things a bit, Jim had suggested. Well, why not? There were still a score of loopholes for escape from the monotony at Rembakut. Her husband was agitated solely on account of her visits to the planter, and her insatiate desire for admiration and conquest swiftly turned her thoughts in other directions. After all, there were more attractive men in Borneo than Dick Moberly!

The picture that her blue eyes were surveying so critically was that of a slight, slim woman in the early thirties, with all the freshness of a girl of nineteen, an aureole of light fluffy curls, and pouting lips that required only the slightest artificial attention to keep them amazingly red.

Her riding-breeches of white drill added a certain piquancy to her appearance of which she was not entirely oblivious, and the broad white solar topee she affected became her wonderfully.

Deliriously attractive, daring to the point of recklessness, such was she whom the adoring Jim Battiscombe persisted in regarding as his devoted better-half, whom Cranley--who had a gift for apt expressions--had christened the _vest-pocket adventuress_ and whom the Commissioner of Police labelled as a _damned dangerous woman_.

She rode off presently through the cocopalms and took a path which led through fields of rectagonal pools where vivid green paddy-shoots thrust their heads timidly above the surface. Great water-buffaloes, browsing in the open, raised their broad snouts at her approach; ugly, formidable creatures with lashing tails and a legendary objection to the white man because of his fondness for soap! But Mrs. Battiscombe had passed these particular beasts a score of times and grown to regard them merely as familiar landmarks on the road to Bukit-Serang.

On the white wooden bridge that spanned the Ayer River she met Dr. Abu-Samar.

He was standing at the far end of the bridge, a cigarette between his lips and his tortoiseshell glasses reflecting the rays of the tropical sun. As she drew closer, she saw that he was taller and more powerful in build than her husband had made it appear; his fingers were long and tapering and his complexion was sallow rather than brown. There was something strangely compelling about the look with which he greeted her. It was as if his eyes were gifted with extraordinary magnetic powers.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Battiscombe,” he said, “I have been waiting for you.”

The girl reined up her mount and sat looking down at him, an amused smile at her lips.

“Waiting for _me_,” she echoed pleasantly. “What exactly do you mean by that?”

A memory flashed upon her of her husband’s treatment of the doctor that morning and she wondered if the man’s presence there were due to a desire for revenge.

“You are on your way to see Mr. Moberly of Bukit-Serang,” continued Samar in the same measured tones. “I am a doctor here, you know, and Mr. Moberly has an appointment at my house at three. He instructed me to endeavour to intercept you and escort you there to meet him.” In some peculiar way he seemed to read the doubts which lay in her mind, for he added, “If you would rather go on to Mr. Moberly’s bungalow, I am to tell you that his servant will give you tea and Mr. Moberly will join you there later.”

Mrs. Battiscombe was gazing down at the muddy waters of the river. She looked up suddenly.

“Very well,” she returned slowly. “I will come.”

Upon hearing her consent, Dr. Abu-Samar turned abruptly on his heel.

“If you will permit me, I will go on ahead and show you the way.”

She touched her pony’s flank with her heel.

“Is it far?” she asked.

“About half a mile,” he said over his shoulder.

The path by which her guide took her was ill-marked, and after the first two hundred yards or so she was forced to dismount to avoid the overhanging branches.

They came presently to a small open space, waist high for the most part with _lalang_, in which stood a broad, squat house with a freshly-repaired roof of sago thatch and walls of dried reeds. A verandah had been added to the original structure and neat wooden steps, painted white, led up to this.

At the foot of the steps a native girl with sarong of bottle-green, and long cigarette between her fingers, lounged idly against a post, favouring the white woman with a look of insolent curiosity mingled with something Vera Battiscombe did not altogether understand.

Abu-Samar waved an eloquent hand.

“Here is my humble dwelling, Mrs. Battiscombe. Shall I take your horse? or would you prefer to tether it yourself?”

He shouted something in a dialect unknown to her and the brown girl, with a flash of her white teeth, flounced off towards the back of the house.

Vera tapped her riding-boots with her stock.

“Do I go up here?” she inquired.

“If you please.”

She found a cane chair and took possession of it without invitation.

The doctor offered to relieve her of her hat and whip, but she shook her head.

“No, thank you. It’s already after three and I don’t suppose Mr. Moberly will want to stop very long.”

She accepted a cigarette, however, and lit it from the match he held towards her.

He flicked the match airily into space and strode off to the far end of the verandah, from which he continued to stare at her until she began to feel profoundly uncomfortable.

“Have you been here long?” she demanded at length.

“Not long,” returned Samar briefly.

At three-fifteen she grew uneasy.

“You are quite certain Mr. Moberly is coming here this afternoon?”

He did not answer at once, but came slowly towards her, his head pushed slightly forward, his eyes never leaving her face.

“You are a very beautiful woman, Mrs. Battiscombe,” he said suddenly.

She came quickly to her feet, her face flushed.

“Answer me,” she commanded, stamping her foot. “Is Mr. Moberly coming here or not?”

“_Not_,” confessed Samar with astonishing frankness. “I am afraid that the whole of my story was nothing less than pure invention, designed to induce you to do something which you would not otherwise have consented to do.”

She stood for some moments aghast, trying vainly to collect her thoughts. Her eyes followed the encircling line of foliage, endeavouring to discover some gap wide enough for her to ride through and outstrip Dr. Samar, should he attempt to follow.

“Oh!” she ejaculated at length--and made for the stairhead. The doctor barred her path, a thin hand resting on either post. His disarming smile exposed a perfect row of white teeth.

“It would be impossible for you to get away from here unless I desired you to,” he said; “but it may ease your mind to learn that I have not the least intention of harming you or of detaining you longer than is absolutely necessary for my purpose.”

He smiled again.

“Very naturally you assumed that I wanted to make you suffer for the insult your husband put upon me this morning. I can assure you such is not the case. I am a cultured man, Mrs. Battiscombe, not a savage. Confess, you don’t in the least mind being here.”

Mrs. Battiscombe laughed nervously.

“Not if you play square. I’m in rather a hurry though, really.”

Samar raised his brows mockingly.

“To find Mr. Moberly--or return to your husband, who happens to be in Jesselton?”

“If you are going to insult me, Dr. Samar----!”

“I do not wish to. I merely desire to show you that I know everything. I am a strange man, Mrs. Battiscombe, with an extraordinary history--and extraordinary powers. The people here regard me as a magician, a miracle worker. They come to me when they are ill, but they are afraid of me, all the same. Frankly, I like to inspire fear. My ancestor was Sidi Samar, an Illanun and a pirate in the days when the English Rajah first came to Sarawak. Driven back into the interior by superior forces, he became, by reason of the vast wealth he had accumulated and the terror he inspired, chief of a tribe of warriors who existed by murder and rapine. A well-kept secret, handed down from father to son, made me eventually sole possessor of his fortune. My desire for knowledge was insatiable. I went to England--the home of the traditional enemy of my tribe--and added to the mysteries of the East the scientific knowledge of the West----”

“Why England?” interrupted Mrs. Battiscombe. “Why go to our country at all if you dislike our people?”

Dr. Samar screwed up his eyes.

“One goes to the bazaar for beautiful fabrics, for jewels, for wondrous ornaments--not because one has anything in common with those who sell. From England I went to Germany, Italy, Austria, and even to America. I have travelled far, you see, always accumulating knowledge----”

“And yet you are content to return to Borneo and live in a native hut with a roof of _ataps_!”

“I have come back to my home and my people,” said Samar quietly, “to the island the white races have taken from us, and, if they could but realise it, so great are my powers that it would pay them to treat me with respect.”

She glanced at her watch and held out her hand to him.

“Well, good-bye, Dr. Samar. I mustn’t really stop a moment longer. Your story has been so interesting that I feel almost inclined to forgive you for having lured me here under false pretences.”

Again that queer light had crept into his eyes.

“You are going to do more than that, Mrs. Battiscombe,” he assured her in a voice that had dropped to a whisper. “You are coming here again and again. At first because I shall call you, and you will be compelled to come--and later because you will have learnt to prefer my house to the bungalow of the little planter at Bukit-Serang.” He caught both her hands and drew her, feebly resisting, to the open doorway of an inner room. “Come. One look at the magician’s palace and you will be free to depart.”

They passed through heavy curtains of orange-coloured silk ornamented with silver beads and, as these swung to behind them, he released her. She found herself in a comparatively small apartment furnished with a strange conglomeration of Moorish, Chinese, and Indian furniture, and hung with bizarre Oriental draperies. A table inlaid with mother-of-pearl occupied the centre of the floor, and close to the far wall reposed an elaborate divan. The atmosphere was permeated with a sticky, resinous odour which she traced to a heavy bronze jar in a corner, from which issued a faint wreath of blue smoke.

Suddenly, as she gazed around her in bewilderment, Doctor Samar threw open the lid of an enormous cedar-wood box and tossed a jumbled heap of glittering ornaments on to the table.

“A little souvenir of your first visit, Mrs. Battiscombe,” he suggested. “Choose what you will.”

Victim of a confused host of fears and suspicions, she backed towards the curtains, her eyes fixed on the glittering pile.

He lifted the table bodily and held it up to her eyes, but she pushed it away from her.

“No, no,” she cried hoarsely. “It is quite impossible. You don’t understand.…”

“Very well; then I must choose for you.”

He selected a pendant in the form of a butterfly, magnificently carved from a red, transparent substance the colour of ruby, with emerald eyes and swung from a chain of gold filigree. It was as thin as a wafer, and, almost before she was aware of it, he had clasped it round her neck.

She stared at him with frightened eyes.

“You mean me to keep this?”

He folded his arms.

“The Crimson Butterfly,” he said softly. “A talisman to which native superstition has attributed strange powers. It is said that the wearer has but to express a wish--and it will most surely be accomplished.” He laughed easily. “I warned you that I was a magician, Mrs. Battiscombe. Even our friend Mr. Moberly would scarcely be able to provide you with so wonderful a gift--in return for the many favours you so graciously bestow on him!”

The events of the afternoon had played the deuce with Vera Battiscombe’s nerves, and she was on the verge of hysteria.

Her face dropped suddenly into her hands and, with a wild outburst of sobbing, she staggered through the curtain into the clearer air of the verandah.

“How dare you!--How dare you insult me like this!--That man is nothing to me--nothing, I tell you!--I wish he were dead!”

Something made her look up.

Abu-Samar was standing at a little distance from her, and the stairway to her pony was within easy reach.

“One has to be careful what one wishes,” the doctor reminded her, “when one happens to be the wearer of the Crimson Butterfly!”

She tore herself from his gaze with an effort, and, running madly down the steps, untethered her mount with trembling fingers.

Half an hour later she stumbled upon the white wooden bridge and rode headlong back to her husband’s bungalow, haunted with the memory of Abu-Samar’s mocking eyes.

Her servant’s startled gaze directed at her chest drew her attention to the butterfly pendant that still hung there, glaringly magnificent against a white background.

She shuddered involuntarily and tucked it out of sight.