Chapter XXIII: The Hut in the Trees

Armourer read the missive through and handed it to Trevor.

“What d’you make of that?” he demanded.

The other scanned it.

“Dear Michael,” it read, “I can bear it no longer. Whenever I close my eyes I see him. I see the rocks in the wilderness, the red light from the brazier--and him, beckoning me. This evening your pitiless catechism broke down the last rampart of my resistance. The call came again--and I could only obey. A mysterious _something_ guides my pen and I have had to force myself to write even these few lines. I find it impossible to inscribe his name, but you, who have guessed so much already, will understand. The wretchedness that my follies have brought to everybody has descended at last upon myself. What ghastly fate awaits me in the beyond I know not, but if it is because of my looks that he has sought me I pray that some horrible disease may mar my features before I encounter him alone.

“Good-bye.
“Vera.”

Trevor stared at his friend in amazement.

“Holy Moses! what’s it all mean?”

“The _him_,” said Armourer, “is Abu-Samar. It was he who gave that ornament to Mrs. Battiscombe.”

“I see; and all this rigmarole about wildernesses and red lights and somebody calling, what’s all that signify?”

The magistrate reached down his hat.

“Abu was never a doctor. His chief stunt is hypnotism. He has apparently taken advantage of Mrs. Battiscombe’s weak state of health to impose his will upon her--from a distance. I don’t understand much about this sort of thing, but I believe it’s quite possible. Looks as if the champagne’s _off_ for the moment, doesn’t it?”

Trevor made a wry face.

“Whenever I come to this confounded house of yours, there’s always some excitement in the wind. A few more experiences of this sort and I shall begin to believe that our district officers constitute a particularly energetic and hard-worked body of men! I think my topee’s on the verandah.”

They went out together by the back way and Chong-Si watched their movements apprehensively. If any particular thought were uppermost in his mind at that minute it was probably one concerning the demise of his immediate predecessor.

Armourer’s first move was to turn out his men and dispatch them with instructions to scour the neighbourhood thoroughly.

“We’ll try the path through the trees first,” he told Trevor, “follow it as far as your wire and come back by the professor’s shack. She’s only ten minutes start of us.”

The other nodded.

“She can’t have got far and the white thing over her head should render her fairly conspicuous in the darkness. Going to ride?”

Armourer reflected.

“No. Ponies will only be in the way if we have to leave the track. We shall be far more comfortable on foot.”

They strode on in silence, filling their pipes as they went.

“I hope we find her all right,” said the magistrate, suddenly. “I feel kind of responsible for this.”

Trevor glanced up at his companion.

“That’s pretty good nonsense, isn’t it? Jim couldn’t expect you to spend your time in her room.”

“I know all about that; but, you see, I asked her a lot of questions about the pendant just before _makan_, and the professor had previously warned me not to do so. It might quite easily be supposed that my attitude was responsible for her flight. You remember what she said in the letter about my pitiless catechism.”

Trevor struck a match and puffed furiously for some seconds.

“I shouldn’t say anything about that letter. It’s of no value except to show what state of mind she was in. It doesn’t supply any definite clue to the direction she’s taken.”

“It doesn’t,” returned the other slowly; “but, if I have made a mistake, I can take my gruelling with the next man. I don’t fancy I should care to suppress anything.”

“It might be misunderstood; it struck me as being rather intimate. It started _Michael_, I mean--and finished _Vera_.”

Armourer bit his lip.

“I’ve never written to _her_,” he protested, “and I can’t very well help what she chooses to write to me, can I? Besides, Jimmy always addresses me by my Christian name.”

“You don’t think he’ll mind?”

“Not particularly. Why should he?”

“And the professor and Miss Standen? Supposing they get to hear of it?”

The magistrate held out his hand.

“Give me the matches, Trevor. Thanks. You’ve a particularly irritating way of hitting the right nail on the head. I’m not going to commit myself to destroying or withholding anything, but I shall certainly think over the wisdom of divulging the contents of that confounded note. D’you know, Trevor, that woman’s becoming a veritable thorn in my side.”

“She evidently likes you.”

Armourer uttered an exclamation of disgust.

“Then all I can say is I wish she didn’t. Jimmy swears he’ll send her home as soon as she’s fit to travel, and I shall try and keep him up to it. She’s a damned dangerous woman.”

“‘Amen’ to that!” added the other, “but we’ve got to find her first.”

They encountered a native in the trees and Armourer questioned him.

“Where are you going?”

The man seemed frightened.

“_Sana_,” he muttered, indicating with a dark forefinger the direction in which a village lay.

“Have you seen anybody on the path or in the forest?”

The creature shook his head.

“Nobody, _Tuan_.”

“Nobody at all? Not a white lady, for example, with a shawl over her head?”

He shook his head again.

“I came from the _Kampong_ on the far side of the hill. There were girls drawing water from a stream, but after that, nobody.”

Armourer shrugged his shoulders and let him go.

He looked at Trevor.

“That’s rather important,” he said. “He must have followed our path for more than a mile before we met him. She can’t have come this way.”

The other rubbed his chin.

“She may have left the track at some point. I suggest we keep on for, say, another half-mile.”

Armourer shone an electric torch on the ground at his feet.

“The worst of it is,” he complained, “that the earth’s as hard as nails everywhere. A regiment of soldiers could march along here without leaving a single foot-mark.”

A hundred yards farther on a man with a hurricane lamp stepped suddenly from the bushes.

“Who’s that?” called Armourer sharply.

“Sembilan, _Tuan_,” came the startled response, and a little black private came respectfully to attention.

“Sembilan, is it? Have you found the white lady?”

“No, _Tuan-Hakim_. The _mem_ is nowhere to be seen; but I have found this on a thorn-bush.”

He held before them a white silk wrap with a long fringe.

Armourer recognised the scent which still clung to it long before he had time to examine the texture of the material.

“Where did you find this?”

The soldier pointed behind him.

“Just there, _Tuan_, but a few moments before you came. The grass had been trodden down and the track points this way--across the main path and into the trees on the other side.”

“Carry on, Sembilan,” commanded Armourer, “we will follow.”

They followed their guide through dense undergrowth, parted in places as if something had recently passed that way. Mosquitoes whined everywhere, monkeys crooned sleepily overhead, and presently a patch of cool air brought them to the bed of a trickling forest stream.

Sembilan came back, holding his lamp above his head, and pointed excitedly at the ground.

“By Jove!” murmured Trevor, “we’re on the right track. That’s a woman’s heel or I’m a Dutchman. See! There it is again.”

Armourer followed the direction of his gaze.

“Thank heaven for that!” he announced presently. “We’ve discovered something! Don’t hang about there, man, gibbering like an infernal ape! Get on with it!”

The native grinned and moved forward.

“What the dickens made her take to the jungle?” asked Trevor after a long pause.

“Don’t know,” responded the other. “Perhaps she’s following some course dictated by that scoundrel Abu. She must be in a sort of trance, or she surely wouldn’t have left this shawl behind.”

Trevor was thinking.

“We’ll hunt up a map when we get back,” he said, “and draw a line on it from your place to this point, and on to infinity. If she’s bound to steer a direct course to where he now is, we might follow that line until we find him.” He dug Armourer in the ribs. “That’s pretty sound reasoning, eh?”

“Marvellous! Any idea where we are now?”

“No.”

“Well, how are you going to find it on the map?”

“Don’t know. I was leaving that to you. Do _you_ know where we are?”

The magistrate sucked at an empty pipe.

“We’re about a hundred yards from the professor’s laboratory, and Mrs. Battiscombe in her wanderings has covered three parts of a circle. Rather knocks your theory on the head, doesn’t it?”

This sudden revelation left Trevor utterly unabashed.

“It was very stupid of me,” he announced cheerfully. “I had forgotten to allow for feminine instability of character!”

Two minutes brought them to the hut.

Armourer uttered an exclamation and ran the final ten yards.

“What’s up?” demanded Trevor, following suit.

“This,” declared the other, and swung the door to and fro on its hinges. “The padlock’s been forced off. Sembilan! bring that lamp inside.”

Trevor, picking his way gingerly, was greeted by an odour of chemicals that set him coughing.

He touched his companion’s arm.

“There’s a bottle been knocked down here,” he said. “I should be careful how you go. Some of these things burn.”

Armourer held the lamp so that its rays illuminated the roof. He pointed to a few links of gold chain that still swung from a hook.

“That’s what she was after, old son. She plagued me for it this evening. You see, the pendant’s gone.”

Trevor gasped.

“But, man alive, she didn’t know where the shack was, she couldn’t possibly have forced that door--”

The magistrate waved his arms in the air.

“It’s no use asking or implying questions. All I can tell you is that the Crimson Butterfly has gone, that she’s got it on her now--and that we’ve got to find her and bring her back.”