Chapter VII: A Strange Insect

Mrs. Battiscombe blinked and looked up.

She was still lying in the long chair on the verandah and the blue sun-blinds had been drawn. There filtered up to her through the morning air the chattering of natives, the contented clucking of hens, the ring of an axe in the forest.

Still in a state of semi-coma, she dimly realised that Jim, with his accustomed thoughtfulness, had drawn the table to her side, so that the bell which would summon Hoon-Kit was within easy reach.

She yawned and was about to turn over and continue her slumbers when her arm touched the pocket of her pyjama-coat. A guilty feeling stole over her and she forced herself into a sitting position. With trembling fingers she fumbled for the contents, hoping to discover that the bulging contour of the pocket was due to an accumulation of handkerchiefs, to a bottle of quinine tabloids placed there by accident, to anything rather than the packet she imagined she had removed from the custody of Battiscombe’s men in her sleep.

Her worst suspicions were justified. The parcel which should have gone to Moberly at dawn was still there.

She held it at arm’s length, and, as she did so the ghastly details of her nightmare built themselves up in her imagination with a vividness that set her trembling. It had not all been a dream, could not have been, for here was a portion of it--glaringly concrete--within her fingers. She was weary, too, thoroughly exhausted, as if she had undergone some stupendous fatigue. Her head throbbed, her eyes felt sore and watered in the light, and she was conscious of a dull aching from head to foot. How much, her reeling brain demanded, had been real--and how much illusion?

Her watch had stopped. Still holding the blanket round her, she crept to the living-room door and saw, by the clock that hung on the wall, that it was ten minutes past eleven.

Jim would be coming from the court-house at noon.

She unearthed a fresh sheet of paper and made the parcel up again. A strong impulse assailed her to withdraw the butterfly pendant and dispose of it in some manner when her husband was away, but she fought it down. The thing frightened her. She must get it out of the house or she would go mad.

In the seclusion of her own room she scrambled into some clothes and penned a hasty note to Dick.

“My Dear,

“Jim has come to his senses at last and, for a time at least, we must put an end to everything. Keep everything you find here. Some day I hope to be able to see you and explain.--Vera.”

She was about to fold it when force of habit made her add her inevitable postscript.

“An awful scene last night; it made me dream. Rotten, isn’t it?--V.”

She pushed it between the folds of the brown paper and rang the bell.

In her excited frame of mind, it seemed an eternity before Hoon-Kit shuffled to the door and knocked.

“Give this to one of the _Tuan-Hakim’s_ men and tell him to take it immediately to the _Tuan_ Moberly’s house. It is the parcel that should have gone earlier this morning. He need say nothing to the _Tuan-Hakim_. _Tahu_?”

The man grinned and withdrew.

In five minutes he was back again.

He found his mistress fully dressed, standing at the open door that led to the verandah.

“The man has gone,” he reported.

She heaved a deep sigh of relief.

“Very well.” She produced a silver dollar and held it out to him. “Give this to the soldier when he returns.”

The coin passed into the doubtful security of a pocket of a pair of Battiscombe’s discarded trousers.

“The man was very glad,” resumed Hoon-Kit, looking down at his feet. “The _Tuan-Hakim_ gave him the packet last night--and this morning he could not find it. He feared that the _Tuan_ would be angry.”

“_Baik-lah_, Hoon-Kit,” and she dismissed him.

She remained, a hand on either door-post, staring through the opening between the blinds. The colour had come back to her cheeks and there was a triumphant light in her eyes.

Things had turned out better than she had dared to expect. Moberly’s presents had gone back to him, there was no danger he would return the Crimson Butterfly, and Jim would never know the parcel had been delayed.

She started violently. Through that opening at the head of the stairs where the sun threw a rectangle of yellow light across the boarded floor there fluttered an enormous crimson butterfly. It encircled for a moment in the sunlight, beat against the blinds, then settled on the table by her chair.

She stood there, rooted to the spot, her eyes drawn to it by a strange fascination.

The insect was formed like a butterfly and yet the familiar delicacy of the wings was absent. It appeared to her as a coarse, unlovely creature, with a corrugated surface like a rubber sponge, the countless pores of which seemed to open and close as she looked. Had she encountered it in the jungle, settling on the bark of a forest-monarch, she would probably have mistaken it for a poisonous fungus.

It swooped into the air again and flew straight toward her.

She uttered a wild scream and Hoon-Kit, who had been laying the table for the mid-day meal, hurried on to the verandah.

“The _mem_ is ill?” he inquired blankly.

She waved her arms frantically.

“Drive it away,” she cried. “Quickly!--that cushion!--anything!--It’s horrible--horrible!”

Hoon-Kit reached behind him for a table-napkin and hit at the thing as it passed.

He missed it by inches and stood staring after it as it wheeled into the open again and was gone.

“The Crimson Butterfly!” she exclaimed in a voice that was barely a whisper.

The Chinaman nodded.

“_Yah_--a butterfly; that is all!”

He folded the table-napkin carefully, shaking his head all the while. It was evident in every line of his brown, wrinkled face that he was at a loss to discover the cause of his mistress’s panic. Suddenly he brightened and grinned broadly.

“The _mem_ does not like red butterflies?” he suggested.

She endeavoured to conjure up a smile.

“Thank you, Hoon-Kit,” she said. “It was very stupid of me. I did not see it was a butterfly. I thought it was something else. Bring in a bottle of lager for your master; he will be here very soon now.”

As soon as he had gone, she sank into a chair.

“It had green eyes,” she muttered to herself, “I saw them.”