The Pointing Man Read online

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  THE POINTING MAN

  _A Burmese Mystery_

  BY MARJORIE DOUIE

  NEW YORKE.P. DUTTON & COMPANY1920

  CONTENTS

  I

  IN WHICH THE DESTINY THAT PLAYS WITH MEN MOVES THE PIECES ON THEBOARD

  II

  TELLS THE STORY OF A LOSS, AND HOW IT AFFECTED THE REV. FRANCISHEATH

  III

  INDICATES A STANDPOINT COMMONLY SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT THEPRINCIPLES OF THE JESUIT FATHERS

  IV

  INTRODUCES THE READER TO MRS. WILDER IN A SECRETIVE MOOD

  V

  CRAVEN JOICEY, THE BANKER, FINDS THAT HIS MEMORY IS NOT TO BETRUSTED

  VI

  TELLS HOW ATKINS EXPLAINS FACTS BY PEOPLE AND NOT PEOPLE BYFACTS, AND HOW HARTLEY, HEAD OF THE POLICE, SMELLS THE SCENT OFAPPLE ORCHARDS GROWING IN A FOOL'S PARADISE

  VII

  FINDS THE REV. FRANCIS HEATH READING GEORGE HERBERT'S POEMS, ANDLEAVES HIM PLEDGED TO A POSSIBLY COMPROMISING SILENCE

  VIII

  SHOWS HOW THE CLOAK OF DARKNESS OF ONE NIGHT HIDES MANYEMOTIONS, AND MRS. WILDER IS FRANKLY INQUISITIVE

  IX

  MRS. WILDER IS PRESENTED IN A MELTING MOOD, AND DRAYCOTT WILDERIS FORCED TO RECALL THE LINES COMMENCING "A FOOL THERE WAS"

  X

  IN WHICH CRAVEN JOICEY IS OVERCOME BY A SUDDEN INDISPOSITION,AND HARTLEY, WITHOUT LOOKING FOR HIM, FINDS THE MAN HE WANTED

  XI

  SHOWS HOW THE "WHISPER FROM THE DAWN OF LIFE" ENABLES CORYNDONTO TAKE THE DRIFTING THREADS BETWEEN HIS FINGERS

  XII

  SHOWS HOW A MAN MAY CLIMB A HUNDRED STEPS INTO A PASSIONLESSPEACE, AND RETURN AGAIN TO A WORLD OF SMALL TORMENTS

  XIII

  PUTS FORWARD THE FACT THAT A SUDDEN FRIENDSHIP NEED NOT BE BASEDUPON A SUDDEN LIKING; AND PASSES THE NIGHT UNTIL DAWN REVEALS ASHAMEFUL SECRET

  XIV

  TELLS HOW SHIRAZ, THE PUNJABI, ADMITTED THE FRAILTIES OFORDINARY HUMANITY, AND HOW CORYNDON ATTENDED AFTERNOON SERVICE,AND CONSIDERED THE VEXED QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT

  XV

  IN WHICH THE FURTHERING OF A STRANGE COMRADESHIP IS CONTINUED,AND A BEGGAR FROM AMRITZAR CRIES IN THE STREETS OF MANGADONE

  XVI

  IN WHICH LEH SHIN IS BREATHED UPON BY A JOSS AND EXPERIENCES THETERROR OF A MAN WHO TOUCHES THE VEIL BEHIND WHICH THE IMMORTALSDWELL

  XVII

  TELLS HOW CORYNDON LEARNS FROM THE REV. FRANCIS HEATH WHAT THEREV. FRANCIS HEATH NEVER TOLD HIM

  XVIII

  THE REV. FRANCIS HEATH UNLOCKS HIS DOOR AND SHOWS WHAT LIESBEHIND

  XIX

  IN WHICH LEH SHIN WHISPERS A STORY INTO THE EAR OF SHIRAZ, THEPUNJABI; THE BURDEN OF WHICH IS: "HAVE I FOUND THEE, O MINEENEMY?"

  XX

  CRAVEN JOICEY, THE BANKER, IS FACED BY A MAN WITH A WHIP IN HISHAND, AND CORYNDON FINDS A CLUE

  XXI

  DEMONSTRATES THE PERSUASIVE POWER OF A KNIFE EDGE, AND TELLS ASTORY OF A GOLD LACQUER BOWL

  XXII

  IN WHICH CORYNDON HOLDS THE LAST THREAD AND DRAWS IT TIGHT

  XXIII

  DEMONSTRATES THE TRUTH OF THE AXIOM THAT "THE UNEXPECTED ALWAYSHAPPENS"

  XXIV

  IN WHICH A WOODEN IMAGE POINTS FOR THE LAST TIME

  GLOSSARY

  THE POINTING MAN

  I

  IN WHICH THE DESTINY THAT PLAYS WITH MEN MOVES THE PIECES ON THE BOARD

  Dust lay thick along the road that led through the very heart of thenative quarter of Mangadone; dust raised into a misty haze which hung inthe air and actually introduced a light undernote of red into theeffect. Dust, which covered the bare feet of the coolies, the velvetslippers of the Burmese, which encroached everywhere and no oneregarded, for presently, just at sundown, shouting watermen, carryinglarge bamboo vessels with great spouts, would come running along theroad, casting the splashing water on all sides, and reduce the drypowder to temporary mud.

  The main street of the huge bazaar in Mangadone was as busy athoroughfare as any crowded lane of the city of London, and it blazedwith colour and life as the evening air grew cool. There were shopswhere baskets were sold, shops apparently devoted only to the sale ofmirrors, shops where tailors sat on the ground and worked at sewingmachines; sweet stalls, food stalls, cafes, flanked by dusty tubs ofplants and crowded with customers, who reclined on sofas and chairs setright into the street itself. Nearer the river end of the street, theshops were more important, and business offices announced themselves onlarge placards inscribed in English, and in curling Burmese characterslike small worms hooping and arching themselves, and again in thickblack letters which resembled tea leaves formed into the picturesquedesign of Chinese writing, for Mangadone was one of the mostcosmopolitan ports of the East, and stood high in the commercial worldas a place for trade.

  Along the street a motley of colour took itself like a sea of shades andtints. Green, crimson, lemon yellow, lapis-lazuli, royal purple,intermingled with the naked brown bodies of coolies clad only inloin-cloths, for every race and class emerged just before sunset. RichBurmen clad in yards of stiff, rustling silk jostled the lean, spareChinamen and the Madrassis who came to Mangadone to make money out ofthe indolence of the natives of a place who cared to do little but smokeand laugh. Poor Burmen in red and yellow cottons, as content with lifeas their wealthy brethren, loitered and smoked with the littlewhite-coated women with flower-decked heads, and they all flowed on withthe tide and filled the air with a perpetual babel of sound.

  The great, high houses on either side of the street were dilapidated andgaunt, let out for the most part in flats and tenements. Screamingchildren swarmed naked and entirely unconcerned upon every landing, andout on the verandas that gave publicity to the way of life in thenative quarter. Sometimes a rag of curtain covered the entrances to thehouses, but just as often it did not. Women washed the big brass andearthenware pots, cooked the food, and played with the children in thesmoky darkness, or sat to watch the evening show of the street.

  At one corner of the upper end of the street was a curio and china shopowned by a stout and wealthy Burman, Mhtoon Pah. The shop was one of thefeatures of the place, and no globe-trotting tourist could pass throughMangadone without buying a set of tea-cups, a dancing devil, a carpet,or a Burmese gong, from Mhtoon Pah. A strange-looking effigy in tightbreeches, with pointing yellow hands and a smiling yellow face, stoodoutside the shop, eternally asking people in wooden, dumb show, to go inand be robbed by the proprietor. He had stood there and pointed for solong that the green glaze of his coat was sun-blistered, but heinvariably drew the attention of passing tourists, and acted as asign-board. He pointed at a small door up a flight of steps, and behindthe small door was a dark shop, smelling of sandal-wood and cassia, andstrong with the burning fumes of joss-sticks. Innumerable cardboardboxes full of Japanese dolls, full of glass bracelets of all colours,full of ivory figures, and full of amber and jade ornaments, were piledin the shelves. Silver bands, embossed in relief with the history of theGaudama--the Lord Buddha--stood under glass protection, and everythingthat the heart of the touring American or Britisher could desire was tobe had, at a price, in the curio shop of Mhtoon Pah. Umbrellas of allcolours from Bussan; silk from Shantung; carpets from Mirzapore; silverpeacocks, Japanese embroideries, shell-trimmed bags from Shan andCochin, all were there; and the wealth of Mhtoon Pah was great.

  Everybody knew the curio dealer: he had beguiled and swindled each newarrival in Mangadone, and his personality helped to make him a verydefinite figure in the place. He was a large man, his size accentuatedby his full silk petticoat; a man with large feet, large hands and around bullet head, set on a thick neck. He had a few sleek black hairsat the corners of his mouth, and his lo
ng, narrow eyes, with thickyellow whites and inky-black pupils, never expressed any emotion.Clothed in strawberry-red silk and a white coat, with a crimson scarfknotted low over his forehead, he was very nearly as strange andwonderful a sight as his own shop of myriad wares, and his manner was atall times the manner of a Grand Duke. Mhtoon Pah was as well known asthe pointing effigy outside, but, whereas the world in the streetbelieved they knew what the wooden man pointed at, no one could evertell what Mhtoon Pah saw, and no one knew except Mhtoon Pah himself.

  All day long Mhtoon Pah sat inside his shop on a low divan and smokedcheroots, and only when a customer was of sufficient importance did heever rise to conduct a sale himself. He was assisted by a thin, eagerboy, a native Christian from Ootacamund, who had followed several tradesbefore he became the shop assistant of Mhtoon Pah. He was usefulbecause he could speak English, and he had been dressing-boy to amarried Sahib who lived in a big house at the end of the Cantonment,therefore he knew something of the ways of Mem-Sahibs; and he had takena prize at the Sunday school, therefore Absalom was a boy of goodcharacter, and was known very nearly as well as Mhtoon Pah himself.

  It was a hot, stifling evening, the evening of July the 29th. The rainshad lashed the country for days, and even the trees that grew in amongthe houses of Paradise Street were fresh and green, though one of thehot, burning breaks of blue sky and glaring sunlight had baked the roadinto Indian-red dust once more, and the interior of Mhtoon Pah's curioshop was heavy with stale scents and dark shadows that crept out as thegloom of evening settled in upon it. Mhtoon Pah moved about looking athis goods, and touching them with careful hands. He hovered over anivory lady carrying an umbrella, and looked long at a white marbleBuddha, who returned his look with an equally inscrutable regard. TheBuddha sat cross-legged, thinking for ever and ever about eternity, andMhtoon Pah moved round in red velvet toe-slippers, pattering lightly ashe went, for in spite of his bulk Mhtoon Pah had an almost soundlesswalk. Having gone over everything and stood to count the silver bowls,he waited as though he was listening, and after a little the light creakof the staircase warned him that steps were coming towards the shop fromthe upper rooms.

  "Absalom," he called, and the steps hurried, and after a moment's talkto which the boy listened carefully as though receiving directions, hetold him to close the shop and place his chair at the top of the steps,as he desired to sit outside and look at the street.

  When the chair was placed, Mhtoon Pah took up his elevated position andsmoked silently. The toil of the day was over, and he leaned his armalong the back of his chair and crossed one leg over his knee. He couldhear Absalom closing the shop behind him, and he turned his curious,expressionless eyes upon the boy as he passed down the steps and mingledwith the crowd in the street. Just opposite, a story-teller squatted onthe ground in the centre of a group of men who laughed and clapped theirhands, his flashing teeth and quick gesticulations adding to each pointhe made; it was still clear enough to see his alternating expression ofassumed anger or amusement. It was clear enough to notice the colouredscarves and smiling faces of a bullock cart full of girls going slowlyhomewards, and it was clear enough to see and recognize the Rev. FrancisHeath, hurrying at speed between the crowd; clear enough to see the Rev.Francis stop for a moment to wish his old pupil Absalom good evening,and then vanish quickly like a figure flashed on a screen by acinematograph.

  Lights came out in high windows and sounds of bagpipes and beatingtom-toms began inside the open doors of a nautch house. An evil-lookinghouse where green dragons curled up the fretted entrance, and where,overhead, faces peered from a balcony into the street. There was noiseenough there to attract any amount of attention. Smart carriages, withwhite-uniformed _syces_, hurried up, bearing stout, plethoric men fromthe wharf offices, and Mhtoon Pah saluted several of the sahibs, whoreclined in comfort behind fine pairs of trotting horses.

  Their time for passing having gone, and the street relieved of thedisturbance, lamps were carried out and set upon tables and booths, buta few red streaks of evening tinted the sky, and faces that passed werestill recognizable. A bay pony ridden by a lady almost at a gallop cameso fast that she was up the street and round the corner in a twinkling.If Mrs. Wilder was dining out on the night of July 29th she was runningthings close; equally so if she was receiving guests.

  A flare of light from a window opposite fell across the face of thedancing man, who pointed at Mhtoon Pah, and appeared to make him offerhis principal for sale, or introduce him to the street with anindicating finger. The gloom grew, calling out the lights into strength,but the concourse did not thin: it only gathered in numbers, and thelong, moaning hoot of an out-going tramp filled the air as though with awail of sorrow at departure. Lascars in coal-begrimed tunics joined inwith the rest, adding their voices to the babel, and round-hattedsailors from the Royal Indian Marine ships mingled with them.

  All up and down the Mangadone River lights came out. Clear lights alongthe land, and wavering torch-lights in the water. Ships' port-holescleared themselves in the darkness, ships' lights gleamed green and redin high stars up in the crows'-nests, or at the shapeless bulk of darkbows, and white sheets of strong electric clearness lay over one or twolanding-stages where craft was moored alongside and overtime work stillcontinued. Little sampans glided in and out like whispers, and smallboats with crossed oars, rowed by one man, ferried to and fro, but itwas late, and, gradually, all commercial traffic ceased.

  It was quite late now, an hour when European life had withdrawn to theCantonment. It was not an hour for Sahibs on foot to be about, and yetit seemed that there was one who found the night air of July 29th hotand close, and desired to go towards the river for the sake of thebreeze and the fresh air. He, too, like all the others, passed alongParadise Street, passing quickly, as the others had passed, his headbent and his eyes averted from the faces that looked up at him from easychairs, from crowded doorsteps, or that leaned over balconies. He, also,whoever he was, had not Mhtoon Pah's leisure to regard the street, andhe went on with a steady, quick walk which took him out on to the wharf,and from the wharf along a waste place where the tram lines ceased, andaway from there towards a cluster of lights in a house close over thedark river itself.

  The stars came out overhead, and the Southern Cross leaned down; seenfrom the river over the twin towers of the cathedral, seen from thecathedral brooding over the native quarter, seen in Paradise Street notat all, and not in any way missed by the inhabitants, whose eyes werenot upon the stars; seen again in the Cantonment, over the massed treesof the park, and seen remarkably well from the wide veranda of Mrs.Wilder's bungalow, where the guests sat after a long dinner, remarkingupon the heat and oppressiveness of the tropic night. The fire-fliesdanced over the trees like iridescent sparks hung on invisible gauze,and even came into the lighted drawing-room, to sparkle with lessradiance against the plain white walls. Fans whirred round and roundlike large tee-totums set near the ceiling, and even the electric lightappeared to give out heat; no breeze stirred from the far-away river, nocoolness came with the dark, no relief from the brooding, sultry heat.It was no hotter than many nights in any break in the rains, but theguests invited by Mrs. Wilder felt the languor of the air, and felt itmore profoundly because their hostess herself was affected by it.

  Mrs. Wilder was a dark, handsome woman of thirty-five, usually full oflife and animation, and her dinners were known to be entertainments inthe real sense of the word. Draycott Wilder was no mate for her inappearance or manner, but Draycott Wilder was marked by the Powers as asuccessful man. He took very little part in the social side of theirmarried life, and sat in the shadow near the lighted door, listeningwhile his guests talked. The party was in no way different to manyothers, and it would have ended and been forgotten by all concerned ifit had not been for the fact that an unusual occurrence broke it up indismay. Mrs. Wilder complained of the heat during dinner, and she hadbeen pale, looking doubly so in her vivid green dress; her usualanimation had vanished, and she talked with evident effort a
nd seemedglad of the darkness of the veranda.

  Suddenly one of those strange silences fell over everyone, silences thatmay be of a few seconds' duration, but that appear like hours. What theyare connected with, no one can guess. The silence lasted for a second,and it was broken with sudden violence.

  "My God," said the voice of Hartley, the Head of the Police, speaking intones of alarm. "Mrs. Wilder has fainted!" She had fallen forward in herchair, and he had caught her as she fell.

  Very soon the guests dispersed and the bungalow was still for the night.One or two waited to hear what the doctor had to say, and went awaysatisfied in the knowledge that the heat had been too much for Mrs.Wilder, and, but for that event, the dinner-party would have beenforgotten after two days. Hartley was the last to leave, and the soundof trotting hoofs grew faint along the road.

  By an hour after midnight nearly the whole white population can bepresumed to be asleep; day wakes early in the East, and there are fewwho keep all-night hours, because morning calls men from their beds totheir work, and even this hot, sultry night people lay on their beds andtried to sleep; but in the small bungalow where the Rev. Francis Heathlived with a solitary Sapper officer, the bed that he slept in wassmooth and unstirred by restless tossing inside the mosquito net.

  The Rev. Francis was out, sitting by the bed of a dying parishioner. Hewatched the long hours through, dressed as he had been in the afternoon,in a grey flannel suit, his thin neck too long and too spare for hisall-around collar, and as he watched sometimes and sometimes prayed, hetoo felt the pressure of the night.

  The woman he prayed beside was dying and quite unconscious of hispresence. Now and then, to relieve the strain, he got up and stood bythe window, looking at the lights against the sky and thinking verydefinitely of something that troubled him and drew his lips into atight, thin line. He was a young man of the type described usually as"zealous" and "earnest," and a light that was almost the light offanaticism shone in his eyes. A dying parishioner was no more of anovelty to Mr. Heath, than one of Mrs. Wilder's dinner-parties was toher guests, and yet the woman on the bed appealed to his pity as fewothers had done in his experience.

  When the doctor came he nodded to the clergyman and just touched thehand on the quilt. He was in evening dress, and he explained that he hadbeen detained owing to his hostess having been taken suddenly ill.

  "Where is Rydal himself?"

  He asked the question carelessly, dropping the pulseless wrist.

  "Who can tell?" said the Rev. Francis Heath.

  "He'd better keep out of the way," continued the doctor. "I believethere's a police warrant out for him. Hartley spoke of it to-night. Shewill be gone before morning, and a good job for her."

  The throbbing hot night wore on, and July the 29th became July the 30th,and Mangadone awoke to a fierce, tearing thunder-storm that boomed andcrashed and wore itself out in torrents of heavy rain.