Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

  On the morning of the fourth day I awoke with a curious exhilaration. I explained it to myself very reasonably.

  “That means that I am looking forward immensely to seeing at last the famous Brazen Palace at Anuradhapura.”

  I dressed quickly, ate my breakfast more quickly still, ordered my car to be brought round and strolled out of the hotel. There I suffered the worst shock of my life. For on the stone parapet which bordered the lakes, at a point just opposite to the door of the hotel, sat Uncle Sunday — no, I am wrong — sat Michael Crowther — no, I am wrong again — sat Michael D. I was so dumbfounded that I had to pass through these successive phases of recognition before I could place this odd apparition in its proper class. It was Michael D. at his worst. Michael D. in a mufti which dubbed him Michael D. as surely as a king’s sword dubs a squire a knight.

  I had never seen a panoply so outrageous. Yet no passer-by was even annoyed by it. I had to remember that the miracles of the West are the commonplaces of the East. He wore a sun-helmet, of course, like the rest of us, but nothing else like the rest of us. He was clothed in a jacket of dark tweed so thick and heavy that it made me perspire to look at it, a white cotton shirt very open at the throat, with enormous wings to the collar which covered the lapels of his coat. The Moore and Burgess shirt was caught in at the waist by a cricket belt of the I. Zingari colours and below the belt white drill knickerbockers decorated his knees and thighs. He wore, with the white knickerbockers, thick, dark woollen stockings and — horrible, most horrible — white canvas shoes with patent-leather toe-caps and patent-leather fancy strappings.

  At the first glance I could not believe my eyes. At the second I did not want to. For the first time I rejoiced that Imogen was eighty miles away at Anuradhapura. For the second time I feared that neither distance nor effort could keep her out of this man’s orbit. I was going to do what I could, however. I set off at a brisk pace down the road as if I had not recognised him — a foolish manoeuvre, for I should have to come back for my car, and Michael D. would still be waiting on the parapet above the water. So I stopped in front of a jeweller’s window and pretended to examine its contents. Out of the tail of my eye I saw my car brought to the hotel door and my baggage placed in the back of it. Then I strolled back. Michael D. sat still, quietly and absolutely certain that I should be compelled to approach him. I had no such intention. I grew hot over his conceit. If he imagined himself to be a magnet, I knew that I was the silver churn. He could not attract me. I took my seat in the car and then he rose from the balustrade and crossed the road to me. It gave me a little pleasure that he had to make the move. It encouraged me, too. I said to myself: “You take me for a pongyi’s acolyte, do you? I’ll show you.” But I saw his face now, and both my resentment and my satisfaction became, in a second, trivial and mean. For it was not Michael D. who looked at me, but Uncle Sunday — Uncle Sunday all the more Uncle Sunday because of his absurd clothes — and with so poignant a distress in his sharpened face that pity must go out to him. I had not the heart even to be witty about his dress.

  “I was waiting for you,” he said.

  “So I saw,” I replied.

  I sat in my seat for a moment. There was nothing for it. I nodded my head and got down from the car.

  “I shall be a little while,” I said resignedly to the porter. “Please look after the car.”

  We walked away from the lake across the green square to the precinct of the Garden Temple, and sitting down upon a stone bench amongst the pagodas and the banyan-trees, Crowther told me of how he had returned from Schwegu to find his votive offering stolen from the high spire at the monastery door.

  His story was a dreadful shock to me. I heard it with a distress not to be stilled by any argument that there might be two sapphires of exactly the same shape and size and colour. The sapphire which Imogen possessed was the sapphire from the pagoda spire at Pagan. I was convinced of it and on the top of that conviction a cloud of dim fears moved across my mind. I had as yet no details. I had drawn no deductions. I had not reasoned. I was simply frightened. Imogen had been drawn into the orbit of the sapphire. And my fear, although I am not more sensitive than other people and very probably not as sensitive as most, showed itself to me in a succession of the vague, rather meaningless and altogether alarming pictures which are apt to afflict the dreams of children. Before I could put a question to Crowther, he added as a corollary to his story:

  “You will understand, then, Mr. Legatt, that I am obligated to repair that sacrilege.”

  I was on edge. I turned upon him. It ought, of course, to have been his smug concentration upon himself which made me turn. But if you are on edge, it’s the trumpery irrelevance which suddenly makes life impossible.

  “You mustn’t talk like that, Michael D.,” I shouted violently.

  “Long ago I dropped the D.,” Crowther answered meekly.

  “You can’t,” I insisted. “You’re obligated to keep it, so long as you’re obligated to anything.”

  Crowther was penitent. There was less of Michael D. in him than there had been at any time.

  “I should, no doubt, have said obliged. I think that probably the clothes I am wearing — I bought them without much thought at Rangoon — have lent some of their vulgarity to my speech. What I meant was that I felt bound to restore my offering to its place.”

  I had cooled down by then.

  “Believe me, Michael, I should be very pleased to hear that you had restored it,” I said cordially.

  Michael was moved by my warmth of tone, but utterly misunderstood it.

  “A kind thought confers merit upon the thinker,” he replied.

  “It wasn’t kind. It was purely selfish.”

  For the last shape which my fear had taken was oddly enough the shadow of Adam’s Peak, and it seemed to stretch not westwards to the sea, but northwards to a buried city in the jungle, and was now less a shadow than a pointing finger.

  I asked for details of the theft and I got them. They made my heart jump into my mouth.

  “There were two convicts in the monastery?” I asked.

  “Yes. Nga Pyu and Nga Than.”

  “Burmese, then?”

  “Yes,” said Crowther. “But there was an accomplice who was not.”

  I sat up stiff on the bench.

  “What’s that, Michael? There was a third, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “And a foreigner?”

  “An Indian. Muhammed Ghalli.”

  Of course, there were millions of Muhammeds, I said to myself, and I kept on saying it until the words meant nothing at all. Millions of them! Millions of them!

  “You are quite sure there was a third accomplice?” I darted at him hopefully.

  “Quite. He was with the other two in the same prison. He was released with them. He went up the river on the same steamer with them to Nyaungu. He had the clothes they changed into on the river-bank. They were together in Prome and took the train from there to Rangoon. They sailed from Rangoon on the same ship for Ceylon.”

  I began to think with a little burst of relief that Crowther was romancing. He was as detailed in his story as Robinson Crusoe. Surely vigils and fasting had made him fanciful. The objection to my theory was that neither vigils nor fasting have any place in the routine of a Buddhist monastery.

  “How do you know all this?” I asked.

  Crowther smiled.

  “There are many monasteries and many monks moving from one to the other. There are many visitors and much talk during the afternoons. If we want to know anything it is not so difficult.”

  “I see. A secret service ready made.”

  I had no doubt of the explanation. The ramifications of the brotherhood were everywhere. There were thousands of pairs of eyes with the time to watch and of ears with the time to listen.

  “They came to Ceylon, then! Yes — the three of them, Nga Pyu, Nga Than and Muhammed Ghalli,” I agreed.

  “After I landed,” Crowther continue
d, “I traced them up from Colombo to Kandy by the same means.”

  “Yes?”

  “At Kandy they sold what they had stolen.”

  I turned to him quickly.

  “To whom?”

  “To the jeweller under the hotel. You were looking into his shop window a few minutes ago.”

  I thought that I saw a flaw here in the link of his story.

  “But how could you know that all the ornaments were sold to him? The monks could hardly help you there. They buy nothing. They have no money to spend at jewellers’ shops.”

  “I didn’t need them,” Crowther replied. “I saw the filigree bracelet and the amber acorn myself, displayed in the window. I went into the shop. He had all the presents I had given to Ma Shwe At. I bought them all back.”

  I jumped up in an excitement of relief.

  “All! That’s fine!” I cried.

  “All that I had given to Ma Shwe At,” he repeated, spacing his words to signify that he meant just what he said and no more. “The sapphire had been sold.”

  My heart sank again. The sapphire was not one of Crowther’s presents. They were all insignificant — images in amber, bits of jade, trinkets of filigree silver. The sapphire was the one thing of value amongst the lot.

  “To whom had it been sold?” I cried. “No doubt you asked.”

  “Oh, yes, I asked all right!” Crowther returned. “He sold it to a young English lady. She had another young lady with her. She said to him that she was going to give herself a present.”

  There could be no longer, then, the least doubt in my mind that the sapphire which had shone on Imogen’s throat was the sapphire from Tagaung. I had never really disbelieved it. But I did not want to believe it. No doubt I was allowing myself to be tormented by the merest fancy. But I could not help myself. I was sure that there was misfortune in that stolen jewel, and if Imogen possessed it, the misfortune would be hers too. There would be attacks which would look like accidents — nay, had not one example happened already? I could after all put two and two together. Two Burmese ex-convicts and an Indian named Muhammed Ghalli for a third — two of them at Hatton and the third coming up from Ratnapura to the foot of the precipice below Adam’s Peak. Might not the next one succeed and be fatal? I had got to be sure that Imogen had Crowther’s sapphire — sure beyond the slightest possibility of a doubt — so much danger shone in it, so much menace made its setting. Common sense, of course, declared that the question whether Imogen possessed Crowther’s sapphire or its twin sister made no difference whatever. Imogen ran precisely the same risk in either case. But I had in front of me Crowther — the bumptious, thieving, ignoble Michael D. evolving through failure and disappointment and loneliness and misery into Uncle Sunday of the yellow robe. Common sense had a very tiny unconvincing voice to my hearing in that precinct of the Garden Temple under the great trees. I had to be sure about that sapphire. I got up.

  “Let us go to the jeweller.”

  Michael nodded and we walked quickly across the space of green to the hotel and down the slope beside it. The jeweller was a stout, bespectacled, comfortable, greasy Cingalese, with long hair dressed high on his head and held so by a big tortoise-shell comb. He described Imogen sufficiently. I made a last effort to dissociate her from the jewel.

  “How was the sapphire set when you sold it to the young lady?” I asked.

  The jeweller explained that he had bought it without any setting at all.

  “It was plain — like a sweetmeat that you pop in your mouth. I myself mounted it according to the young lady’s wishes. I fixed a tight plain band of platinum round the rim and hung it as a pendant to a platinum chain.”

  No wish, however urgent, could argue against that statement. Imogen’s sapphire was the sapphire given long ago by Ma Shwe At to the Captain of the Dagonet that it might be kept safe from the dacoits.

  “Thank you,” I said, and after buying a small trinket in gratitude for the man’s amiability, I went out of the shop and sat with Michael on the balustrade above the water.

  “There were two men who spoke Burmese at Hatton,” I said slowly.

  “Two men,” Crowther repeated. He was not very interested.

  “Yes. I took them to be coolies from the plantations or pilgrims.”

  “Did they wear turbans?” Crowther asked. He was kicking the heels of his appalling shoes against the stone parapet as he sat bent forward, with his elbows on his knees. But he was still really unconcerned.

  I looked at him sharply. The point to me suddenly became of crucial importance. Burmans wore long hair, skewered up on their heads. But turbans, no! If these two had worn turbans they would have been wearing them to hide a stubble of new hair on a shaven scalp. They would be the ex-convicts for a certainty. But had they worn turbans? I tried to visualise the scene — the hotel at Hatton, the broad street outside, Imogen with her arms stretched wide — Imogen without a turban, the two of us standing side by side — I could feel the pressure of her hand in the crook of my elbow — one man pushing past us, the other saying: “Muhammed is at Ratnapura,” my turn-about, and the two men walking away, their backs towards us and one of them reading a telegram. Yes, they had worn turbans. I had not seen their faces, but their backs — yes.

  “They did wear turbans,” I replied. “Thank you, Michael! That’s a very important point.”

  “I don’t think it’s important at all,” Michael rejoined, still knocking the backs of his shoes against the parapet. They would not stand very much of that usage, but I did not stop him. They were an offence against the world and the sooner he kicked them on to the dust-heap the more merit he would acquire.

  “They talked of a third man,” I went on. “An Indian, already at Ratnapura — an Indian Muhammed.”

  “You are not following me, Mr. Legatt,” Crowther explained with a quite human testiness. “What does it matter whether the Burmese were at Hatton and the Indian at Ratnapura?”

  “It matters a very great deal to me,” I said.

  “But the Burmese had sold the sapphire. We have been to the shop where it was sold. We know it. They and the Indian are now out of the picture altogether.”

  “I wish they were,” I answered gravely.

  “You have your wish,” said Crowther. “The important question is: Who is the young lady who bought it?”

  “That’s an easy one,” said I.

  Crowther turned incredulously towards me.

  “You can answer it?”

  “Of course.”

  “You know her, perhaps?”

  “I do.”

  It was his turn now to jump with excitement, mine to remain impassive.

  “And you can sit there as cold as an icicle,” he began, staring at me in his indignation.

  We were completely at cross-purposes. He was occupied only with his self-imposed mission. He thought only of the restoration of his offering to its high place on the pagoda spire in far-away Pagan. I was troubled with a more immediate problem.

  “You have given me very bad news this morning, Michael,” I said.

  That stumble on the top of Adam’s Peak took on a very ugly look in the light of what he had told me — all the uglier because there had been no excuse for the stumble. I had looked at the spot where it had occurred immediately Imogen was safe. There was no break in the smooth surface of the rock — not a pebble to stub a toe upon. Had those two men been on the Peak with us that morning? Was one of them the man who stumbled?

  “Two men on the Peak waiting for their opportunity.” I put the case aloud for my own benefit rather than for Crowther’s. “The third man coming up from Ratnapura and he, too, waiting — at the foot of the precipice below the overhang.... They knew the stone could be marketed. They had sold it once. They could sell it again — if they could steal it again. A crude way of stealing it? Yes. A rather childish way? Yes. And murder? Yes. But that’s Burma.... And it nearly came off.”

  I shut my eyes and in that hot sunlight shivered. The next
moment I was sitting up stiff and straight with one question clamouring for an answer. Had Imogen understood at once what had been made clear to me only now? I saw the two girls side by side in the hotel on the evening after the ascent. I heard them speaking almost in one breath and according to plan. They must go to Anuradhapura first thing in the morning. To see the Brazen Palace? As if it was likely to uproot itself and fly away? No. To put as quickly as possible as wide a distance as possible between the robbers and themselves? Yes. Surely, yes! And I had taken offence! The world’s perfect idiot, said Pamela.... Well, Pamela was right. I jumped down from the parapet.

  “I’m off,” I said, and I crossed the road to my car.

  Crowther ran after me.

  “But you’ll tell me the young lady’s name?” he pleaded.

  “I will not,” I replied.

  “Where she is, at all events?”

  “Nor that,” I cried and I slipped behind the wheel into the driving-seat. “But listen to me, Michael! I want you to have that sapphire back. I want it tremendously. There’s only one thing in the world which I want more. I’m going to try to get it back for you. And I think I can — and at once, too.”

  I shut the door of the car with a bang. Crowther’s face cleared as magically as a summer’s day. He must not thank me, of course. That would have been altogether improper and absurd. I should be acquiring enormous merit for myself by restoring to him the stolen jewel. I might save myself a hundred existences by this good deed. But he had thanks on the tip of his tongue and was in quite a bother to keep them unspoken.

  “I am going north,” I continued. “I’ll meet you the day after to-morrow in the morning. At some quiet place.”

  I did not want Michael Crowther to march in upon Imogen and Pamela and myself at Anuradhapura. For if I would not allow that he was a magnet to me, he might very well be one to Nga Pyu and Nga Than and Muhammed Ghalli; and in his reach-me-downs a conspicuous magnet, too.

  “I’ll be at the Rock Temple at Dhambulla,” he said.

  The Rock Temple, as all the world knows, is a famous resort of tourists. If you travel to Ceylon you must visit it or endure derision upon your return and some scepticism as to whether you ever got beyond Paris on your journey out. It would be, therefore, a natural place for me to journey to. I could meet Michael Crowther upon its terrace without arousing any attention.