10-Story Book, February 1928 — page 33: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE SOUTH SEA ISLAND NUMBER 31 protested against the refined cruelty of deserting a wife, knowing that she and her people were dependent on him—de- serting her, yet making of a solicitor a sort of relieving officer, an agent who measured out an allowance with a covert sneer on his face that was meant to re- mind her of her helplessness. The last letter I received from John Maxwell came from Borneo. He was going up country, he said, and expected to be back in about three months. Nothing has been heard of him since. Can you find him for me?” There were other things in the letter that showed how deeply and accurately she had plumbed the depths of Kava- nagh’s mind. He was prevented by those other things from rushing across the world to her side; but between the lines of the letter he read the unwritten prom- ise of the oasis after three years in the desert. He sailed from Hakodadi on a coast- ing steamer the night after receiving her letter, and disembarked at Tokio in order to replenish a travel-worn kit and make inquiries about the chances of getting down to Borneo and into the interior with mercurial speed. He cabled to her from the city of mud and bamboo, in- forming her that he was on his way to Borneo; and thenceforward his move- ments were swift and dramatic. It was as though the wholeof the Eastern Hemisphere had become privy to his thoughts; there was the song of immi- nent triumph in the boisterousness of the wind; the typhoon that struck the ship off Formosa was all laughter and encouragement to him; the hum and roar of the engines were a musical accom- paniment to the dream-songs in his brain. Then he was in the lazy, sensuous, aro- matic splendor of the East Indian Archi- pelago. In the shimmer of the heat he saw the vision of Eunice as on the day when he saw her face for the first time—a fragile slip of a girl in white linen; in the cool of the eastern night, with a pur- ple sky and a moon that silvered the ocean from the side of the ship to the rim of the world, he saw her laughing at him from out of the shadows, beckon- ing to him from the white path that lay across the sea. And when he got to Sarawak, and heard the name of John Maxwell mentioned within five minutes of his arrival, he was guilty of a super- stitious feeling that the whole world had suddenly dropped its interest in other things and was concerning itself with him, and John Maxwell, and Eunice. It was on the veranda of the Batavia Hotel, where he was trying to wash the heat out of his throat with iced drinks, that he met Bruch, a tall, thin, weedy Dutchman, who .chewed tobacco and drank “planters’ champagne.” He was not the type of man to appeal to Kav- anagh, whose soul revolted against noth- ing so much as untrimmed finger-nails. Bruch appeared to have used his for every task imaginable. It was Bruch who opened the conversation. “Rubber, I reckon?” he said, expecto- rating at a lizard on the wall. “Orchids.” Whereupon Bruch lifted his eyebrows and said: “Are you Westerners mad on orchids ?” “As dingoes,” said Kavanagh. you know anything?” “No,” said Kavanagh. “Do “If you’re a collector, yes. But you’ve got to pay my price. I can put you on to the craziest things in orchids. I know something about ’em—orchids that small you need to look through a microscope at them, orchids as big as that span above your head, orchids that are alive. Did ye get that, stranger? Absolutely alive. I’ve known ’em eat a man. Now, call me a liar!” “If we’d been talking about anything COMICOOOKS.ECO