Adventure, July 1, 1928 — page 175: what you’re looking at

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

THE THRALDOM OF SINGAN their surplus stuff at a moderately fair price. Quental was engaged to do the running; and nobody in the world can beat the Japanese at a game like that. They got their stuff out of Perak and Johore without the authorities being any the wiser. Scala couldn’t trade with the Javanese ports because of Anglo-Dutch cooperation, but he found a ready buyer in Shanghai who was willing to ship to the States. It was a profitable business, and it might have gone on indefinitely, had Scala not been greedy. By then he had been married to Valérie Le Camus about three or four years, just long enough to tire of her. And the very fact, too, that she was the only person in the island, except Liu Tang, who did not tremble at the very sight of him, made him furious with her. Yet in some fashion he loved her. *‘And then,” Charles added, lowering his voice, “‘the sultan saw her—and this part of the story’s damnable. He used to make no end of excuses to come down to Scala’s bungalow, so that he might see Valérie. He never spoke to her. He just sat there and stared at her; and that used to frighten the life out of her, for he’s a fat, oily looking brute. A pure bred Malay, all the same. That’s the funny part about it. Nearly everywhere you go in this part of the world you'll find two or three distinct races living in the same place. I expect the sultan’s forebear who first settled in Singan was a Malay pirate who wanted a comfortable life. The aboriginal inhabitants are more or less Dyaks. There’re not many of them left; and they’re no good for work. “The sultan’s palace, as he calls it, is on a hill on the north side of the island, well away from Scala’s estate. He’s got about half a dozen Malay wives. But Montmartre has given him somewhat advanced ideas, and he suddenly came to the conclusion that he ought to include a white woman in the collection. And Seala wanted more land. He wanted to open up a tract of country to the west, where he had found the best soil in the 169 island. He had got to the end of old Le Camus’s money, and he was putting his own away. “In true Oriental fashion, the sultan took his time over the bargain. I’ve some reason to believe that weeks elapsed be- fore he had the pluck to put the propo- sition into so-many words. He had to be careful because, like every one else, he was afraid of Scala. He suggested that Scala should swap Valérie for a new con- cession of land. ie IND YOU, John, I didn’t know that, when I got there; nor did Valérie herself. They wanted a real planter to run the show. That was why Scala had come over to Singapore, when Valérie found me by chance. When I got to Singan, I soon tumbled to what their game was. They had an A 1 little harbor tucked away behind a long, tree covered islet that screened the place from view of any ships that happened to pass. They had made a proper wharf, in water deep enough for the Chauve-Souris to berth alongside. “Quental’s boat was called the Bat because she used to fly by night. On the wharf was a godown, where they stored the stuff which Quental took up to Shanghai about three times a year. They turned Eugene Pai into a kind of store- man after I got there. Though I wasn’t supposed to go into that godown, or have anything to do with it, I darned soon found out that there was more rubber there than we had ever tapped in Singan.” “Did Madame Scala know that?” asked Eade. “Yes. She hated her husband, and she hated the whole business; but she couldn’t leave because of her father. Quental al- ways brought up supplies of opium from Singapore, and the whole lot of them smoked it—even Valérie, sometimes, to try to drown her sorrows.” “She never looked that sort!’ Eade exclaimed. “Because she’s no _ fool,” Charles answered. “She never let the drug get hold of her. Nor did Scala for that comiicloooks.conn