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Read Ebook: A Personal Problem by Bedford Jones H Henry
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Ebook has 98 lines and 5512 words, and 2 pages
Produced by: Roger Frank. This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive.
"All the island's up at the commissioner's to-night--he always gets a bale of ice up from Auckland on steamer day. You were surprised to find me here, eh?"
"So-so." The fat man wiped his face and poured another drink. "You're a damned ironic brute, Cranshaw! How was I to know that the John Smith, our Raratonga agent, was yourself? You have nerve. I always said you had nerve."
The long, lean man looked across the table, inspecting his guest curiously. He had looked forward to the coming of the firm's junior partner, but Hobson did not know it.
His thin lips crisped ironically as he squirted soda into his glass.
"Well, what are you going to do about it? Come, Hobson, let's not mince words. You had me driven out of Auckland; you took over my stock in the company; you married Agnes, and you've grown fat. I fancy you're punished enough--you needn't look at me like that, man! Avarua is good enough for me."
Hobson was indubitably nervous. He had shaven before coming ashore, but his fat jowl was dusky again. He perspired freely, and as he mopped his face he shot uneasy glances at the other man from deep-set black eyes.
An overlarge diamond flashed on his fat hand, and another glittered in his tie.
"You're a sly dog, Cranshaw, a sly dog," he muttered, then his voice took on vigor. "What do you mean, anyway? You needn't think that because your bally bungalow is out here at the edge of town you can threaten me. I won't stand for it. I'll discharge you--I'll show you up before the commissioner--"
"Hold on, man! Great Heavens, don't you see that I'm in your power?" Cranshaw leaned over the table, his face anxious, pleading.
But behind the anxiety in his gray eyes there was a hard coldness, quickly veiled.
"I'm not threatening you, Hobson--it's the other way around. I'm satisfied, here in Avarua; I'm the company's agent, no one knows who I used to be, I've a good salary. Come, don't bear malice! The old life is forgotten, so let the dead bury their dead. Don't be hard on me, old man! I know you didn't treat me square, but you married Agnes--I was beaten, and that's an end to it. Now I'm contented and prospering here. You won't give me away, will you? You won't discharge me, send me down into hell a second time?"
Hobson took a cheroot from the table and lit it. His flash of apprehension had vanished altogether.
"No," he returned slowly, judicially. As he was inspecting the diamond on his finger he did not notice the hard gray eyes across the table. "No, Cranshaw. I didn't treat you right, I'll admit, but bygones are bygones. As you say, you're in my power. I never quite believed you stole that money myself."
A burst of terrible irony ripped through the mask of Cranshaw's lean face; but it was gone instantly.
Hobson glanced up with complacent, cunning frankness.
"I misunderstood you, I guess," he went on heavily. "To tell the truth, I half expected you had got me here to--to--"
He paused, licking his lips. Cranshaw broke out into a loud, ringing laugh.
"Nonsense, man! Come, drink up and shake hands on it all--if you bear no malice we'll cry quits, eh? No, things have turned out for the best, far as I'm concerned. And so you'll not bear hard on me, old man? You'll just forget who I used to be?"
Hobson's little leering eyes cleared of their suspicion and something very like a sigh of relief shook his fat chest. Their glasses clinked together.
"Here's how!"
The personal problem, it seemed, was closed finally and forever.
There followed an hour of labor over the table, since it was the junior partner's first "whirl around the circuit" of the islands; previously he had lived a cunning and contented existence in Auckland, far from savages and resident commissioners.
Cranshaw, however, had looked forward to his coming for some little time.
"You'd better stay ashore for the night," stated the resident agent, when the reports had been cleared up and balanced properly. "There's quite a surf running, and it'll be hard to get a whale boat, since all the natives are feasting. Steamer day's a great occasion here, you know."
"I'm not fond of insects," and as Hobson reached for the siphon his eyes flitted around uneasily. "I've heard stories about these islands."
"You look apoplectic, too," mused Cranshaw. For an instant that odd, bitterly cruel light shot through his gray eyes. "Nonsense, man! That's all talk. Of course, there are a few cockroaches and such, but there's nothing dangerous. Absolutely no scorpions, and the centipeds don't kill. That's all talk. See here, I've two cots laid up in my sleeping-room--finest mosquito curtains in the island. Better stop, and it'll save coming ashore in the morning."
Hobson glanced through the door that his host flung open, and the sight of the wide, clean sleeping-room with its two draped beds evidently decided him.
"All right," he nodded.
"Better finish this bottle," suggested Cranshaw easily. He himself drank little.
"Come out to the steamer to-morrow," said Hobson, a half hour later, as they rose. "I'd like to show you--show you Agnes's picture--an' the baby's."
"Thanks," returned Cranshaw.
But his long, lean face seemed to quiver a trifle, and as he ushered his guest into the sleeping-room his gray eyes were baleful. That speech had been sheer venom, for Hobson was not drunk; he had merely forgotten for the moment his intense fear of Cranshaw.
Once ensconced with their mosquito curtains, the two men exchanged a few words before dropping off to sleep, then the darkness was broken only by the rasping snore of Hobson.
Curiously enough, Cranshaw's breathing seemed hardly audible.
For Avarua, the night was a cool one. The bungalow was at the edge of town, and the roar of the surf thundered dully from the outer reefs in unbroken cadences.
Suddenly, and without the slightest warning, a horrible scream echoed out from the veranda--shrilled up and off, and seemed to die softly in the distance.
"My God!" Hobson's voice rang out. "What's that?"
"What's that?"
"A flying fox--for heaven's sake shut up and go to sleep!"
Cranshaw did not sleep himself, however, for he lay motionless with his hand on an electric torch, and chuckled slightly as he listened to the irregular, panting breathing of the other man.
Slowly through the surf-mutter there pierced other sounds--slight, thin, bird-like sounds, as though innumerable watches were ticking in the room. Hobson's breathing sounded rather flurried, and Cranshaw's thin lips parted in a grim smile as he stared up into the darkness.
Peculiar though the ticking sounds were, they were presently overborne by a still more peculiar sound--one which no human brain could define, without experience.
It was a ghostly tapping, tapping, tapping that seemed to come from the floor; a clicking, irregular, metallic tapping. It ceased with uncanny suddenness.
"I say, are you awake?"
Hobson's voice sounded stifled, hoarse.
"Cranshaw! Wake up!"
"Eh? What's the matter?" Cranshaw spoke very sleepily, and smiled to himself.
"There's something on my curtains!"
"Shake it off and go to sleep."
A soft flurry of mosquito curtains, a subdued crash, and then a scuttling and tapping that once more ended abruptly. A gasp from Hobson.
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