alized state accounted for what Davidson
had observed on his last visit to the Schomberg establishment, some two
months after Heyst's secret departure with the girl to the solitude of
Samburan.

The Schomberg of a few years ago--the Schomberg of the Bangkok days,
for instance, when he started the first of his famed table d'hote
dinners--would never have risked anything of the sort. His genius ran to
catering, "white man for white men" and to the inventing, elaborating,
and retailing of scandalous gossip with asinine unction and impudent
delight. But now his mind was perverted by the pangs of wounded vanity
and of thwarted passion. In this state of moral weakness Schomberg
allowed himself to be corrupted.

CHAPTER FOUR

The business was done by a guest who arrived one fine morning by
mail-boat--immediately from Celebes, having boarded her in Macassar,
but generally, Schomberg understood, from up China Sea way; a wanderer
clearly, even as Heyst was, but not alone and of quite another kind.

Schomberg, looking up from the stern-sheets of his steam-launch, which
he used for boarding passenger ships on arrival, discovered a dark
sunken stare plunging down on him over the rail of the first-class part
of the deck. He was no great judge of physiognomy. Human beings, for
him, were either the objects of scandalous gossip or else recipients of
narrow strips of paper, with proper bill-heads stating the name of his
hotel--"W. Schomberg, proprietor, accounts settled weekly."

So in the clean-shaven, extremely thin face hanging over the mail-boat's
rail Schomberg saw only the face of a possible "account." The
steam-launches of other hotels were also alongside, but he obtained the
preference.

"You are Mr. Schomberg, aren't you?" the face asked quite unexpectedly.

"I am at your service," he answered from below; for business is
business, and its forms and formulas must be observed, even if one's
manly bosom is tortured by that dull rage which succeeds the fury of
baffled passion, like the glow of embers after a fierce blaze.

Presently the possessor of the handsome but emaciated face was seated
beside Schomberg in the stern-sheets of the launch. His body was long
and loose-jointed, his slender fingers, intertwined, clasped the leg
resting on the knee, as he lolled back in a careless yet tense attitude.
On the other side of Schomberg sat another passenger, who was introduced
by the clean-shaven man as--

"My secretary