l by any means, was bursting with gratitude,
and under the stress he must have let out something vague--enough to
give the island gossip a chance. And you know how kindly the world is
in its comments on what it does not understand. A rumour sprang out that
Heyst, having obtained some mysterious hold on Morrison, had fastened
himself on him and was sucking him dry. Those who had traced these
mutters back to their origin were very careful not to believe them. The
originator, it seems, was a certain Schomberg, a big, manly, bearded
creature of the Teutonic persuasion, with an ungovernable tongue which
surely must have worked on a pivot. Whether he was a Lieutenant of the
Reserve, as he declared, I don't know. Out there he was by profession a
hotel-keeper, first in Bangkok, then somewhere else, and ultimately in
Sourabaya. He dragged after him up and down that section of the tropical
belt a silent, frightened, little woman with long ringlets, who smiled
at one stupidly, showing a blue tooth. I don't know why so many of us
patronized his various establishments. He was a noxious ass, and he
satisfied his lust for silly gossip at the cost of his customers. It
was he who, one evening, as Morrison and Heyst went past the hotel--they
were not his regular patrons--whispered mysteriously to the mixed
company assembled on the veranda:

"The spider and the fly just gone by, gentlemen." Then, very important
and confidential, his thick paw at the side of his mouth: "We are among
ourselves; well, gentlemen, all I can say is, don't you ever get mixed
up with that Swede. Don't you ever get caught in his web."

CHAPTER THREE

Human nature being what it is, having a silly side to it as well as
a mean side, there were not a few who pretended to be indignant on no
better authority than a general propensity to believe every evil report;
and a good many others who found it simply funny to call Heyst the
Spider--behind his back, of course. He was as serenely unconscious of
this as of his several other nicknames. But soon people found other
things to say of Heyst; not long afterwards he came very much to the
fore in larger affairs. He blossomed out into something definite. He
filled the public eye as the manager on the spot of the Tropical Belt
Coal Company with offices in London and Amsterdam, and other things
about it that sounded and looked grandiose. The offices in the two
capitals may have consisted--and probably did--of one room i