been on the move till he
fetched up against this famous coal business. Fits the son of the father
somehow, don't you think?"

For the rest, Heyst was as polite as ever. He offered to pay for his
passage; but when Davidson refused to hear of it he seized him heartily
by the hand, gave one of his courtly bows, and declared that he was
touched by his friendly proceedings.

"I am not alluding to this trifling amount which you decline to take,"
he went on, giving a shake to Davidson's hand. "But I am touched by your
humanity." Another shake. "Believe me, I am profoundly aware of having
been an object of it." Final shake of the hand. All this meant that
Heyst understood in a proper sense the little Sissie's periodic
appearance in sight of his hermitage.

"He's a genuine gentleman," Davidson said to us. "I was really sorry
when he went ashore."

We asked him where he had left Heyst.

"Why, in Sourabaya--where else?"

The Tesmans had their principal counting-house in Sourabaya. There had
long existed a connection between Heyst and the Tesmans. The incongruity
of a hermit having agents did not strike us, nor yet the absurdity of a
forgotten cast-off, derelict manager of a wrecked, collapsed, vanished
enterprise, having business to attend to. We said Sourabaya, of course,
and took it for granted that he would stay with one of the Tesmans.
One of us even wondered what sort of reception he would get; for it was
known that Julius Tesman was unreasonably bitter about the Tropical
Belt Coal fiasco. But Davidson set us right. It was nothing of the
kind. Heyst went to stay in Schomberg's hotel, going ashore in the hotel
launch. Not that Schomberg would think of sending his launch alongside
a mere trader like the Sissie. But she had been meeting a coastal
mail-packet, and had been signalled to. Schomberg himself was steering
her.

"You should have seen Schomberg's eyes bulge out when Heyst jumped in
with an ancient brown leather bag!" said Davidson. "He pretended not
to know who it was--at first, anyway. I didn't go ashore with them. We
didn't stay more than a couple of hours altogether. Landed two thousand
coconuts and cleared out. I have agreed to pick him up again on my next
trip in twenty days' time."

CHAPTER FIVE

Davidson happened to be two days late on his return trip; no great
matter, certainly, but he made a point of going ashore at once, during
the hottest hour of the afternoon, to look for Heyst. Schomber