Henkel got it so cheap.
No fever touched him. He lived there alone with a lot of
servants--Indians. And they were all wrecks, Ransome said, broken down
from accident or disease--wrecks that no one else would employ. He got
them very cheap. When they died he got more.

Henkel was a large, soft, yellowish man. Ransome said, "I don't mind
a man being large and yellowish, or even soft in reason; but when
he shines, too, I draw the line." Henkel had thick hands with bent
fingers, and large, brown eyes. He was a Hollander, and in that place
he stood apart. For he didn't drink, or gamble, or fight, or even buy
rubber. He was just a large, peaceful person who bought things cheap.

He was very clever. He always knew the precise moment, the outmost
low-water mark, of a bargain. His house was full of things he'd bought
cheap from wrecked companies or dying men, from the mahogany logs in
the patio to the coils of telegraph wire in the loft. His clothes
never fitted him, for they belonged to men whom the fever had met on
the way up the Mazzaron, and who had therefore no further use for
clothes. The only things for which Henkel ever paid a fair price were
butterflies.

"I went to his house once," said Ransome--"had to. A lame Indian in
a suit of gaudy red-and-white stripes opened the door. I knew that
striped canvas. It was the awnings of the old _Lily Grant_, and I saw
along the seams the smoke-marks of the fire that had burnt her innards
out.... Then the Indian opened the jalousies with a hand like a bundle
of brown twigs, and the light shone through green leaves on the walls
of the room. From ceiling to floor they flashed as if they were
jeweled, only there are no jewels with just that soft bloom of color.
They were the cases full of Henkel's butterflies.

"The Indian limped out and Henkel came in. He was limping, too. I
looked at his feet and I saw that they were in a pair of some one
else's tan shoes. That and a whiff from the servants' quarters made
me feel a bit sick. I wanted to say what I had to say and get out as
quick as I could. But Henkel would show me his butterflies. Most of us
in that place were a little mad on some point. I was, myself. Henkel
was mad on the subject of his butterflies. He told me the troubles
he'd had getting them from Indians and negroes, and how his men
cheated him. He took it very much to heart, and snuffled as he spoke.
'And there's one I haven't got,' he said, 'one I've heard of but can't
f