Chapter XVI: The Butterfly Returns

Trevor rose from his knees to find Joyce at the doorway.

He could see that she was pale and trembling.

“Is anything the matter?” she asked.

He controlled himself with an effort.

“Nothing much,” he declared firmly. “Mai-Heng’s met with an accident. D’you mind just slipping down the passage to the back entrance and calling for an orderly.”

She hesitated.

“Where is Mai-Heng?--I don’t see him.”

Trevor bit his lip.

“Of course you can’t see him,” he returned with some irritation. “I’ve got him here--on the floor behind the table--and the lamp’s gone _phut_.”

“I’ll bring you a light.”

“Don’t bother now, please. I’ll fix that while you’re away.”

She came a step towards him, peering fearfully into the darkness.

“Mr. Trevor, if there’s been an accident, surely I can do something for the poor fellow. I’m used to nursing, you know.”

He took her by both arms and pushed her gently from the room on to the verandah, closing the door after him.

“I hate to seem to order you about, Miss Standen; but I want one of Armourer’s men at once.”

“Is he unconscious?”

“Yes.”

She stood for some seconds regarding him steadily, then went slowly towards the head of the passage. She turned suddenly, a faint smile hovering on her lips.

“You’ll have to go,” she declared. “I can’t speak a word of Malay.”

He made a noise with his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

“I hadn’t thought of that. All right, you stop here--and mind, I don’t want you to go into that room. Mai-Heng was never an over-clean specimen of humanity--and as he is now he might easily frighten you. Will you promise?”

“Very well.”

He could see that she gave her consent reluctantly, and feared, from the troubled look behind her dark eyes, that she had already her suspicions as to the actual state of affairs.

He was on his way back from the men’s quarters when a piercing scream broke upon the stillness of the Eastern night.

He completed the rest of the distance at breakneck speed.

In the passage-way he cursed himself for an abject idiot. One of a score of ghastly things might have occurred in his absence, and his only sane line of action under the circumstances should have been to have taken her with him.

He was considerably relieved to discover her half fainting in a chair, staring as if hypnotised at something on the wall beyond the lamplight.

He bent over her.

“It was you who screamed?”

She nodded.

“You opened that door.”

She began talking rapidly, excitedly.

“No, no, I didn’t even go near the room. I stood quite still just where you had left me, trying to regain my nerve. I was frightened, horribly frightened; the shadows frightened me… the awful silence… everything. Presently I gritted my teeth and forced myself to do something. I remembered that the others should be on their way back and walked to the rail to look for them. The moon had gone in, and there was nothing there but blackness. You can _feel_ the blackness out here. I heard a voice--your voice, shouting something, and decided to go and meet you. As I passed the lamp an enormous insect fluttered down from the ceiling and circled round it. There had been scores of things flying there before, but they all vanished when _it_ came. Something made me stop. I saw its outline at first and thought it was a huge moth; and then I realised it was a butterfly--and saw that it was red! I just flopped back into the first chair I could find and screamed at the top of my voice.”

He turned his head sharply.

“A red butterfly!” he muttered hoarsely. “You must be mistaken. They don’t fly at night, you know, even out here.”

She pointed at the wall.

“I tell you I saw it quite plainly. It was the creature you told me about--the one my father described this afternoon. It’s over there now--don’t you see it?”

She clutched at his arm and a cold sensation passed down his spine.

He had never quite understood until that moment how peculiarly contagious fear was. With Mai-Heng lying there and the memory of something unpleasant brushing his cheek, Armourer’s bungalow had suddenly become a house of horrors. For a matter of moments he remained rooted to the spot, an invisible--yet impassable--barrier between him and the far wall.

The approach of the magistrate’s men brought him to his senses and he cast a sidelong glance at Joyce, praying that this momentary lapse had passed unnoticed.

The two black soldiers shuffled on to the verandah buttoning up their coats and looking profoundly uncomfortable. One of them carried a lamp.

“Go into the _Tuan-Hakim’s_ room,” Trevor commanded. “You will find Mai-Heng there. Carry him out by the other door and put him in any shed that happens to be empty. Cover him up with a blanket or something.”

The fact that Joyce did not understand Malay had its advantages.

The men saluted and passed into the darkness, leaving the door ajar.

Trevor shut it deliberately.

He heard them moving about inside, a volley of startled exclamations and fragments of a prolonged consultation that ensued almost immediately after. One of them said something about a blanket and a door opened somewhere.

A remark from the girl roused him to action.

“It’s crawling up the wall,” she cried. “Look!”

His glance fell upon the butterfly net that Gholam-Singh had made for the professor. He plucked it from the shelf upon which it lay and hooked a small chair through the living-room doorway.

Joyce was on her feet now.

“Do be careful,” she implored.

“I mean to be,” he said between his teeth; “but, in case I miss, hadn’t you better go in to Mrs. Battiscombe? You’d be safer there.”

The colour had come back to her cheeks, and in the light from the lamp she looked infinitely beautiful.

“I’m not afraid--now,” she told him, “and I want to be of use, if I can. Don’t send me away.”

Trevor reflected.

“All right,” he said at length. “There’s Armourer’s tennis racquet over there in the corner. Swipe at it with that if it flies towards you.”

He placed the chair a couple of feet from the wall and mounted it.

Joyce possessed herself of the racquet and watched breathlessly.

The insect had crawled into the angle the ceiling made with the wall, a position that presented difficulties. She removed the shade from the lamp and the creature showed up clearly against the woodwork. She could plainly discern the thin black body, the fat fleshy wings and the long antennæ that moved restlessly.

It was the green eyes of the thing, however, that were disconcerting Trevor. They seemed to be surveying his every movement with an interest that was at once almost human and distinctly inhuman. He was aware of a sense of fear, a feeling of acute nausea and an unpleasant, pungent odour.

To the girl it seemed countless ages before he brought back his arm and the net with it, remained motionless, as if taking careful aim, and brought the frame of the contrivance against the boarding.

The uppermost edge of the frame scraped against the ceiling and Trevor hit a couple of inches too low on the wall. A fraction of the body remained imprisoned for a fleeting second, and before he could make the necessary movement to ensure his capture the insect had struggled free and fluttered off into the night.

“Damn!”

Not knowing why, Joyce laughed.

“Rotten luck!” she commented.

He stepped from the chair, regarding the net ruefully.

“A jolly bad shot,” he insisted. “I might have known the ceiling would baulk me. Where’s it gone now?”

She pointed into the darkness.

“Out there.” She contrived to speak easily. “Anyhow, you’ve driven it away.”

He put the chair back in its place and threw the net on to the table.

“There is that consolation, I suppose; but I was a blithering idiot to miss, all the same. Must have lost my nerve at the critical moment.”

He unstoppered the decanter.

“Ugh! The thing smelt horribly!”

“Smelt?”

“Yes--worse than a stink-bug, if you’ll excuse the expression. Won’t you have something to drink? I’m sure you want it.”

She shook her head.

“No, thank you very much. I’m afraid the smell of the whisky would upset me more than that of the butterfly.”

He poured out three fingers and looked up.

“There’s some wine knocking about somewhere.”

“Don’t bother to look for it, please. I really don’t want it. The only thing I ask is not to be left alone. Look at the dogs. When you went into the bedroom I put Mick back in the chair--and neither of them has moved a hair. Do sit down. I want to talk to you.”

Trevor smiled.

“The Oracle is ready,” he said, “and there is absolutely no charge!”

Joyce frowned.

“That was the crimson butterfly,” she declared.

“I believe so.”

She bent forward.

“Was it that that caused Mai-Heng’s _accident_?”

Trevor emptied his glass. When he looked up at her again his face was flushed.

“You ought to go in for law,” he said; “you’d make a charming and efficient barrister!”

“But you haven’t answered my question.”

He racked his brains for an evasive reply.

“I don’t think it wise for any of us to jump to conclusions until we’ve had a look at Mai-Heng in the morning.”

“You didn’t send for a doctor.”

“No, because there isn’t one available at the moment.”

She looked straight into his eyes.

“Mr. Trevor, why take such elaborate precautions to try and deceive me? Why didn’t you let me help you with Mr. Armourer’s servant?--why were you so anxious to keep me from that room? I have all my senses, you know, and a woman’s intuition thrown in. I know that Mai-Heng is dead--and that he died as Mr. Moberly died this afternoon. It’s true, isn’t it?”

The assistant rubbed his chin.

“Mai-Heng is dead,” he admitted, “but as to how he met his end--that’s a doctor’s affair, not mine. D’you mind if we discuss something else.”

“Not in the least; but I should like to say just one thing. I’m out for the defence of my sex now, Mr. Trevor. When you told me about the other affair you seemed inclined to associate Mrs. Battiscombe with the crimson butterfly.”

“Did I?”

“Well, you did, didn’t you? You told me that the _ju-ju_ theory was all nonsense, but the male in you wouldn’t allow you to exonerate Mrs. Battiscombe entirely from blame. Now this second tragedy proves her innocence conclusively. Her ornament--which you found near Mr. Moberly when he died--could not possibly have been near that wretched Chinaman.”

Trevor was conscious of a tremendous inward struggle.

“No,” he conceded lamely, “it couldn’t, could it?”

At that moment one of Armourer’s men appeared at the opening and stood, his hands clasped behind him, waiting for someone to notice him.

“What is it?” demanded Trevor.

The native came forward.

“It is this, _Tuan_,” he stammered. “When we carried Mai-Heng away we did not see it; but we felt it as we put him down. It was fixed between the fingers.”

Joyce, bending forward excitedly, saw a ruby ornament on a gold chain pass from the soldier’s grubby brown hand to Trevor’s palm.