Chapter XXIV: The Goddess of the Butterfly

They were making for the open again when, in the light of the hurricane-lamp Armourer still carried, Trevor noticed something.

“Wait a minute!”

The magistrate stopped and looked back.

“What’s the matter?”

The planter pointed to the concrete floor of the professor’s laboratory. The fluid from the broken bottle had formed a dark patch which had spread--like a fantastic map--halfway across the hut. Both Englishmen, warned by the pungent odour, had avoided this patch when they entered, but somebody who had preceded them had been less cautious. On either side there were vague, smudgy tracks, and at the far end, the clear imprint of bare toes.

“More than one person has been here,” he said with conviction.

“Yes,” conceded Armourer; “you’re right there.”

He stepped outside and Trevor heard him engaged in conversation with Sembilan.

The magistrate thrust his head in at the door.

“Come along, old son. This is beginning to get interesting. Sembilan says there are four distinct tracks outside. Standen, it appears, employs a good deal of water in his experiments--and slings most of it out through the doorway. The soft state of the earth outside helps us enormously. The awkward part of it is that those little half-moons made by Mrs. Battiscombe’s heels peter out here altogether.”

“Samar sent somebody for her,” suggested Trevor, “and she was carried from here.”

Armourer nodded.

“I don’t think there’s the least doubt about that. Wherever his hiding-place happens to be, it’s sure to be at a considerable distance--and he could hardly have expected her to walk.”

Trevor was stooping down, both hands on his knees.

“Can your fellow tell us the direction they’ve taken?”

“The devil of it is he’s found two tracks, both clearly marked, and leading in different directions.”

Trevor pursed up his lips.

“Sembilan must be a pretty smart chap at the game, for I can’t see a damn’ thing beyond a few smudgy foot-prints just where we’re standing. The only conclusion I can come to is that the two paths were deliberately made so as to throw us off the scent. There were four tracks--or, rather, four sets of footmarks--you said. Those of Mrs. Battiscombe and three others. I suggest that, to ensure a smart getaway, Abu dispatched a couple of hefty men with a _pikul_--and a third to hang around and make false paths to confuse us. Possibly this third native met her close to your house and induced her to follow that queer roundabout way through the trees, rather than keep to the path. When they split up outside here, the bearers and Mrs. Battiscombe must obviously have gone in one direction--and the remaining native in the other. The larger party should naturally make the biggest track.”

Armourer whistled up his man, who was standing knee-deep in fern and rank grass, staring solemnly in all directions.

“The _Tuan_ Trevor thinks that three people went by one path and only one by another.”

“_Yah, Tuan_, that is so. The one who was alone came first and went away alone. After a little while the white lady came with two men.”

Trevor rubbed the back of his head.

“Now, how the dickens does he know that?”

Armourer smiled.

“Sembilan has a gift for this sort of thing.” He turned to the soldier. “Very well, we will follow the main track.”

“Why not divide?” suggested his friend. “One of us could take Sembilan--and the other go alone. For all we know, the lonely gentleman may prove an important witness. If he arrived on the scene first, it is probably he who forced the lock and pinched the pendant.”

“I’ll go alone,” said Armourer promptly. “I know my way about here better than you do. If anybody can follow the marks left by Mrs. Battiscombe’s bearers, it’s Sembilan. You’ll be safe enough with him. You’d better get along as fast as you can.”

“But,” protested Trevor, “you won’t be able to follow the other route without an intelligent native to help you.”

The magistrate dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t you bother about me. I shall get in touch with one of my men inside a quarter of an hour--and the professor’s shack is a good pushing-off point. Have you got a gun?”

Trevor grinned.

“I have. Vance makes us all carry ’em now. The obvious inference is that they’re for shooting butterflies! Cheerio!”

“You know what you’re after,” Armourer shouted after him. “You’ve to bring back Mrs. Battiscombe by hook or by crook. If Abu’s fellows show any sign of resistance--shoot ’em! But try and keep one of them alive until I can interview him as to Abu’s whereabouts.”

He stood for some minutes watching the hurricane-lamp bobbing its way out of sight among the trees, then tested his torch to reassure himself as to the amount of _juice_ left in the battery.

His pipe had gone out and he filled and lit it again.

He was in two minds as to what his next move should be. He was still a fair distance from his bungalow, and all his men, with the exception of an orderly on duty and the cook-boy, were presumably still scouring the district. If he decided to make his way back, he would run the risk of missing the whole bunch of them and wasting valuable time. If he endeavoured to follow the single native alone, it was ten chances to one he would lose himself and his quarry into the bargain. In a case of this sort, he was obliged to acknowledge the superiority of native intelligence.

Impatient as he was to accomplish something definite, he decided to wait where he was. Sembilan had hit upon the route Mrs. Battiscombe had taken, and, even without the evidence of the shawl on the thorn-bush, it was more than probable some of the others would follow suit.

It was dark under the trees and, accustomed as his eyes had grown to the gloom, he could only recognise objects at a few paces. The forest seemed never still. There was a constant rustling, varied at intervals by queer, crashing sounds, the piercing shriek of a night-bird, and a weird groaning as branches high above him worked upon each other, swayed by the breeze that had suddenly sprung up.

He set his back against a trunk and tried to forget that there were comfortable chairs at Jelandang, an unfinished meal and two unopened bottles of champagne.

Five minutes passed… ten… fifteen.

His pipe went out again and he did not bother to replenish it. He gazed all round him. There were no signs of his men, no footsteps, distant voices--nothing.… Just that incessant modulated chorus of jungle sounds: nothing more.

It was beginning to get monotonous.

For want of something better to do, he sauntered back into Standen’s laboratory and flashed his torch over rough shelves stocked with bottles, crucibles, lengths of glass tubing and measures. There was a heap of papers in a corner of the bench, covered with neat groupings of mysterious hieroglyphics, a tin-lid that had been used as an ash-tray, and a rack of test-tubes of varying sizes. Tucked under the bench he found kerosene-tins, some empty, some filled with water, and a miniature Primus stove.

It astonished him to discover how much the professor had succeeded in raking together in the course of a few days.

He looked at his watch.

Trevor had been gone nearly half an hour. He wondered how he was getting on. He wished now that he had gone with him. It seemed so futile, waiting there--and yet he could not see what else he could have done under the circumstances.

The breeze was blowing harder now and the atmosphere was growing chill. He turned up his collar.

Another five minutes and he would go in search of his men.

He was not an habitually nervous man and yet he hated the idea of switching off that light. He tried the experiment and turned it on again.

As he did so, the pale rays were reflected in some bright object on the floor by the doorway.

He stooped and picked it up.

It was a narrow, fluted circlet of gold, the size of a bracelet, and broken to allow it to be fitted over the ankle of a native girl. He had seen many of these things before, but never wrought is so precious a metal.

The light went out again and he remained in the darkness thinking deeply.

Even Sembilan’s jungle wisdom had failed to reveal this. One of the nocturnal visitors to the hut had been a native woman.

The discovery puzzled Armourer.

Abu-Samar would not have dispatched a woman to help to carry Mrs. Battiscombe. Could it be possible that the knowledge that the pendant was kept unguarded there had got abroad, and that some brown-skinned maiden from the locality had decided to steal it for its beauty. Assuming such a possibility to be correct, it was doubly strange that she should have chosen so momentous a night for her raid. What, too, had caused the wrench that forced this mysterious female to part with her anklet?

He shone his light on the dark patch of fluid on the floor and tested it gingerly with a finger-tip. He uttered an exclamation and wiped it hastily on his coat.

She had stepped into the chemical and burnt her foot. Clutching wildly at the injured member, the anklet had been torn off and forgotten in her momentary agony.

He went to the door, slipping the torch into his pocket. Moonlight was filtering through the trees, throwing ghostly patches of jet shadow, describing a barbaric patchwork of black and gold.

He stepped quickly back, feeling for the automatic at his hip.

Some large object had passed between two trees not a score of feet from the hut.

Every nerve alert, he waited.

It was coming closer… he could hear it now… soft, padding steps in the open.

He hazarded a look.

A vague indefinite body, that might have been a man or even a giant ape, stooped and grunted almost on the threshold.

He levelled his pistol and flashed on the torch at the same time.

A shrill scream pierced his ears, two arms swept wildly heavenward, and a native woman stood erect before him, writhing and moaning in mortal terror.

She was lithe, and better-looking than the majority of her kind; there were ornaments of silver and gold at her ears and wrists and the Crimson Butterfly, the ends of its chain held together by a strip of leather, hung at her throat.

He caught her arm and threw her roughly behind him into the shack. He fixed the switch of his pocket-lamp and rested it on its side on the bench, then produced the anklet he had found.

At the sight if it she uttered a joyful cry.

“That is mine,” she whispered hoarsely; “I came back to find it.”

He touched the ornament at her throat with his forefinger.

“And that?” he demanded. “How came you by that?”

“That is mine, too,” she told him defiantly. “It was stolen from me and given to another woman, and for a time I did nothing because I was afraid. There is a devil in this thing, O _Tuan-Hakim_, but while I wear it the devil is silent. While I go free there is peace in the forest and in the open lands beyond the forest; but he who seeks to harm me--dies!”

The magistrate tucked his revolver out of sight.

“Who are you?” he asked.

She held herself proudly, the crimson ornament sparkling at her neck.

“I am she who men call Dara, whose home is where no trees grow, where there is a tall hill and a fire that never burns out. I am the goddess of the Crimson Butterfly.”

Armourer scratched his chin.

He stood for some moments looking at her, then picked up his torch.

Presently a smile illuminated his features and a great hope rose within him, warming his blood and surging to his head like strong wine.

“Come with me, Dara,” he said softly. “I have been seeking you for a long while.”