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"No, he was alone, and he was carrying a parcel. Anyhow, that is all I can tell you about him that night." Joicey looked up as though he considered that he had said enough. "And from there you went to the opium den," said Coryndon relentlessly. The perspiration dripped from Joicey's hair, and he took up the threads of the story once more. "I went there," he said, biting the words savagely.
Francis Heath on the night of the 29th of July, and had imagined that he was not there, that he was away from Mangadone; and as Coryndon dropped off to sleep, he felt entirely convinced that, if necessary, he could help Joicey's memory very considerably.
The colour mounted to Joicey's heavy face, and his temper rose with it. "Then you mean to tell me " He broke off and stared at Coryndon, and gave a rough laugh. "You're Hartley's globe-trotting acquaintance, aren't you? Well, Hartley happens to be a friend of mine, and it is just as well for you that he is. Tell me your business, and I will overlook your intrusion on his account."
He was weary and tired when he crept into the compound outside the sleeping bungalow on the hill-rise, and he stood at the gate and gave a low, clear cry, the cry of a waking bird, and a few minutes afterwards Coryndon followed Joicey's example and cursed the Durwan, kicking him as he lay snoring on his blanket.
The gathering passion of rage in Joicey's eyes had not touched him, but the memory of the big, bull-dog, defiant man huddled on the low chair, his arm over his face, was a memory that spoke of other things than what he had come there to discover; the terrible things that are behind life and that have power over it.
"Not in Mangadone, Mr. Joicey. Mangadone proper ends at the tram lines; the district beyond is known as Bhononie." Coryndon could see that his shot told. There were yellow patches around Joicey's eyes, and a purple shadow passed across his face, leaving it leaden.
I've forgotten what England looks like and I've got over the desire to go back there, and so I rot through the rains and the steam and the tepid cold weather, and it isn't doing me any good at all." They walked into the drawing-room, Hartley with his hand on Joicey's shoulder.
"It comes too close to home," Hartley spoke with a jerk. "A hateful job I thought I'd tell you " He spoke in broken sentences, and his words affected the Banker very perceptibly. "Can't you drop it?" Joicey came to a standstill, and his voice was lowered almost to a whisper. "I wish to Heaven I could, but it's a question of duty," he could hardly see Joicey's face in the gathering gloom.
Coryndon wandered to the piano, and he played the twilight into the garden, the bats out of the eaves, and he played the shadow of Joicey's shame off his own soul until he was refreshed and renewed, and it was time for him to return to his disguise and slip out of the house. The obese boy sat in Leh Shin's shop, fiddling sometimes with his ears and sometimes with the soles of his bare feet.
"Unless I can complete my case by other means, you will be called as a witness to prove certain facts in connection with the disappearance of the boy Absalom on the night of July the twenty-ninth." "Who is going to call me?" The question was curt, and Joicey's defiance was still strong, but there was a certain huskiness in his voice that betrayed a very definite fear.
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