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Updated: May 13, 2025
"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.
He wanted nothing from Atkins, who knew less of the Rev. Francis Heath than he did himself, and he had to sustain his rôle of ignorance of the country. The two men stayed late, and it seemed to Coryndon that when men talk they do more than talk, they tell many things unconsciously.
So long as there was anything to gain by remaining in his Burmese clothing, Coryndon used it, avoiding the Chinaman and cultivating the society of his assistant, but he soon began to realize that if he were to follow as closely as he desired, he could not do so in his present disguise.
Coryndon was back in Hartley's bungalow with this to consider; and it left him in a strange place, miles from any conclusion. He had sighted the end of his labours, seen the reward of his long secret watchfulness, and now they had withdrawn again beyond his grasp. Heath had seen Absalom with the Chinaman's assistant.
Coryndon knew the full value of working from point to point, but beside this method he placed his own instinct, and his instinct pointed along a different road, a road that might lead nowhere, and yet it called to him as he sat on the side of his bed, as roads with indefinite endings have called men since the beginning of time.
His knife rent my arm, and I fell as though dead." Coryndon supported him to his feet. His mind was working quickly. "Canst thou stand by thyself?" he asked impatiently. The Chinaman gave a nod of assent, and Coryndon hammered on the door, throwing all his weight against it, until it cracked and fell inwards under the nervous force of his slight frame.
Coryndon watched him go, and went back to his corner to wait until Leh Shin should return from either the gambling den or the Joss House.
He joined Hartley at tea in the sitting-room, with its semi-official air of being used for serious work, and Hartley fulfilled his avocation by bringing Coryndon back from strange places into the heart of sane humdrum existence.
Coryndon said nothing, but waited for the rest of the story, and, bit by bit, Hartley set it before him. "Heath saw Absalom, and admitted it to me," he said, pulling at his short, red moustache. "Even then he showed a very curious amount of irritation, and refused to say anything further.
Heath, but I can tell you honestly from my heart that I think you were justified." He went out into the darkness that had come black over the evening during the hour he had sat with Heath, and as he walked back to the bungalow he thought of the man he had just left. There had been no need for Coryndon to question him about Mrs. Wilder: her secret mission to the river interested him no further.
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