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"I could do nothing but hold my tongue or bring on a quarrel some manifestation of their dark purpose, which we have no means to resist. Of course, you may remain invisible this evening; but with that atrocious-brute prowling all the time at the back of the house, how long can your presence be concealed from these men?" Heyst's distress could be felt in his silence.
"I suppose," he wheezed placidly, "I am bound to see her some day." He meant to take the Samburan channel every trip, as before of course. "Yes," I said. "No doubt you will. Some day Heyst will be signalling to you again; and I wonder what it will be for." Davidson made no reply. He had his own ideas about that, and his silence concealed a good deal of thought. We spoke no more of Heyst's girl.
After telling him that they wished to render his stay among the islands as pleasant as possible, and that they were ready to assist him in his plans, and so on, and after receiving Heyst's thanks you know the usual kind of conversation he proceeded to query in a slow, paternal tone: "And you are interested in ?" "Facts," broke in Heyst in his courtly voice.
However you'll have to pardon me." He put his fingers into his mouth and let out a whistle which seemed to drive a thin, sharp shaft of air solidly against one's nearest ear-drum. Though he greatly enjoyed Heyst's involuntary grimace, he sat perfectly stolid waiting for the effect of the call. It brought Pedro in with an extraordinary, uncouth, primeval impetuosity.
He became a waif and stray, austerely, from conviction, as others do through drink, from vice, from some weakness of character with deliberation, as others do in despair. This, stripped of its facts, had been Heyst's life up to that disturbing night.
Heyst's mind had worked on the assumption that Wang had possessed himself of the revolver during his own absence from Samburan; but at that period of his speculation his point of view changed. It struck him with the force of manifest certitude that the revolver had been taken only late in the day, or on that very night. Wang, of course. But why? So there had been no danger in the past.
Her detachment from her task seems to me now to have equalled or even surpassed Heyst's aloofness from all the mental degradations to which a man's intelligence is exposed in its way through life. Silent and wide-eyed she went from table to table with the air of a sleep-walker and with no other sound but the slight rattle of the coins to attract attention.
In the end Morrison, casting desperately for an idea in the blackness of his despondency, hit upon the notion of inviting Heyst to travel with him in his brig and have a share in his trading ventures up to the amount of his loan. It is characteristic of Heyst's unattached, floating existence that he was in a position to accept this proposal.
Heyst's tone was light, with the flavour of playfulness which seasoned all his speeches and seemed to be of the very essence of his thoughts.
But nothing lasts in this world, at least without changing its physiognomy. So, after a few weeks, Schomberg regained his outward calm, as if his indignation had dried up within him. And it was time. He was becoming a bore with his inability to talk of anything else but Heyst's unfitness to be at large, Heyst's wickedness, his wiles, his astuteness, and his criminality.
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