Contango (Ill Wind)

“A common soldier, a child, a girl at the door of
an inn, have changed the face of fortune, and almost of
Nature.
”—BURKE.

“History seen from a distance produces the illusion
that it is rational.
”—SAINTE-BEUVE.

“
To reflect how easily the course of things might
have been different is to learn perspective and
humility.
”—JOHN BUCHAN.

“
The random element in the Universe always
increases.
”—EDDINGTON.

1. Charles Gathergood
   
2. Florence Faulkner
   
3. Stuart Brown
   
4. Sylvia Seydel
   
5. Nicholas Palescu
   
6. Leon Mirsky
   
7. Max Oetzler
   
8. Paula Courvier
   
9. Henry Elliott
   

“Curious, the way things do jump out of nothing. This
affair seems to have been begun by a hat blowing off.”

To Gathergood, as he said this, sitting on his bungalow verandah at Cuava
with the temperature over a hundred in the shade and his whole body
perspiring with the slightest movement, there came the sudden realisation of
unpopularity. He had been conscious of it, at times, before; but never quite
so definitely. He wondered if the planters had been telling tales against
him, but he did not trouble himself much with the possibility; it was far too
hot—an hour for anything rather than unpleasant speculation. He added,
stiffening his glance as he met the eyes of the man across the table-top:
“Of course it’s bad enough, in the result, but I’m not so
sure that as much underlies it as you think.”

“You mentioned something about a hat blowing off?”

“Yes, Morrison’s hat. He was walking down from the club after
tiffin, and just there”—he pointed with a jerk of the
head—“where the path curves round the cliff his hat blew into
the sea. He called to a native down below on the quayside to get it for
him—a young Cuavanese named Naung Lo—but the fellow
didn’t hear him, apparently. Morrison then scrambled down the cliff
himself and made a scene. That’s as far as we can get before the
evidence begins to be conflicting.”

“A planter named Franklyn was with Morrison, I
understand?”

“Yes. Of course it’s on Franklyn’s evidence that Naung
Lo was arrested. He says Naung Lo pushed Morrison into the sea.”

“Well, is there any doubt of it?”

“Naung Lo says he didn’t push him. He says he didn’t
hear what Morrison had shouted, that Morrison then came down and hit him,
that there was a bit of a struggle on the edge of the quay, and that Morrison
suddenly toppled over. He also says that Morrison was drunk.”

“And I take it you accept this version of what happened in
preference to Franklyn’s?”

“No, not altogether. I daresay Naung Lo may have pushed—I
don’t see how, if there was a struggle, he could have avoided
it.”

“Franklyn says Naung Lo hit first.”

Gathergood was silent a moment. Then he replied, rather slowly:
“It’s too hot to take you to the scene of the affair or
you’d realise that Franklyn, being thirty yards away at least, may not
have been in the best position for seeing exactly what did happen. Naturally
he was indignant about the death of his friend.”

“You wish me to infer that his evidence is false?”

“By no means, Humphreys,” answered Gathergood sharply.
“I don’t suggest anything of the kind. But Franklyn admits that
he stayed on the path up above, while Morrison climbed down to the edge of
the quay where the whole thing took place.”

“But he doesn’t admit that Morrison was drunk.”

“No. Drunkenness is perhaps a matter of opinion. I can only say that
I should have called him drunk when he left the club—I was there and I
saw him. But that, of course, was half an hour earlier. Some men quickly
throw off the effects.”

A long silence followed, which Gathergood broke by adding: “I think
I should point out also that Naung Lo is slight in build, while Morrison was
a six-footer. It seems unlikely, on the face of it, that the smaller man
would begin the attack, without weapons— and no weapons were found on
or near him afterwards…. And, of course, Morrison’s death was in some
sense an accident, anyhow—he certainly wouldn’t have drowned if
his head hadn’t struck a stone that stunned him.”

“Franklyn went to the rescue, didn’t he?”

“Yes. And Naung Lo stood by and gave what help he could. A point in
his favour, I should be inclined to think.”

“Well, now we’ve had all the points in his
favour—unless there are some more—perhaps we can consider those
against him. He’s been in prison, they tell me?”

“Yes, several times—for theft. I don’t claim that
he’s a highly moral character in any way.”

“And he was once in the employ of Morrison, but got the
sack?”

“Yes, Morrison had to sack a good many natives. So have all the
planters round here, with rubber down to fourpence a pound. The biggest item
of evidence against the youth—I’ll tell you to save you the
trouble of finding it out for yourself—is that he’s undoubtedly
been heard to utter threats against Morrison. Morrison thrashed him once, and
he swore to get even with him. He probably deserved the
thrashing—though, on the other hand, Morrison was rather noted for
that sort of thing.”

“Well, it establishes a motive, doesn’t it?”

“Certainly.”

The two men, Gathergood the Agent and Humphreys the Vice-Consul from the
mainland, faced each other again in a lengthy silence. Then Humphreys said:
“Of course, Gathergood, people are rather expecting you to do something
about it.”

The Agent replied quietly, scarcely moving a muscle in the almost
intolerable noonday heat: “I’m doing what I can, Humphreys.
I’m trying to find out if there were other witnesses of the
affair.”

“Still, you know, witnesses or not, the awkward fact remains that
here you have an Englishman dead and a native somehow or other responsible.
These things have a way of leading to trouble if they’re not smartly
dealt with. What’s the present position?”

“Naung Lo’s in jail awaiting trial, or perhaps I should rather
say, awaiting sentence. Cuavanese law is primitive, but quite brisk on these
occasions. As soon as the Sultan decides that he’s guilty, he gets his
head chopped off right away.”

Humphreys raised his eyebrows with a certain blandness. “And may I
enquire if you have seen fit to offer His Highness any advice in the
matter?”

Gathergood answered, still without movement: “The Sultan asked me if
I thought the youth should be put to death and I said not yet, at any rate,
because it seemed to me there were doubts.”

“Well, I suppose you know your own business best—or should
do. But in these days, with all these political crimes everywhere—
India, Burma—”

“Yes, quite, but I don’t think this has anything to do with
it.”

“You’re by nature an optimist, perhaps?”

Gathergood half-smiled. “No, I wouldn’t say that. I
wouldn’t call myself a pessimist, either. I just think one ought to
preserve one’s sense of proportion, that’s all….”

Humphreys stayed on for a few days and then took the coastal boat back to
the mainland.

Gathergood was forty-nine, and had spent a quarter of a century in various
parts of the East. He had never married, nor had rumour ever associated him
with a woman, white or coloured. He was aware that women did not particularly
care for him, and he had never found their indifference hard to endure. With
men, individual men, he had sometimes wished he could become more intimate,
but even the wish for this had rarely been enough to make for keen
disappointment. He knew, as indeed it was impossible not to know, that his
intrusion into Cuavanese society had scarcely been a social success. He was
neither gallant enough for the planters’ wives nor sufficiently
alcoholic to be considered a good fellow by the planters themselves; whilst
among the natives a reputation for fair dealing was outweighed by an
unwillingness to give a dollar tip when half a dollar was ample. Moreover,
all these negations were much emphasised by his having come to Cuava in 1927,
after Bullenger, whose reputation for hard drinking and hard wenching had
fitted easily into the spacious prosperity of the rubber boom, so that those
golden years were still remembered in some such phrase as: “Ah, that
was in poor old Bullenger’s time.” A tribute, wistfully
inaccurate, since the man had been neither poor nor old, but had died wealthy
and prematurely of cirrhosis of the liver; and a censure, by implication, on
the stiff, more difficult fellow whose succeeding regime had coincided with
Cuava’s decline from affluence to penury.

In appearance Gathergood was tall, spare, and nearly as brown-
complexioned as some of the Malays; he had fine teeth and a strong chin, but
was not otherwise good-looking; his chill blue eyes repelled more often than
they attracted. In speech he was decisive, but rather slow; indeed, his eyes
more often commanded than his voice.

After the departure of Humphreys he went on with his job, which was not
normally very onerous, and was decidedly not among the plums of the service;
apart from acting as go-between for British merchants doing trade with Cuava,
giving occasional advice to the Sultan, and attending to such matters as
quarantine and the immigration of British Chinese from Hong-Kong, there was
not a great deal to do. His bungalow, which included an office, stood on a
spit of land just above the water-front, and was chiefly built of reed and
thatch after the local fashion. A few of the planters had been able to afford
Europeanised bungalows out of the profits of the boom years, but on the whole
Cuava was still primitive in these matters—owing chiefly, no doubt, to
the fact that it remained a native state, under a Sultan who enjoyed a more
than technical independence of the authorities at Singapore and Batavia,
though faintly compelling eyes were often cast upon him from those
quarters.

Cuava, capital of the island and state of the same name, was the only
white settlement, and its white population, due to the slump in rubber, was
rather rapidly decreasing. Perhaps forty or fifty survivors of a once
prosperous community lived on the two hills that lay behind and above the
native kampong; a few of them had their wives, but most were considerate
enough to make do with the resources of the locality. There was a Welsh
doctor who shared his activities between Cuava and another island a
day’s journey distant; and there had once been an American missionary
who had been converted from missionary work by the superior opportunities of
buying up rubber estates. Occasionally a European sea-captain came ashore and
spent a few days drinking and yarning at the club. This latter institution,
inevitable where two or three Englishmen are gathered together, was the
centre of Cuavanese society, the fount of its corporate wisdom, the source of
its rumours, and the sounding- board of its various opinions. It stood on the
hill nearest the estuary, adjacent also to the plantations, and surrounded by
billowy land which enthusiastic new-comers always dreamed of turning into a
golf-course until they had their first experience of the sweltering Cuavanese
summer.

Down in the native kampong on the water-front there was reckoned to be a
mixed population of some ten thousand Malays, Chinese, and Sikhs. Many of
them had been attracted from overseas when work and pay on the plantations
were both plentiful; now, with these conditions at an end, an existence not
far above the starvation line was somehow contrived. They lived in ramshackle
huts on the edge of the river-mud, and except when they caught cholera or
smuggled gin authority was glad enough to leave them alone.

Authority, indeed, resided five miles inland, well removed from the
commercial and maritime atmosphere. There, enclosed by primeval jungle, was
situated the Sultan’s palace, with its private apartments, its imperial
harem, and its government offices, council chamber, prison, and military
arsenal; a mysterious and legendary place to the white planter who rarely or
never visited it.