The Island Where Time Stands Still (52 page)

About A-lu-te he was extremely worried, as he had no idea how the new situation in the Island might have affected her. To him it seemed certain that the nine men who had died after Kâo's banquet had been deliberately poisoned by him, and A-lu-te's father had been one of them. She had been her father's darling and devoted to him; so if she suspected that he had met his death through foul play it was very possible that she had accused her uncle. If she had, Kâo would have taken drastic steps to deal with her; so she might no longer be free, or might even, perhaps, have become a victim of his ruthlessness.

Although Gregory had said nothing about it to the others, such thoughts had been causing him acute anxiety all the evening, and he had been awaiting the coming of night with great impatience, as it was not until everyone had gone to sleep that he could make an attempt to find out.

He had never given away how he had managed to escape from the cage before, so everyone had assumed that he really had made a colossal jump from the roof over the electric fence at its back; and, on arriving there that afternoon, he had been much amused to see that the fence had been heightened. That had been a considerable comfort to him, as it meant that his old escape route was still unsuspected.

For the best part of three hours after being locked in his cubicle he sat turning things over in his mind far from happily; then he tore the curtains into strips and made another hole in the ceiling. Having tied round his neck a thin parcel that he meant to give to A-lu-te, if he could find her, he scrambled up through the hole on to the roof. For some minutes he lay there listening, but no sounds broke the stillness; so he got to his feet and with a stone tied in the end of a length of the curtain, proceeded to hook and haul down a branch of the tree that overhung the roof—just as he had done nearly eight months before. Ten minutes later he was
cautiously making his way up the steep slope at the back of the cage.

On the far side of its crest he had once more to pass through the belt of semi-jungle in which disturbed parakeets screetched, and small animals scuttled away in the undergrowth at his approach; but this time he had the comfort of knowing that it was not inhabited by poisonous snakes. Beyond it, a quarter of an hour's brisk walk brought him down to the two factories in which were faked the
objets d'art
that brought the Island its wealth.

It was now close on one o'clock in the morning, so no one was about; but, since a meeting might have proved calamitous, he took advantage of every patch of shadow as he advanced along the road and turned into the avenue of palms. As there was no moon he could not see the cluster of beautiful buildings down in the valley; but, against the starlit sky, the delicate outlines of the roofs of the few houses that he passed recalled to him the fairy-like loveliness of the hidden scene as he had first gazed upon it. After leaving the avenue, another ten minutes' walk brought him to the lake.

As he crossed the bridge he could feel his heart beating heavily. Upon what he would find, or fail to find, in the next few moments so much depended. If A-lu-te were not in her room, it would not only confirm his fears for her, but mean that his best hope of saving little Josephine, and the rest of them, would be gone. Increasing his pace he walked swiftly past a thick screen of bamboos. As he emerged on their far side he drew a quick breath of relief. The house was in darkness except for a dim light that came from A-lu-te's room; the curtains had not been drawn and she was in it.

After a cautious glance round to see that no one else was about, he crossed the grass. Before, he had been able to make out only her head; but now he could see that she was clad in mourning white and sitting motionless on her day-bed, apparently absorbed in thought and staring out of the french window. In a few rapid steps he reached and knocked upon it.

At the same moment she rose, grasped the handle of the screen door, and pulled it open. As they came face to face she gave him no welcome but, her eyes wide with apprehension, exclaimed:

‘You must be mad to have come here!'

He smiled. ‘Anyhow, it seems you were expecting me.'

‘Tonight, yes. Knowing your boldness I felt certain that somehow you would manage to escape from the cage again. I meant that you must be off your head to return to the Island.'

‘How could we possibly guess that Kâo would make himself master of the place in a fortnight?'

Backing a little way into the room, she asked, ‘What difference could that make to you?'

‘Surely you can see that for yourself,' he replied, following her in and pulling the door to behind him. ‘If we could have got here earlier we might have spiked his guns. As it is we have landed ourselves in a damnably tight corner.'

‘Your danger would have been as great whenever you arrived,' she said sharply. ‘Everyone here would have been against you.'

‘To start with, perhaps. But for your sake I was prepared to take that risk.'

‘For my sake?'

‘Yes. But you don't seem very pleased to see me.'

‘I am not. For the past seven weeks I have been doing my utmost to forget you.'

His face hardened. He had expected that she might still be worried and puzzled about what part he had played in Shih-niang's death, but it had never entered his mind that her reception of him would be completely frigid. Greatly upset and distressed by her attitude, he said nothing for a moment, then he snapped:

‘If that's the way you feel, I wonder that you bothered to wait up for me tonight.'

‘As I had plighted my troth to you, I felt it my duty to be here to see you if you came,' she replied coldly.

‘Duty be damned!' he exclaimed. ‘Curiosity, you mean!
And by everyone's being against me, I take it now you include yourself. But if you have some of Kâo's braves waiting to pounce on me as I go out, you had better warn them that I am armed.'

A-lu-te drew herself up. ‘I feel shame for you that you could harbour such a thought; and it shows how little I really knew you. How could you possibly suppose that a woman like myself would ever betray a man she had loved—even if he had done murder?'

Gregory gave an angry sigh. ‘So you still believe that! I'm sorry about what I said just now. I didn't mean it. You see, I've been under the impression that you would be hoping that I should turn up again if I could possibly find a way to clear myself; and now that I have it's quite a shock and a bit humiliating to find that you have had so little faith in me.'

‘It cannot be a worse shock than the one I sustained at Tung-kwan.'

‘Perhaps not, but you intervened to save me then.'

‘That was an impulse to which any woman in love might have been subject.'

‘Still, I should have thought that on thinking matters over you would have given me the benefit of the doubt.'

‘Why should I? Everything pointed to your having killed the Princess; and if that were not enough I understand that you are now giving further proof of your roguery by attempting to foist a false Princess upon us.'

‘Nothing of the kind!' he retorted angrily. ‘The girl down at the guest house is the real Josephine. Even if you don't believe me, I should have thought the fact that Lin Tû-lai brought us both here would have been proof enough for you of that.'

‘Is … is Tû-lai here too, then?' she stammered.

‘Yes. Didn't you know?'

‘I was told only that you had returned with a story that the Princess was not dead after all; and that you had brought her here.'

‘So I have! Think back for a moment to the other girl. You must remember how, although she was supposed to
have been brought up in the United States, she understood no English; how she could hardly write the simplest characters; and how ignorant she was on practically every subject. It was she who was the fake, and we were all had for a lot of mugs—myself more so than anyone, as I was speaking French to her all the time and had more chance to find her out.'

A-lu-te gave a little gasp, and put a hand up to her mouth. ‘Yes … Oh yes; there were many little things! But I don't understand. What does this mean?'

‘It means that your uncle Kâo is one of the biggest criminals unhung. He knew she was a fake all the time, and planned her death to serve his own ends.'

‘Kâo!' she gasped again. ‘If you are right, perhaps … perhaps other people are too. They have been whispering all sorts of terrible things about … about a banquet that he gave.'

‘If they have been saying that he poisoned nine of his guests, including your father, I have no doubt they are right.'

Tears welled up into A-Iu-te's golden eyes and she suddenly sat down on the day-bed. ‘He … he has always been so kind, and … and so jolly,' she sobbed. ‘I cannot believe it.'

Gregory had never seen her cry. Sitting down on the day-bed he put his arm about her shoulders and said gently, ‘I'm afraid you've got to. I've no proof of that, but I have enough of other crimes he had committed with the same object to make it as good as certain. It was largely in the hope of preventing him from continuing with his devilish plans that I came back here. That I should have arrived too late to save your father and the others is a tragedy; but I still mean to do my damnedest to unmask him.'

A-lu-te gulped back her tears. From loyalty to her uncle she had put out of her mind many half-formed suspicions of him, but now they all came crowding back, outweighing the single count of the situation in which she had last seen Gregory. With the conviction that she had held for the past
ten weeks now shattered, she murmured unhappily, ‘Please … please tell me what you have found out?'

He shook his head. ‘I can't now. It's too long a story. But you will hear it all tomorrow. That is, if you can get yourself into the Chamber when we are brought before the Council. Anyhow, you will hear all about it soon afterwards; but as you have so many influential friends I am hoping that you could get yourself passed in dressed as one of the attendants.'

‘Yes; I think I could do that,' she nodded. Then, as she thought again, she added swiftly, ‘But you must not stand your trial. You must not! Now Kâo is the President of the Council you wouldn't have a chance. It is a certainty that he would overrule the others and have you condemned. You must escape. Now that you are free you must go down to the harbour and steal a boat. There will be no one to stop you at this hour, and you could row out in it to the ship that brought you. That is, if it has not sailed away already.'

‘No; she is still there. But, even if I wanted to, I couldn't do that. I must return to the others.'

‘Of course; how stupid of me. All this has made me temporarily half-witted. I was simply urging on you the course I meant to press you to take while I was sitting here waiting for you.'

‘You intended then to do your best to make me save myself in any case?'

‘Oh, how can you think otherwise? But can you not, even now, get Tû-lai out of the guest house and escape to this ship with him?'

‘It's just possible I might, but that would still leave Foo and—'

‘Foo?'

‘Yes. He is the young student who was in love with Josephine in San Francisco. It was to try to trace her through us that he stowed away in the yacht.'

‘Then it was not he who tried to murder you after all?'

‘No; but if you think back a bit you'll see now who did.
Anyhow, even if I could get him and Tû-lai out, my escape route would prove much too difficult for Josephine.'

‘But it is you more than any of the others that Kâo has his knife into,' A-lu-te protested. ‘I beg you to escape to the ship while you still have the chance. The others are in nothing like as much danger; and when the people realise that it is the real Princess you have brought here they will protect her.'

Gregory shook his head. ‘They won't be given a chance to realise it, as long as Kâo remains master of the situation; and it is her blood much more than mine that he is after. We are all in this together, and I must sink or swim with the others. I still think we'll manage to swim through, if you will give me your help.'

She hesitated a second, then she said, ‘I'd do anything to help you escape; but I must be fair to Uncle Kâo. I have only your word for all this, and no proof at all that he is not right in saying that you and some others came here with the intention of trying to get hold of the wealth of the Island for yourselves through fooling us into placing a false Princess on the throne.'

‘All right, then.' Gregory smiled. ‘I'll tell you something else. Josephine was married to Foo in the House of Lin five weeks ago, so she is no longer in a position to be married to a member of one of the Seven Families. In bringing her here we hoped for no more than that she should be allowed to settle with her husband in the Island, and that the Council would make her an allowance sufficient for them to maintain themselves in reasonable comfort. My own object in returning was to prevent Kâo from reaping the reward of his crimes, and to be with you again.'

A-lu-te nodded, and gave him a sad little smile. ‘I see now how wrong I have been. You are, as I believed to begin with, a brave and faithful man. And it all fits in. Very well, then, what do you wish me to do?'

Gregory unwrapped the parcel that he had brought, showed her the thing it contained, and told her the use to which he wished her to put it. Then they discussed at some
length the steps she should take in order to be in the Council Chamber when the prisoners were brought up for trial in a few hours' time.

When everything was settled, the anxiety of both of them about how things would go was too great for them to feel like love-making; but as they stood up she offered him her lips.

She, too, was now involved in a desperate gamble; but having convinced her of his honesty he knew that she would not have had things otherwise, and that he could count on her courage and loyalty. Before going out into the darkness, he took her in his arms and kissed her fondly. It was for the last time; but that he could not know.