Part 26 (1/2)

He looked anxiously away towards the town and began to mumble. Trent was in despair. Presently he began again.

”I used to belong to the Guards,--always dined there till Jacques left.

Afterwards the cooking was beastly, and--I can't quite remember where I went then. You see--I think I must be getting old. I don't remember things. Between you and me,” he sidled a little closer to Trent, ”I think I must have got into a bit of a sc.r.a.pe of some sort--I feel as though there was a blank somewhere....”

Again he became unintelligible. Trent was silent for several minutes.

He could not understand that strained, anxious look which crept into Monty's face every time he faced the town. Then he made his last effort.

”Monty, do you remember this?”

Zealously guarded, yet a little worn at the edges and faded, he drew the picture from its case and held it before the old man's blinking eyes.

There was a moment of suspense, then a sharp, breathless cry which ended in a wail.

”Take it away,” Monty moaned. ”I lost it long ago. I don't want to see it! I don't want to think.”

”I have come,” Trent said, with an unaccustomed gentleness in his tone, ”to make you think. I want you to remember that that is a picture of your daughter. You are rich now and there is no reason why you should not come back to her. Don't you understand, Monty?”

It was a grey, white face, shrivelled and pinched, weak eyes without depth, a vapid smile in which there was no meaning. Trent, carried away for a moment by an impulse of pity, felt only disappointment at the hopelessness of his task. He would have been honestly glad to have taken the Monty whom he had known back to England, but not this man!

For already that brief flash of awakened life seemed to have died away.

Monty's head was wagging feebly and he was casting continually little, furtive glances towards the town.

”Please go away,” he said. ”I don't know you and you give me a pain in my head. Don't you know what it is to feel a buzz, buzz, buzzing inside?

I can't remember things. It's no use trying.”

”Monty, why do you look so often that way?” Trent said quietly. ”Is some one coming out from the town to see you?”

Monty threw a quick glance at him and Trent sighed. For the glance was full of cunning, the low cunning of the lunatic criminal.

”No one, no one,” he said hastily. ”Who should come to see me? I'm only poor Monty. Poor old Monty's got no friends. Go away and let me dig.”

Trent walked a few paces apart, and pa.s.sed out of the garden to a low, shelving bank and looked downward where a sea of gla.s.s rippled on to the broad, firm sands. What a picture of desolation! The grey, hot mist, the whitewashed cabin, the long, ugly potato patch, the weird, pathetic figure of that old man from whose brain the light of life had surely pa.s.sed for ever. And yet Trent was puzzled. Monty's furtive glance inland, his half-frightened, half-cunning denial of any antic.i.p.ated visit suggested that there was some one else who was interested in his existence, and some one too with whom he shared a secret. Trent lit a cigar and sat down upon the sandy turf. Monty resumed his digging. Trent watched him through the leaves of a stunted tree, underneath which he had thrown himself.

For an hour or more nothing happened. Trent smoked, and Monty, who had apparently forgotten all about his visitor, plodded away amongst the potato furrows, with every now and then a long, searching look towards the town. Then there came a black speck stealing across the broad rice-field and up the steep hill, a speck which in time took to itself the semblance of a man, a Kru boy, naked as he was born save for a ragged loin-cloth, and clutching something in his hand. He was invisible to Trent until he was close at hand; it was Monty whose changed att.i.tude and deportment indicated the approach of something interesting. He had relinquished his digging and, after a long, stealthy glance towards the house, had advanced to the extreme boundary of the potato patch. His behaviour here for the first time seemed to denote the hopeless lunatic.

He swung his long arms backward and forwards, cracking his fingers, and talked unintelligibly to himself, hoa.r.s.e, guttural murmurings without sense or import. Trent changed his place and for the first time saw the Kru boy. His face darkened and an angry exclamation broke from his lips.

It was something like this which he had been expecting.

The Kru boy drew nearer and nearer. Finally he stood upright on the rank, coa.r.s.e gra.s.s and grinned at Monty, whose lean hands were outstretched towards him. He fumbled for a moment in his loin-cloth.

Then he drew out a long bottle and handed it up. Trent stepped out as Monty's nervous fingers were fumbling with the cork. He made a grab at the boy who glided off like an eel. Instantly he whipped out a revolver and covered him.

”Come here,” he cried.

The boy shook his head. ”No understand.”

”Who sent you here with that filthy stuff?” he asked sternly. ”You'd best answer me.”

The Kru boy, shrinking away from the dark muzzle of that motionless revolver, was spellbound with fear. He shook his head.