‘This time you must. You won’t leave the room until you do.’

I put my hand in my pocket. In fact I did not have my revolver with me, but he jumped in alarm. I came a step closer and looked at him.

‘Listen, let me tell you something … and then we need not resort to desperate measures. I have reached a point where I set no store by my life or anyone else’s … I am anxious only to keep my promise that the manner of this death will remain secret. And listen to this too: I give you my word of honour that if you will sign the certificate saying that this lady died of … well, died accidentally, I will leave this city and the East Indies too in the course of this week … and if you want, I will take my revolver and shoot myself as soon as the coffin is in the ground and I can be sure that no one… no one, you understand—can make any more inquiries. That ought to satisfy you—it must satisfy you.’

There must have been something menacing in my voice, something quite dangerous, because as I instinctively came closer he retreated with the obvious horror of … of someone fleeing from a man in frenzy running amok, wielding a kris. And suddenly he had changed … he cringed, so to speak, he was bemused, his hard attitude crumbled. He murmured something with a last faint protest. ‘It will be the first time in my life that I’ve signed a false certificate … still, I expect some form of words can be found … Who knows what would happen if … but I can’t simply …’

‘Of course not,’ I said helpfully, to strengthen his will—only move fast, move fast, said the tingling sensation in my temples—‘but now that you know you would only be hurting a living man and doing a terrible injury to a dead woman, I am sure you will not hesitate.’

He nodded. We approached the table. A few minutes later the certificate was made out; it was published later in the newspaper, and told a credible story of a heart attack. Then he rose and looked at me.

‘And you’ll leave this week, then?’

‘My word of honour.’

He looked at me again. I realised that he wanted to appear stern and objective. ‘I’ll see about a coffin at once,’ he said, to hide his embarrassment. But whatever it was about me that made me so … so dreadful, so tormented—he suddenly offered me his hand and shook mine with hearty good feeling. ‘I hope you will be better soon,’ he said—I didn’t know what he meant. Was I sick? Was I … was I mad? I accompanied him to the door and unlocked it—and it was with the last of my strength that I closed it again behind him. Then the tingling in my temples returned, everything swayed and went round before my eyes, and I collapsed beside her bed … just as a man running amok falls senseless at the end of his frenzied career, his nerves broken.”

 

Once again he paused. I shivered slightly: was it the first shower carried on the morning wind that blew softly over the deck? But the tormented face, now partly visible in the reflected light of dawn, was getting control of itself again.

“I don’t know how long I lay on the mat like that. Then someone touched me. I came to myself with a start. It was the boy, timidly standing before me with his look of devotion and gazing uneasily at me.

‘Someone wants come in … wants see her …’

‘No one may come in.’

‘Yes … but …’

There was alarm in his eyes. He wanted to say something, but dared not. The faithful creature was in some kind of torment.

‘Who is it?’

He looked at me, trembling as if he feared a blow. And then he said—he named a name—how does such a lowly creature suddenly come by so much knowledge, how is it that at some moments these dull human souls show unspeakable tenderness?—then he said, very, very timidly, ‘It is him.’

I started again, understood at once, and I was immediately avid, impatient to set eyes on the unknown man. For strangely enough, you see, in the midst of all my agony, my fevered longing, fear and haste, I had entirely forgotten ‘him’, I had forgotten there was a man involved too … the man whom this woman had loved, to whom she had passionately given what she denied to me. Twelve, twenty-four hours ago I would still have hated him, I would have been ready to tear him to pieces. Now … well, I can’t tell you how much I wanted to see him, to … to love him because she had loved him.

I was suddenly at the door. There stood a young, very young fair-haired officer, very awkward, very slender, very pale.