"I am sorry you won't tell me anything about my friend's absence," he said. "My friend Heyst, you know. I

suppose the only course for me now is to make inquiries down at the port. I shall hear something there, I don't doubt."

"Make inquiries of the devil!" replied Schomberg in a hoarse mutter.

Davidson's purpose in addressing the hotelkeeper had been mainly to make Mrs. Schomberg safe from suspicion; but he would fain have heard something more of Heyst's exploit from another point of view. It was a shrewd try. It was successful in a rather startling way, because the hotelkeeper's point of view was horribly abusive. All of a sudden, in the same hoarse sinister tone, he proceeded to call Heyst many names, of which

"pigdog" was not the worst, with such vehemence that he actually choked himself. Profiting from the pause, Davidson, whose temperament could withstand worse shocks, remonstrated in an undertone:

"It's unreasonable to get so angry as that. Even if he had run off with your cashbox "

The big hotelkeeper bent down and put his infuriated face close to Davidson's.

"My cashbox! My he look here, Captain Davidson! He ran off with a girl. What do I care for the girl?

The girl is nothing to me."

He shot out an infamous word which made Davidson start. That's what the girl was; and he Page 23

reiterated the assertion that she was nothing to him. What he was concerned for was the good name of the house. Wherever he had been established, he had always had "artist parties" staying in his house. One recommended him to the others; but what would happen now, when it got about that leaders ran the risk in his house his house of losing members of their troupe? And just now, when he had spent seven hundred and thirtyfour guilders in building a concerthall in his compound. Was that a thing to do in a respectable hotel? The cheek, the indecency, the impudence, the atrocity! Vagabond, impostor, swindler, ruffian, schweinhund!

He had seized Davidson by a button of his coat, detailing him in the doorway, and exactly in the line of Mrs.

Schomberg's stony gaze. Davidson stole a glance in that direction and thought of making some sort of a

Victory

V

21

reassuring sign to her, but she looked so bereft of senses, and almost of life, perched up there, that it seemed not worthwhile. He disengaged his button with firm placidity. Thereupon, with a last stifled curse, Schomberg vanished somewhere within, to try and compose his spirits in solitude. Davidson stepped out on the verandah. The party of customers there had become aware of the explosive interlude in the doorway.

Davidson knew one of these men, and nodded to him in passing; but his acquaintance called out:

"Isn't he in a filthy temper? He's been like that ever since."

The speaker laughed aloud, while all the others sat smiling. Davidson stopped.

"Yes, rather." His feelings were, he told us, those of bewildered resignation; but of course that was no more visible to the others than the emotions of a turtle when it withdraws into its shell.

"It seems unreasonable," he murmured thoughtfully.

"Oh, but they had a scrap!" the other said.

"What do you mean? Was there a fight! a fight with Heyst?" asked Davidson, much perturbed, if somewhat incredulous.