3
When Trent reached the hotel he found Tambusami waiting, with no news of Guru Singh, and the Englishman dismissed the native and went to his room.
As he undressed, the coral pendant lay upon the table before his eyes and he stared at it fascinatedly—stared until the coral blended in with the silver and met his gaze like a monstrous blood-shot orb.... It was hard to believe that Chavigny was at Gaya, that it was the Frenchman who murdered Manlove. Chavigny—Gilbert Leroux. What reason had he to kill Manlove, unless, as he theorized before, the guilty one had been discovered at the bungalow by his victim and in the ensuing struggle the latter was stabbed? Or, as Kerth suggested, he might have mistaken Manlove for Trent, although he could think of no reason why Chavigny should desire his death. And there was Chatterjee—Chatterjee, who died with his secrets.... Chavigny at Gaya! It was incredible. Of course the piece of coral might have been left as false evidence, a blind. But who, other than a member of the Order of the Falcon, would possess the ornament, and would a member of that mysterious band have left the symbol to be found by the police?
Provided Chavigny was the murderer, would it not be natural for him to take steps to recover the pendant, once he discovered its loss? Perhaps it was he who stole it in Benares. But that did not seem likely, in the light of Guru Singh's actions. For why should Chavigny wish to return the oval to him? If....
Then Trent had an inspiration. Was the attempt to kill him at the House of the Golden Joss the work of Chavigny? But what of the Buddhist priest? Chavigny might have bought him; paid him to kill Trent. To go further, it was possible that Chavigny was on the Manchester. Chavigny, an illusive personality, ever at his heels, like his own shadow! There was something intriguing in the thought. And it was plausible—plausible, too, that Chavigny, the notorious Chavigny, was the Falcon, the head of that nebulous order.
Theories, Trent concluded—only theories. He locked the pendant in his trunk and switched off the light.
As he lay in darkness, while lizards chirruped on the floor and the ceiling, a sense of cavernous aloneness enveloped him. It thronged with poignant thoughts. Manlove.... It seemed an age since he stood in the bungalow at Gaya that last morning. So much had happened since then—much to distract. Yet always, niched away in the subconscious, was the hurt, wearing deeper with a bruising force. Trent's nature was sterile for the average seeds of intimate kinships, but now and then—not more than half a dozen times in his life—one fell upon fertile soil. There was something fresh and strong in his association with Manlove. (An essence thrice sweet in the memory.) Their personalities seemed to have entered into a mystic communion of comradeship—a bond not of words nor demonstrations, but feeling. That was why he felt so keenly the bruise of it.
Gone, too, was the woman who had materialized from his world-scroll into intimate palpability, bringing the rich gift of her presence—and leaving the bitter-sweet pangs of her departure. He would find her again, for she had fixed herself in the inner-penetralia of his being. But the period of waiting!... Waiting—love's Gethsemane since the first simian creatures battled in the wildernesses of a still-hot planet.
As he lay there, reflecting upon these things, he experienced an ache, a sensation of isolation, that was reminiscent of his boyhood—of a night when a shadowy being of antiseptics and sick-room odors roused him from sleep with the announcement that the man who had fathered him into existence was no longer in the house.
It dulled only when a sleepy intoxication came over him, and as he surrendered to it he visualized, in a dim, hazy way, a falcon, and it lay in a welter of blood.