“What have you got?”
The pack was unrolled deftly on the wet grass, and inside lay a long strip of raw silk. Opening this after a swift glance down the road, the stranger revealed a medley of things, some beautiful, many valuable, and none of them ordinary. No Manchester stock was this. He had chains of native workmanship, hammered bangles of gold and silver, semi-precious stones carved with amazing cleverness, bits of oddly shaped ivory, all the paraphernalia of the peddler of the Far East. These he showed with obvious and lingering interest as though he loved them, pattering meantime of the Sunda Islands, the Moluccas, Bali, Lombok, and a host of Eastern ports and places whose accustomed names fell from his lips with glib fluency. There was no doubt about his knowing the East.
“This, sir, is a bit of hammered tin from Kuantan in Pahang, and you don’t get much of that kind of work nowadays. They wash the tin out of the gravel on the hillsides, and there are only three men in Malaysia who turn out this grade of art. This gold bangle is from Berak—all Chinese labor there—and you can have it for ten shillings. Better take it, sir, for it weighs twenty pennyweight and is worth a sovereign for the gold alone.”
“Then why not sell it as gold?”
“I wouldn’t offer it unless I were footsore and had to have somewhere to sleep. Can’t sell this sort of thing in an English village. I’d get arrested for having it; that’s why I’m heading for London.”
His piercing eyes rested on Derrick while he spoke, and in them moved something more than a mere interested scrutiny. Then they roamed curiously about the neighborhood. A brain was working behind those eyes, and it occurred to Derrick that this man knew well where he was.
“Ever been in this part of England before?”
The lean brown fingers hung motionless over the trinkets. “No, sir, there’s nothing to bring my kind here unless it’s the June race meet. Won’t you take this bangle? There’s a good twenty pennyweight of fine gold in it. There isn’t a lady who would turn up her nose at it. I’ve seen a woman bought and sold for one not half as good.”
Derrick hesitated. Strange thoughts were coursing through his head and with them the growing conviction that this, like all the rest of it, was meant to be. Perhaps it was grotesque, but had not Perkins said weeks ago that others were coming to Beech Lodge, drawn by mysterious signals they could not withstand? Then Martin had come, and Jean Millicent, and who should say that here was not the last of the gathered company. It was not a bundle of trinkets that had brought this wanderer to these tragic gates.
“What’s your name? You speak good English, but you’re not English, are you?”