“I do. In fact I wrote about him.”
“And I daresay you were pretty severe with us for letting him get away—no matter, we bear no malice. The public says nothing when we hit, but it makes a lot of fuss when we miss. Well, I was told off for this job. I’d got Mrs Wyse’s letter. I’d only got to call myself Pentwin, and follow her instructions, and it was all plain sailing. And a pretty haul I’ve made. There’s Sweetling my-lording it over everybody; Hanson, who killed his girl; Mast—a nasty case; Fellowes, who sold the secret explosive; Lord Charles Baringstoke, who forged his uncle’s name. Trimmer, of the Cornish coal fraud—a whole lot of back numbers nicely bound together.”
“It’s all very well,” said Lechworthy, “it’s all very well, but you can’t touch those men. Faloo is independent, and has no extradition treaty with Great Britain.”
“Very likely,” said Parget, with a laugh. “I’m not going to touch them. All I’ve got to do is to report. I’m only a subordinate officer at present. The rest will be for my chiefs to settle, and if they don’t find some way of dealing with this cock-sparrow of an island, I’m a Dutchman.”
“Now to come to the point; what do you want with me, Mr Parget?”
“I require you to assist an officer in the execution of his duty. I’m in a hole. They made all the arrangements for me to get here, but they left it to me to get away again the best way I could. Now if I tried for a passage on Smith’s schooner, it wouldn’t do. I’ve paid my subscription, and if I were Pentwin, Faloo would be the only place for me. Why should I want to go? They’d smell a rat. That man Hanson isn’t any too satisfied with me; he tried a bit of cross-examination last night, and though I kept my end up I don’t like it. What I’ve got to do is to disappear. There’s been a case of that before. There was a chap called Duncombe who got too fond of a native girl that was already—well—appropriated. He went out one fine night and he didn’t come back. Everybody at the club knows that he was killed. So I talk a deal about the native girls up at the club. I’ve the reputation of a Lothario. Sir John Sweetling has given me a good dressing-down about it already. As a matter of fact I’ve had nothing to do with these wenches. I’ve got a girl at home and wish I was safe back again with her. But that’s where it is, you know. If I go out one night, and don’t come back, and leave all my luggage behind me, including two or three letters to Pentwin and Pentwin’s pocket-knife with his name and address on it, then even Hanson will have no doubt that I was Pentwin, and that I have been speared or knived by a jealous man.”
“Very likely. But what will you do really, Mr Parget? How does my help come in?”
“The night I disappear will be the night after the Snowflake has come back. You’ll send a note privately to the skipper that I shall be coming aboard. I’ve learned to work a native canoe all right. On the Snowflake I shall lie low until you’re ready to sail. Nobody but the King knows that I’ve spoken with you, for at the club I’ve always professed to be scared of going near the King’s house, and I gather that the King has nothing more to do with men from the club nowadays. Besides, I fancy a word from you would keep him quiet. And then—well, I should ask you to lend me some clothes, take me to Tahiti, and say nothing to anybody. I pay for what I have, of course, and after Tahiti I can manage for myself.”
“Very well. I’ll do all that for you.”
“Thank you very much. And I’m sorry to give so much trouble. The luck’s with me to find a gentleman like you touring these islands just now.”