“Lucky he had that rag in his collection,” I said. “He evidently forgot it was there, didn’t want us to see it, and is going to do some of his nonsense to put it out of our heads. It’s a throw-in for us, Mark.”
“If that signifies a bit of good luck, I am entirely of accord,” said the Marquis. “Flint, I am joyous; I must dance.”
And dance he did, lightly as a girl of sixteen, there in the huge dusk marea, in the moonlight and the firelight, holding out his arms like wings, and whistling as he danced. Before he had done, Mo appeared again with something in his hand; and for an instant the stony veil was lifted altogether from his face, and he shot such a look of hate at the Marquis that I felt my hand slip involuntarily round to my hip.
“The old curio dealer doesn’t like your dancing, Mark,” I warned. “Somehow your accomplishments don’t seem popular here.”
“It was the dance of Marianne before Herod,” said the Marquis, stopping at the end of a pirouette. “I dance that dance when I am glad. The second part of it, I mean—the part when Marianne has got the head of John the Baptist, and is satisfied of that.”
“Old Ikey Mo isn’t satisfied about something or other,” I said. “Let’s get him to work; perhaps he’ll forget his troubles then.”
“What has he got in his hand?” asked the Marquis, with interest.
It was a lizard, about ten inches long, yellowish in color and quite dead. He gave it to us to handle. We both saw that it was dead and beginning to grow stiff; it seemed to have died naturally, as there were no marks upon it. Mo squatted down on the floor and motioned us to keep quiet. He laid the lizard out upon a banana-leaf, shut his eyes and began to chant something in a low, monotonous voice. We could not hear very clearly, for the drums throbbed on and on in the village and the distant dance had risen to a thundering chorus of feet and voices, like the beat of the tradewind surf on the long beaches of Papua.
By and by he stopped, opened his eyes and took something out of his bag. The dance still thundered on; through all its far-off roar we could hear the dog that cried under the house—if it was a dog.
Mo had taken a crystal out of his bag—the biggest one—and unwrapped it from its covering of leaves. It was a pretty thing, like the end off a chandelier luster, and just about the same size, only it was double-ended, with two points. The lizard lay still and dead upon the ground. Mo pointed the crystal at it and began stroking the air just above the little corpse, without actually touching it. Over and over it he went with the crystal, making lines of light as the dying fire caught the quartz and drew violet and green and crimson colors out of it.