Madame explained how the casualties of war had left the House desolate.
"So Sir John Toppys, cousin of the late Lord, is the heir," mused Grant reflectively. His brow puckered, and he looked at Madame acutely and suspiciously. She bore the scrutiny in that bland impenetrable way which has so often baffled me.
"So you are interested," said he at last, "in the irregular branch?" The emphasis upon the adjective was unmistakable.
"Well," drawled Madame Gilbert, "you will agree that the colour is somewhat unusual."
Grant smiled again. He was thinking hard, and it was plain that he was familiar with the ramifications of the Family of Toppys, and with the lawful rights of the Twenty-Eighth Baron. Until that moment, however, he had not known that the direct white heirs had failed.
When he spoke it was with deliberate, anxiously deliberate, emphasis. "The kindest service which you can render, Madame, to the coloured branch of Toppys is to leave them alone—in happy ignorant security. I repeat, ignorant security."
Madame drew a deep breath. For reasons which she did not yet appreciate, but which she was soon to understand, Willatopy's banker was on her side, the side of Sir John Toppys, Baronet of Wigan.
"I was an intimate friend of Will Toppys," went on Grant. "I loved him, and think that I, alone among his white friends, sympathised with his withdrawal from white civilisation. Money and honours meant nothing to his simple soul. The few hundreds a year which he drew through me from his property in England, the small plantation which he bought upon Tops Island, sufficed. He was in his way wealthy, and also in his own way gloriously happy. His wife—you have not seen his wife—honoured him as a king of men. Willatopy, his only son, worshipped him as a god. You may perhaps have noticed how Willatopy, although but twelve years old when his father died, quotes his lightest saying as the last word in human or divine wisdom?"
Madame nodded.
"I was my friend's executor, and, in my humble way, have tried to be a guardian to Willatopy. I love the boy for his father's sake and his own sake. He is a good boy. His courage has the quality of tempered steel: he is honest and generous. He comes here about once a month, draws a pound or two in silver from me, buys gear for his yawl and a few delicacies for his family—they all have a queer passion for sardines and tinned tongue—picks up some beads for his brown girls, and then disappears. He does not drink; he has not, I believe, ever tasted alcohol. His relations with brown girls are those customary in the Straits. Here, Madame, boys and girls follow their inclinations, but they are free from the vices of the white races. The unmarried flit from flower to flower, but those who are married—though wedded by the sketchiest of native ceremonial—are faithful to one another with a rigidity unknown in Europe or America. All the vices and all the diseases in these islands are the gift of the white man. I have always feared for Willatopy, and now your coming fills me with dread for him. White and brown blood form a bad mixture—an explosive mixture. A mixture unstable as nitro-glycerine. So long as Willie remains brown, and follows the precepts of his father, he will be safe and happy. But let him incline by ever so little towards the white side of him, let him once awaken to a taste for wine or whisky, and become conscious of the seductions of white women—and Willatopy will be a lost soul. Here in my desk lies the will of my friend Toppys and—other papers. I see the danger which threatens Willatopy, and I tremble. Take your yacht away, Madame Gilbert, and trouble the boy no more."