Bennett sat down. Singapore was an unexpected sort of place. He felt imprisoned now in the silence. Nothing moved. There was no sound but once, when a wasp as big as a bird bolted in heavily, blundered and hummed among the wooden rafters, and went again so straight and suddenly that Bennett thought something in the overhead shadows had flung it out. He began to feel bitter about that romance of the East. Sometimes it seemed lost in a brooding quiet, or else it stirred into episodic and irrelevant activity directed to God knew what. He put his sun helmet on the floor, wiped his brow, and regretted the childish folly which had sent him to look for what perhaps did not exist on earth. What did people mean by romance? What was it? How could it be found in ’rickshaws and rubber plantations? He could not get the hang of Singapore. Ships, temples to all the gods, cocoanuts, and men and women of so many different colors that they could not talk to one another. And who was that fellow who had just gone out? How did he come into the picture? It was a life which went on outside his own, and he could not follow it. Didn’t even know that fellow’s name. He might have been created among those trees just to let a Londoner know that the East, though it pretended never to observe him, yet wanted him to understand that he was making a fool of himself in a place not his. He might as well have some of that drink.
The siphon made so immense a noise that he thought the invisible watchers must hear it and send another messenger to mock him politely. He began to drink gratefully.
“Mix me one,” grumbled a deep voice.
He almost dropped the glass, and looked round in a little panic. He could not see anybody. A lounge chair with its back to him stood by the veranda at the far end of the room. He went to it. An old man, with a mass of riotous white hair and a white beard stained brown about the lips, reclined there at full length. His eyes were shut. His open shirt showed gray hair on his ribs.
“Did you speak?” asked Bennett.
“Of course,” said the man, without opening his eyes. “You heard me. I want a drink.”
Bennett brought it. The old man sat up sideways in his chair with surprising swiftness, opened his eyes at the glass in sullen criticism, and emptied it at once. He sat looking at the tumbler thoughtfully, while Bennett stood by, hoping that the car would arrive soon. Then the bearded figure looked up at him and surveyed him with dark disapproving eyes.
“Who are you?”
Bennett felt very modest. “Oh—nobody—just out from London. I found this estate by chance—got lost, you know. A good friend here, whose name I don’t know, has telephoned for a car.”
“Well, Mr. Nobody, sit down. No. Get me another drink. Put more whisky in it.”