“We had entered the stockade, an enclosure of some size, in the middle of which stood a bungalow, which had once been pretty and which was evidently far older than the structure surrounding it. There was not a soul in sight, yet one had the feeling of furtive eyes peering from behind slanted jalousies. Lynch looked about him critically.
“‘Quite like an Australian ranch-house, is it not, Doctor?’ he remarked; then turned sharply to our host. ‘Have you ever been in Australia, friend McAdoo?’
“One could see the man’s heavy jowl drop a trifle beneath his coarse, red beard; his face looked flaccid—just for the second, and then the blood came pouring back until the veins across the side of his forehead became distended. His pale, little eyes began to dance, just as those of a hog when he is about to make a rush—you know the look.
“‘Where is Mr. Cullen—the missionary?’ asked Lynch, sharply, and at this direct question the congestion of McAdoo’s face faded in blotches and the glitter of his eyes changed to a gleam of cunning.
“‘He’s gone away, leavin’ me in charge o’ the station, and now if ye’ll kindly step inside’—the brute actually mustered a sort of grin which was, no doubt, intended for an expression of good-will—‘I’ll leave ye for a minute or two.’
“‘Thank you,’ said Lynch, calmly. ‘Doctor Leyden will wait here on the veranda, but I believe that I will go with you, if you don’t mind. I should like to look around a bit.’
“‘There’s little enough to see,’ growled McAdoo, but his tone was growing wary. ‘I’ll ask ye to bide here for a bit.’
“‘Thanks,’ said Lynch, and there was actually a sing-song tone of sarcastic ennui in his voice, ‘but I’ve conceived such a fondness for your society that I really can’t bear to have you out of my sight, friend McAdoo. We’ll go together; the Doctor does not mind being left alone.’
“This to that desperado whom we both believed to be an escaped Australian convict, whose presence in the mission-house was still to be explained. Lynch was armed, of course—armed with one of the big revolvers your cowboys carry, and, in fact, he had been a plainsman for a while after leaving college, and I knew that, for all his languid air, if McAdoo laid a hand on the butt of either of the two revolvers which he carried he would be a dead man before the weapon was half-drawn, for Lynch was a master of your Western American art of lightning extermination. It did not seem to me, however, that this would help matters much, as I had seen that the man kept a swarm of Malays about him; and Malays, even when ill-treated, are apt to be faithful brutes, if the master who ill-treats them inspires their respect, as no doubt McAdoo must, or he would have been dead long before.
“McAdoo did not permit himself another exhibition of badly suppressed rage; the situation was growing too serious for such petty self-indulgence. Instead, he assumed an air of awkward good-nature, which was far more sinister.