"What are we going to do, kapitein?" he asked quietly.
"Welcome him, mynheer!" Again the sardonic smile. "Treat him to some of your fine cigars and a bottle of your best Hollands. Draw him out, make him empty his belly to us. When we have sucked him dry and drenched him with liquor we will pack him back to the Prins to tell Kapitein Enckel what fine fellows we are. To-morrow we'll receive him with all ceremony—I'll instruct him this afternoon how a resident is installed in his new post and how he must conduct himself.
"Enckel will leave here without a suspicion, Mynheer Gross will be ready to trust even his purse to us if we say the word, and we will have everything our own way as before. But s-s-st! Here he comes!" He lifted a restraining hand. "Lord, what a shoulder of beef! Silence, now, and best your manners, mynheer. Leave the talking to me."
Peter Gross walked along the kenari-tree shaded lane between the evergreen hedges clipped with characteristic Dutch primness to a perfect plane. Behind him formed a growing column of natives whose curiosity had gotten the better of their diffidence.
The resident's keen eyes instantly ferreted out Van Slyck and Muller in the shadows of the veranda, but he gave no sign of recognition. Mounting the steps of the porch, he stood for a moment in dignified expectancy, his calm, gray eyes taking the measure of each of its occupants.
An apprehensive shiver ran down Muller's spine as he met Peter Gross's glance—those gray eyes were so like the silent, inscrutable eyes of the stranger in de Jonge's chair whom he saw in his dream. It was Van Slyck who spoke first.
"You were looking for some one, mynheer?" he asked.
"For Mynheer Muller, the controlleur and acting resident. I think I have found him."
The mildness with which these words were spoken restored the captain's aplomb, momentarily shaken by Peter Gross's calm, disconcerting stare.
"You have a message for us?"