And in the fantastic glow of paper lanterns stood Alfred Poynter Tunstal, surely the strangest figure to which a dapper and sophisticated seeker after truth was ever reduced, with a face blackened and unrecognizable like a hideous caricature and slashed across by the raw wound of his recent gag, clad, head to heel, in the plastered red hide of a monstrous orang-utan, the true jungle man!
So he stood to give testimony and make atonement for various things.
"Not monkeys!" he gasped hysterically. "I thought so—I thought they were—and they made a monkey out of me!"
He swayed and straightened in Nivin's grip.
"I killed their ape. I put the touch of dishonor on a brown skin. And they served me proper for it—proper. But I've got the proof you want....
"All day I've been sitting there, under that tree. The man—the man who bought those cinnabar girls—he came to talk business.
"It's true. He gets those girls in starving villages. They engage for service; that's all. They don't know—don't understand—till too late.... Three of them now in that house back there waiting shipment! Blind victims—an incidental side line to Lol Raman!"
"Who?" thundered De Haan!
A long, hairy arm shot out accusing.
"That greasy little cur over there. Van Goor, the agent. Stop him!"