Hoyting dropped his chin on his breast and narrowed his eyes. Then he shook his head very slowly. “At my time of life it’s silly to be always saying how strange things are, and how clever life is, and all that literary nonsense; but, on my word, if ever a scene was arranged to make a man a protagonist in spite of himself, this was it. Every element in that Dakar situation was contrived to bring Paramore out. He had fever and the prescience of death—which is often mistaken, but works just as well notwithstanding; he had performed his extraordinary task; he was in love with Madame Pothier. The cup was spilling over, and I was there to wipe up the overflow.”
Hoyting was silent for a moment. Then he spoke irritably.
“I don’t know where to begin. There isn’t any beginning to this story. It hasn’t any climax—or else it’s all climax. It’s just a mess. Well, I shall have to begin, I suppose, if Paramore didn’t. Perhaps the first thing was his sitting up in bed one morning and peering out at me through his mosquito-netting. It gave him a queer, caged look. His voice went with it—that cracked and throaty voice they have, you know. ‘Do you know Whitaker?’ he asked.
“‘No, indeed,’ I said. ‘You’d better lie down.’
“If you could have seen him then, you’d have felt, as I did, that he’d better not talk; that he wouldn’t say anything one wanted to hear.
“‘It was Whitaker that finished me.’ Still he peered out at me.
“‘You’re not finished.’ I remember lying quite peevishly about it. He so obviously was finished.
“‘Yes, I am. And Whitaker did it. Oh, I mean I really did it.’
“I give you my word that he was startling, with that unnatural voice, that cunning look in his eyes the sick often get, and those little white cross-bars pressed against his face.
“‘Lie down,’ I said again. ‘What did Whitaker do?’