“Oh, there were alarums and excursions, of course. But I had to guess them myself. Paramore’s mind had other things to dwell on. You can see it all, though: the girl, who had thought he was drifting towards a proposal; the man, Whitaker, who wanted his daughter settled and happy, and thought Paramore would do—oh, a lot of primitive instincts that we don’t recognize until they’re baffled; Paramore behaving as well as he knew how, granted his obsession; and they choosing to consider him a blackguard. Nothing violent happened, apparently, but you can understand the zest with which Whitaker probably spoke in London. There was black hate in his truth-telling. I fancy what Paramore had done wouldn’t in the least have shocked Whitaker if it had been done by his son-in-law. He didn’t mention the girl in that famous interview, and Paramore never knew what had become of her. I don’t think he cared. He never saw Whitaker again.”
Hoyting rose and walked to the window. The gray eyes looked curiously down on the rue de Rivoli, as if, for charity, he had taken a box at a pageant that bored him.
“This isn’t in my line, you know,” he said finally, turning back—“any of it. Paramore reeked of civilization—Great Russell Street, if you like. Hang civilization! Yet he went down with fever like a sick Kruboy. Well, I must get on with this. I wouldn’t stop in Paris another night for anything you could offer me.”
He sat down, his big frame shaking the little gilded armchair. But he seemed loath to begin. His gray eyes were closed.
“How did he get to Dakar?”
Hoyting’s eyes were still closed as he answered. “That was Paramore trying to wash himself white again. He was discredited, deservedly. He had lied, deliberately and rather long-windedly. No loophole anywhere for excuse. Paramore himself was the last man to find any excuse for it. He never carried a devil’s advocate about with him. Doubtless, at home, his own conscience had returned to him, in place of the changeling conscience that had dwelt with him in the wilderness. He knew his reputation was dead and buried with a stake through its heart. But he set himself to atone. Some men, feeling as he did, would have shaved their heads and put on a hair shirt. Not Paramore—though he would have saved me a lot of nuisance if he had. No; he wanted to retrieve himself in kind, as you might say. He would spend his life and his few crumbling bits of fortune in doing the thing he had pretended to do. He would go to an utterly new field and stay till he’d amassed a treasure—priceless, authentic facts, each an unflawed pearl. That’s why he went to the Upper Niger—and here is his treasure.”
Hoyting opened his eyes suddenly, bent forward, and tossed the packet across to me.
“There you have it all. He went, he did the incredible thing, and then, quite properly, he died. The rest—the rest is mere drama.” He sat back.
I put the packet down. “Do you mean that these are his documents, and that you believe in them? Have you read them?”
“Have I read them? Do I look as if I would read an anthropologist’s note-books? Of course, I can see the humor of throwing over Christianity, lock, stock, and barrel, only to spend your life studying totemism—and on top of that, calling it a ‘career.’ If you think the absurdity of it is lost on me, you’re quite mistaken. But I would be willing to take my oath before the Last Tribunal that there isn’t a false word in that whole pile. Paramore did it—the more honor to him. When it comes to expecting any one else to believe it—I’m not such a fool. But I should think my word might suffice for you.”