“Alla tobat!” screamed the poor woman who was compelled to see her daughter thus outraged wantonly before her eyes.
That bitter cry of distress had the desired effect. For a single instant it caused Setrosmito to turn his watchful eyes to his wife; but that single instant was sufficient. Quick as lightning Singomengolo took advantage of it, and slipped his closed hand under the little Pandan mat which was spread out over the baleh-baleh and which, during the search, had already three or four times been lifted and shaken without result. Then, in triumph, he produced from under it a little copper box, and, as he held it up with a theatrical gesture he exclaimed:
“You see that; after all, there was smuggled opium in the house; I knew I should find it!”
Setrosmito turned deadly pale at the sight; he well knew what the Dutch law-courts had in store for him, and the thought of the ruin which thus stared him in the face filled him with rage and fury.
“There was no opium concealed here,” he cried out; and in his despair not well knowing what he was doing, he put his hand out mechanically to the kris, an old heirloom which was stuck into the bamboo-wall above the baleh-baleh.
“You dirty dog,” he cried to Singomengolo, “it was you yourself that slipped that box under the mat!”
The words had scarcely passed his lips before Singomengolo answered the frantic accusation by a blow with his clenched fist which struck Setrosmito right in the mouth. Maddened with pain and rage the unhappy man plucked the kris from its sheath; but at that moment, suddenly, little Kembang uttered a heartrending scream of pain and horror. That cry saved the life of the opium spy. The poor father looked round as if bewildered at the sound; but when he saw the disgusting leer upon the Chinaman’s face and in what an outrageously indecent manner that wretch was treating his pretty little flower, the blood seemed to rush to his head and his rage was at once turned into another direction. A red mist—red as blood—clouded his eyes.
“Help, help, pain, pain!” cried poor little Kembang.
Utterly blinded and wholly beside himself with fury the father, kris in hand, flew towards the miscreant.
“Amokh, Amokh!” shouted one of the policemen, as he saw the flaming kris in the frenzied father’s hand.