CHAPTER XXVII.
SUMMUM JUS SUMMA INJURIA. FATHER AND SON CONDEMNED. MURDER OF SINGOMENGOLO.
A couple of days later, Mr. Zuidhoorn left Santjoemeh. He started for Batavia in one of the Dutch Indian Navigation Company’s ships, intending to take a passage to Singapore in the Emirne. From Singapore he was to go to Marseilles in the Irrawady of the Messageries Maritimes. He was, as we have seen, a thoroughly honest man; and he had fully made up his mind to let the authorities at Batavia know all that had occurred at the last session in Santjoemeh. He intended to act in this matter as prudently as possible; but yet was resolved that the officials at the head-quarters should be fully informed of the shameful intrigues that were carried on in the interior. But—between the forming of a good resolution and the carrying out of it, there is a vast difference, as Mr. Zuidhoorn was soon to discover.
He had but three days to stay in Batavia, and he found that he could not, in these three days, obtain an interview with the Governor General. Mr. Zuidhoorn had taken the trouble to go all the way to Buitenzorg; but it was only to find that, on the very day of his arrival, his Excellency had, in the early morning, started for Tjipannas. The only thing, therefore, that he could do was to wait till the morrow, and then take a carriage and drive to that place. Mr. Zuidhoorn took the precaution of telegraphing to the adjutant on duty, and as he received no answer to his telegram, he started the next morning for Tjipannas. He was doomed to be once again disappointed; for when he arrived, he was told that, unfortunately, His Excellency the Governor was confined to his room by a severe attack of fever, and that no one could be admitted to his presence. The aide-de-camp made this announcement with a profusion of excuses, and tried to explain that he had not been able to send a reply to the telegram because His Excellency had not been taken ill until late in the night.
There was no help for it, and Mr. Zuidhoorn had to hurry back, as best he could, to Batavia; cursing his unlucky star. But in these fruitless efforts to gain the Governor’s ears, two precious days had been wasted, and he had but one left.
On the following morning Mr. Zuidhoorn called upon the Chief Justice. This gentleman received him with a cordiality which was somewhat too boisterous to be real.
“Here you are at length, my dear Zuidhoorn!” cried he, as, with much outward show of friendship, he grasped his hand. “Indeed, I am delighted to see you! I have been alarming myself so dreadfully about the state of your health, that it is a positive relief to see you as well as you are. I thought your indisposition was much more serious. I am glad to find you are not so very bad after all; but it is getting high time for you to go away for a bit and get a little rest.”
Mr. Zuidhoorn did not know what to make of all this. “You thought me very ill?” he asked in surprise. “What do you mean? I don’t remember, in any of my letters, that I represented my state of health as worse than it really is. And then ‘high time to get away?’ I assure you I do not understand what you mean. I was not at all anxious to leave.”
“I suppose not,” rejoined the Chief Justice, “I suppose not; but I know you are beginning to feel the effect of the climate.”