Lim Ho’s face grew ashy-pale as he heard these terrible words, he began to understand into whose hands he had fallen.
Van Gulpendam thought that he ought still to keep up his proud and dignified bearing. He could not bring himself to believe that a mere Javanese would dare to raise his hand against his august person, against the kandjeng toean. But yet he thought it advisable to speak in a somewhat conciliatory tone.
“If what you have just now said be true,” he began, “then certainly Lim Ho deserves severe punishment, and I pledge you my word that I will exert my authority to see that his punishment shall be proportioned to his offence; but what have I done that you dare to treat me thus?”
“You, you, kandjeng toean!” vehemently broke in the leader, in a voice which seemed fairly to hiss with rage, “you have made the offences, as you call them, of this Chinese dog possible. You have had the man, of whom I just now spoke, cast into a dungeon, you condemned him to the most barbarous punishment, knowing all the while that he was innocent. And all this you have done merely in order that you might screen the smuggling trade of that scoundrel. You supplied the opium-farmer with the means of preventing that girl’s father from defending his own child against the brutality of yon beastly Chinaman. Do you still ask me what you have done? Why, you and your wife are guilty of all I have said—and you and your wife deserve to die. Part of our sentence has already been carried out, and, believe me, it will be fully executed.”
“Wha—! What? Partly carried out you said?” gasped van Gulpendam. “My wife—!”
The leader turned to one of his followers:
“Tell the kandjeng toean what has become of the njonja.”
“The njonja is dead!” was the brief reply.
“Yes!” shouted the leader wildly, “the njonja is dead! We had mercy upon her, one single stab put an end to her accursed life. Look here—those spots on my kris—they are her blood!”
“That shriek I heard?” cried van Gulpendam.