“. . . . For I do think, Chubsie, Lewis is the very best man in the world. You’ll laugh; but he takes such beautiful care of me, and the work’s so interesting, and the babies are such dirty little ducks, all eyes and tummies. I don’t really feel fit to be a missionary’s wife, but I’m trying to be, and I know quite a lot of Spanish. And on Thursday, he said I was—what do you think?—an inspiration. Don’t laugh, you bad girl. Oh, Chubs, I wish I could hear you! And that brings me to the one thing—I wouldn’t tell him for the world, but I can tell you because I know you never breathe a word of what anyone tells you. This country frightens me. It’s not a bit like the winter I was in Ceylon. Just sometimes, you know; though I tell myself it’s only for two years, and I’m with Lewis, and I was willing. But it’s interesting too. Guess what he found that time he went up the Horado to the fifth tributary.—Fancy, it hasn’t even a name!—where the boys said no white man had been before. He found whole forests of rubber trees. I said, ‘Was it valuable?’ And he said, ‘Yes, immensely,’ but he’d never make use of it or tell anyone it was there, because he said rubber seemed to be one of the accursed products of the earth, and death and suffering always followed where it was. Of course I agreed. Isn’t he splendid? Then Mr. Franca came in. I must tell you about him. He’s quite splendid in a catty sort of way; but truly, I’m a little bit afraid of him too. He’s like the country. . .”
And that was all. But Brennan had his clue. Clue? It was a revelation, a whole dark landscape shown in one flash of leven-fire. He crushed the little spill in his fingers, and across the chasm of her fate cried to Bonnie West,—“Yes, I see, I see. But what did he do. . .?”
“You have it. . .”
Franca, just breathing the words, stood in the doorway; he leaned, not towards the paper in Buck’s hand, but away from it, as a man leans against the pull of a rope.
“You have it. You know it. . . .”
“What do I know, I wonder?” said Buck, thoughtfully, his eyes never leaving Franca’s.
“Where he went. . . . What he found. . .”
“Yes.” Buck was more thoughtful than ever. With a single movement he took his pipe from his mouth and tilted the red-hot ash on the paper in his palm. The thin “foreign note” curled instantly in a fluff of little flame, ended in a square of fragile gray edged with dying scarlet. Buck sat watching it quietly. Franca had cried out once, no time for more. Now he stood grunting and sweating like an animal, one hand pulling and fumbling at his belt.
“No good.” Buck shook his head. “No good. You wouldn’t be such a fool. . . . I am—now—the only living soul that knows.”
The only living soul . . . . Franca went out.