Captain Santosa laughed. "You look like a man with a grudge against some one," he answered. "Perhaps you have a touch of fever, otherwise I know you would have good taste enough to conceal the grudge. A gentleman suffers—and smiles."
It was past two o'clock in the morning, and Hemming was lying flat on his back, smoking a cigarette in the dark. He had been writing verses, and letters which he did not intend to mail, until long past midnight. And now he lay wide-eyed on his bed, kept awake by the restless play of his thoughts.
His windows were all open, and he could hear a stirring of wind in the crests of the taller trees. His reveries were disturbed by a stumbling of feet in the room beyond, and suddenly Valentine Hicks stood in the doorway. By the faint light Hemming made out the big, drooping shoulders and the attitude of weariness. He sat up quickly, and pushed his feet into slippers.
"That you, Hicks?" he asked.
"Don't talk to me, you damn traitor!" said Hicks.
Hemming frowned, and tossed his cigarette into the night.
"If you will be so good as to turn on the light, I'll get the quinine," he said.
The secretary laughed.
"Quinine!" he cried; "you fool! I believe an Englishman would recommend some blasted medicine to a man in hell."
"You're not there yet," replied Hemming. He was bending over an open drawer of his desk, feeling about among papers and bottles for the box of pills. Hicks drew something from his pocket and laid it softly on the table.