“This is all very well, Stella,” he said, “but it looks to me as if I’m going to be left out in the cold. What with your thinking about Chauncey Seller—he’s let down more pictures than any two men I know—and all that sort of thing, I don’t see that I’m going to be much use to you. I don’t really. I know you’ll think I’m a fearful, awful rotter, but I feel that we owe something to old Jack Kneb, I do really. I’ve jeopardized my position for your sake, and I’m prepared to do anything in reason, but what with pulling Chauncey Seller—who is a bounder of the worst kind—into your cast, and what with Foss jumping down my throat, well, really—really!”
They were not inclined to mollify him, having rather an eye to the future than to the present, and he had retired in a huff before the girl realized that the holding of Reggie would at least have embarrassed Knebworth to the extent of forcing a retake of those parts of the picture in which he appeared.
“Never mind about Connolly. The picture is certain to fail with that extra: she’s bad. I have a friend in London,” explained Foss, after the discussion returned to the question of ways and means, “who can put up the money. I’ve got a sort of pull with him. In fact—well, anyhow, I’ve got a pull. I’ll go up tonight and see him.”
“And I’ll see mine,” said Stella. “We’ll call the company The Stella Mendoza Picture Corporation—”
Lawley Foss demurred. He was inclined to another title, and was prepared to accept as a compromise the Foss-Mendoza or F.M. Company, a compromise agreeable to Stella provided the initials were reversed.
“Who is Brixan?” she asked as Foss was leaving.
“He is a detective.”
She opened her eyes wide.
“A detective? Whatever is he doing here?”
Lawley Foss smiled contemptuously.
“He is trying to discover what no man of his mental calibre will ever discover, the Headhunter. I am the one man in the world who could help him. Instead of which,” he smiled again, “I am helping myself.”
With which cryptic and mystifying statement he left her.
Stella Mendoza was an ambitious woman, and when ambition is directed toward wealth and fame it is not attended by scruple. Her private life and her standard of values were no better and no worse than thousands of other women, and no more belonged to her profession than did her passion for good food and luxurious environment. The sins of any particular class or profession are not peculiar to their status or calling, but to their self-education in the matter of the permissible. As one woman would die rather than surrender her self-respect, so another would lose her self-respect rather than suffer poverty and hardship, and think little or nothing of the act or the deceit she practised to gain her ends.
After Foss had gone, she went up to her room to change. It was too early to make the call she intended, for Sir Gregory did not like to see her during the daytime. He, who had not hesitated to send Bhag on a fantastic mission, was a stickler for the proprieties.
Having some letters to post, she drove into Chichester late in the afternoon, and saw Mike Brixan in peculiar circumstances. He was the centre of a little crowd near the market cross, a head above the surrounding people. There was a policeman present: she saw his helmet, and for a moment was inclined to satisfy her curiosity. She changed her mind, and when she returned the crowd had dispersed and Michael had disappeared, and, driving home, she wondered whether the detective had been engaged professionally.
Mike himself had been attracted by the crowd which was watching the ineffectual efforts of a Sussex policeman to make himself intelligible to a shock-haired, brown-faced native, an incongruous figure in an ill-fitting suit of store clothes and a derby hat which was a little too large for him. In his hand he carried a bundle tied up in a bright green handkerchief, and under his arm a long object, wrapped in linen and fastened with innumerable strings. At the first sight of him Michael thought it was one of Penne’s Malayan servants, but on second thoughts he realized that Sir Gregory would not allow any of his slaves to run loose about the countryside.
Pushing his way through the crowd, he came up to the policeman, who touched his helmet rim and grinned.
“Can’t make head or tail of this fellow’s lingo, sir,” he said. “He wants to know something, but I can’t make out what. He has just come into the city.”
The brown man turned his big dark eyes upon Mike and said something which was Greek to the detective. There was a curious dignity about the native that even his ludicrous garments could not wholly dissipate, an erectness of body, a carriage of head, an imponderable air of greatness that instantly claimed Michael Brixan’s attention.
Then suddenly he had an inspiration, and addressed the man in Dutch. Immediately the native’s eyes lit up.
“Ja, mynheer, I speak Dutch.”
Mike had guessed that he came from Malaya, where Dutch and Portuguese are spoken by the better class natives.
“I am from Borneo, and I seek a man who is called Truji, an Englishman. No, mynheer, I wish to see his house, for he is a great man in my country. When I have seen his house I will go back to Borneo.”
Mike was watching him as he talked. It was a particularly good-looking face, except for the long and ugly scar that ran from his forehead to the point of his jaw.
A new servant for Gregory Penne, thought the detective, and gave him directions. Standing by the policeman’s side, he watched the queer figure with its bundles till it disappeared.
“Queer language, that, sir,” said the officer. “It was Dutch to me.”
“And to me,” chuckled
