Pearls of Price

By RALPH STOCK

OWN there in the Taumotus the sun is not to be trifled with. It pours out of the sky like molten brass, and where it falls unchecked sears the earth as with living flame. Not a blade of grass is to be seen in these atolls, and even the coral of which they are formed is bleached to a deathly pallor.

Yet here Monsieur Rénaud lived and throve, for the lagoons of the Taumotus are natural storehouses of treasure unequalled in the world, and he had forced their locks.

Each morning, as the inevitable sun climbed from the sea, a black serpent put out from shore, leaving an ugly scar on the fair face of the lagoon. Presently it would break into a score of fragments, each resolving itself into a pearling canoe complete with naked diver and mate. And somewhere amongst them would be Monsieur Rénaud, hunched over the gunwale of his dugout, scouring the sea-floor through a water-glass. Never were eyes quicker than his to catch a glimpse of shell. That was why he made a point of directing his own fleet, and that also accounted for his wealth. For those were the halcyon days of unrestricted diving, before a pettifogging Government stepped in to ordain that pearls should be the property of the diver—the property, if you please, of some brainless bronze giant who knew no more than to sell them to the highest bidder and drink himself to death on the proceeds. You should have heard Monsieur Rénaud on the subject!

But by the time the measure came into force he was beyond being affected by it. Apart from the substantial fortune he had derived from shell, and deposited in a Tahiti bank, there were his pearls. Each was perfect. It would not have been kept otherwise, and Monsieur Rénaud's chief amusement of an evening was to open the door of the safe where they lay in a bed of cotton-wool, and fondle them in much the same way that he fondled his adoring Parisian wife and little daughter Jeanne.

"So," he exclaimed one evening, while engaged in this pleasurable pastime, "so they would give you to the savage. They would indeed cast pearls before swine. Sacrilege!" He swung-to the door of the safe with a clang that caused Jeanne to come running to his knee, and Madame to look up from her needlework in alarm.

"It is nothing," he answered her anxious look. "Only that we shall shortly go to live in Paris." He explained the edict that had gone forth. "So, you see, there is nothing to keep us here longer."

Madame Rénaud regarded her husband with incredulous brown eyes. She had often heard him talk in this strain, but never with such tones of finality. Was it possible that he now meant what he had said so airily in the past, never dreaming of the torture he was inflicting—that Paris would be theirs in the near future, a small hótel in the Rue Voulois, close to the shops and the Opera? Paris.…

A flush came to Madame Rénaud's cheeks, and her hands trembled over her work as she listened to what her husband was telling Jeanne.

"But yes, little one, there are other places in the world than the Taumotus; others even than Papeete, where you may remember making yourself ill with ice-cream. Where we are going there are shops filled with wonders, and at night lit up like fairyland. And it is cool there, even cold sometimes, so that you must wear little furs, and bowl a hoop through the gardens to keep warm. A hoop? Ah, you will soon learn all about hoops."

"May bébe come, too?" inquired Jeanne. She was a serious child for her years, and already concerned over the possible fate of a pet turtle that lived in a neighbouring rock-pool.

"How could we leave bébe?" laughed Monsieur Rénaud non-committally, and, setting the child down, turned to his wife.

"And what has maman to say?" he suggested, rubbing his strong hands together in anticipation of her pleasure.

Madame Rénaud looked up, and smiled as she knew he would have her smile.

"You will miss many things," she ventured.

"So that is all?" Monsieur Rénaud relapsed with the air of a disappointed schoolboy, then leant forward so that his starched drills crackled under the strain. "I shall miss many things," he mocked. "The everlasting heat and glare, perhaps, or a strip of coral and a few tattered pandanus palms. Or, again, it my be the embarrassing variety of our fare—the grated cocoanut, the eternal fish!" His face took on a look of tragedy that caused Madame Rénaud to laugh in spite of herself, and her husband to continue, elated at his success: "No, no, ma chérie, it is other things that I shall miss, and good riddance to them—the pallor of your cheek, the weariness in your eyes. We have enough. We will proceed to live."

"When?" said Madame Rénaud. It was the first time she had permitted herself to ask such a direct question on the subject.

Her husband leant back in his chair and studied the ceiling for a space.

"I will make one more trip with the fleet," he mused. "There is a corner of the lagoon, deep yet possible, which interests me. One last trip, then I will sell to the Compagnie Maritime, who have long wished to buy, and—a month," he ended abruptly, "in a month at latest. Will that leave time enough for you to prepare?"

"Ample," said Madame Rénaud, who would have cheerfully been ready in a day, but the tone failed to satisfy her husband.

"You are not pleased," he accused. "Is it possible that you do not wish to go?"

Madame Rénaud smiled wistfully at the impulsiveness of this husband of hers, usually so reserved, so deliberate. How could she tell him her heart had so often danced to the tune of that magic word "Paris," and been stilled by disappointment, that she now found herself incapable of displaying proper appreciation?

"It is not that," she said gently. "I was thinking"

"Thinking?" boomed Monsieur Rénaud. "Of what should you be thinking but the hats that you will wear, and of how Jeanne will look on the boulevards?"

"I was thinking," persisted his wife, "that I would rather you did not make that last trip to the lagoon."

Monsieur Rénaud stared at her bemused.

"I do not like 'last trips,'" she added gravely. Whereupon her husband laughed aloud, kissed her with the utmost tenderness, and turned his attention to other matters.

And the next, day he directed the fleet as usual. He took, it to a far corner of the lagoon, where his hawk-like eyes had detected shell at a greater depth than the divers had yet essayed. Standing up in his dug-out, he told the assembled company of brown-skinned men and women that these would be their last descents in his employ, that they had worked for him loyally, and that in return he proposed to give each a present before he bade them farewell. He therefore hoped that to-day's would be a record showing of shell.

It was. Never had the raft, on which the immense pearl oysters were opened, been so laden, and never had the eyes of Monsieur Rénaud been so quick to detect a pause in the process of opening. It was as he thought: this shell, deep down, old and barnacle-encrusted, contained what all men sought in the Taumotus—occasional pearls of varying size, shape, and colour. Most of them were worthless, a few might pass muster, but one—there is always the chance of this one—a perfect product of the disease that gave it birth. Pink, pear-shaped, and with a peach-like bloom, it rested in the unworthy setting of Monsieur Rénaud's begrimed palm. His keen eyes devoured it, his fingers closed reverently upon it, as he crumpled down on the shell-strewn raft.

What had happened? He asked himself the question with growing impatience. There was a pearl in his hand. He could feel it, yet it had dissolved into a blood-red mist. His head ached. Ciel, how it ached! And the divers were about him shuffling, muttering. They were lifting him bodily into the dugout, and the dugout was moving—he could hear the plash of paddles, feel the blessed motion of air after the sweltering glare that had enveloped him throughout the day. But that was all. The rest was a red curtain rung down.

It was the same when they lifted him from the dugout, and he lurched up the beach like a drunken man. It was the same when he heard his wife's voice, and stumbled towards it.…

It was the same five years later, and would be to the end. An oculist had come from Papeete and said as much. As already pointed out, the sun of the Taumotus is not to be trifled with.

Monsieur Rénaud had suggested that the original plan of returning to Paris should be adhered to in spite of his affliction. They (his wife and Jeanne) should be his eyes. They would tell him just how things looked, the new hats of maman, Jeanne's play in the gardens. It would be great fun. He smiled as he said such things, a smile that would have deceived most people, but never his wife. To her he had always been a man transparent—that was why she had married him—and she knew that, as things were, Paris would be little short of torture to him.

"I do not understand," he muttered, when the subject came under discussion. "It seemed to me before—before it happened, that you would have liked to go. I hope"

"If you remember"—his wife's low voice came from behind the curtain—"I was not enthusiastic about it."

Monsieur Rénaud nodded reminiscently. "But it is strange," he mused, "strange that a woman should prefer the Taumotus to Paris."

"Perhaps I am strange," admitted Madame. "Hark! There are the canoes."

The sonorous hoot of a conch came over the water, and Monsieur Rénaud felt his way to the verandah—he hated being helped—and stood facing the lagoon.

"How many?" he asked eagerly.

"Forty," answered his wife.

His face brightened. "Ah, the Compagnie Maritime is growing! Forty, eh? But I'll wager they get no more shell than I used to with half that number. And no pearls, no pearls at all!" He chuckled and, dragging forward the cane chair, sat listening to the sounds he knew so well—the dry rattle of pandanus leaves, the eternal roar of the surf on the outer beach, the peckings and struttings of the minah birds. Often he smiled. And he would not smile like that in Paris, no. Madame Rénaud was convinced of it.

Then there came another and overwhelming reason for remaining on the atoll, nothing less than the failure of the bank in Tahiti. The letter explaining the tragedy—as connected in some subtle fashion with the bursting of the South Sea cotton bubble—interested Madame Rénaud not at all. What occupied most of her time and sapped her remaining strength was the struggle to make ends meet. While her husband sat smiling across the lagoon, or crooning over his pearls, it was hers to devise ways and means of saving him from anxiety and harbouring the slim resources that remained from the wreckage of his fortune. So the lean years dragged on.

"Jeanne," she at last told her daughter, now a petite sixteen-year-old edition of herself, "you will look after him?"

"Need you ask, maman?" cried Jeanne in an agony of apprehension. "But why do you speak like this?"

Her mother smiled and took her hand. "Listen, Jeanne. This is no country for a white woman. Remember that. And get André to take you away from it as soon—as soon as it is possible. You understand?"

Jeanne blushed, but nodded obediently. She had no idea that her mother had noticed so much concerning André of the Compagnie Maritime.

"He is a good boy," said Madame Rénaud, "and you are a fortunate child, but no more fortunate than your mother. Remember that also."

Jeanne nodded again. She could not speak.

"Consider your father before all things," continued Madame Rénaud. "He is easily managed. A great boy. You will keep from him the bank failure and anything that might upset him. You are old for your years. You will attend to these things."

A faint sound came from the room beyond, and Jeanne moved swiftly to the bead curtain of the doorway, but there was no one there. Her father was standing at the verandah rail, smiling his serene smile across the lagoon. Already Jeanne felt the responsibility of her trust. Already it was part of her religion. He must never know—never.

So the gentle deception was handed on, for Madame Rénaud had spoken on a bed from which she never rose. But the difficulties of successful subterfuge increased with time. There was practically nothing left, yet still Monsieur Rénaud's chief pastime consisted of playing with toys worth a young fortune. Jeanne would watch the changing expression of his face as he sat there at the table, arranging and rearranging his precious baubles to form a necklace, a brooch, a pendant, while he related the history of each.

"Ah, here is the fellow that gave the trouble! But is he not worth it? See the lustre! See the perfection of form.…"

It was maddening. It could not go on. Jeanne told herself this with increasing insistence as time passed, and always the memory of her promise—"You will keep from him the bank failure and anything that might upset him"—rose up to give her pause. How was it possible to have recourse to their sole remaining means of support without betraying the situation? It was for Jeanne to find a way.

She would have told André of her trouble, but pride forbade. It was enough to have to go to him without a dot, and on the strict understanding that they should not leave the Taumotus as long as her father lived. André should not be imposed on further, she decided, though he appeared to like nothing better.

Often she would sit on the outer beach, hands clasped about knees, hair streaming in the wind, and ask counsel of the surf. It had always been her good friend, and one day it made answer.

"Take them!" it thundered, with a flurry of spindrift that danced in miniature rainbows before the sun. "Take them, so long as he does not know—so long as he does not know.…"

And he need not know! The thought leapt at Jeanne out of the turmoil about her. She scrambled to her feet and hurried up the beach, never pausing until she stood before the counter of the local store.

"M'sieur Challier," said Jeanne, addressing a heavily-built man with bilious eyes, "I find it impossible to pay your bill for the month until the next mail from Tahiti."

"But it is nothing," protested Challier, leaning over the counter to feast his eyes on Jeanne's wind-whipped face, "If you allow such a trifle to disturb you for one instant, I shall be desolated."

"You are kind," said Jeanne, and ordered what she required.

She had turned to leave, when a thought seemed to strike her. "You deal in pearls?" she asked.

Challier flung wide his huge hands. "For what else am I in these pestiferous Islands, mam'selle?"

"Pipi pearls?"

He puckered his thick lips and blinked at the corrugated iron roof of the store.

"From you, mam'selle, yes, I would buy pipi, though, as you know, they are from other shell than the pearl oyster, and of little marketable value."

Jeanne puckered her lips also. Challier found it an adorable sight. "It may be curious," she mused, "but I like pipi best. They are so colourful. Some are like gold."

"Exactly," grinned Challier; "they are like anything but pearl."

"Yet, except for their colour, they are the same."

"True."

"By weight, touch, and test."

"Yes. It is only a matter of fashion. Who knows? Some day Paris may decree that pipi are de rigueur. Until then"—Challier shrugged his massive shoulders—"I fear I can offer you but little for your pipi, mam'selle."

"Fashion is stupid," said Jeanne.

"Stupid but inexorable," added Challier.

"So that I shall take advantage of it where I may," proceeded Jeanne, with a toss of her small head. "But you have misunderstood me. I have no pipi to sell. I wish to buy them, for a necklace." Challier's gaze became fixed. "Or, if you will, to exchange real pearls for them. Then I shall have the difference of their value in money and the kind of necklace that I like—in spite of it not being the fashion," Jeanne explained with charming naïveté. "Is that not so, M'sieur Challier?"

Challier did not attempt to deny it. Why should he? It was evident what this bewitching child intended to do—for he knew most things about the Rénauds—and it seemed he at last stood a chance of securing some of the old man's well-known pearls.

Jeanne left with a selection of some fifty pipi, and that evening carried her plan into effect. It was necessary to sit very close to the table whereon Monsieur Rénaud played as usual with his toys, select one for comparison with its possible duplicate in pipi, and replace it the instant his hand moved in its direction. It was a nerve-racking process, but Jeanne persevered. And presently an unequalled opportunity occurred. Her father was engaged on a small but intricate design, and the remaining pearls lay discarded for some time. Jeanne took one, closed her eyes, and shook it together with a pipi in the hollow of her hands. But afterwards, between finger and thumb, she—even she—could tell the difference. It seemed hopeless.

Yet with practice she became more adept, and presently it seemed that the thing was done. She could detect no difference—no difference at all.

"Ah," sighed Monsieur Rénaud, "tell me, little Jeanne, how does that look?"

He had spoken while Jeanne's eyes were closed, while every nerve was centred in her finger-tips. The shock of his voice coming out of the black silence caused her to drop one of the pearls, and it was not the pipi. It fell with the faintest sound on the matting of the floor, but Monsieur Rénaud heard it. "One has fallen!" he cried in alarm.

"No, no!" protested Jeanne to cover her confusion, and slipped the pipi amongst the rest.

"One has fallen," repeated Monsieur Rénaud. "Am I deaf as well as blind?"

It was seldom that he spoke thus. Nothing, it seemed, angered or pleased him now except his toys. Jeanne had come to hate the sight of them.

"Count them, father," she suggested gently, and watched his groping fingers with a kind of desperate resignation.

Here was the test. When he came to the intruding pipi, Jeanne's heart stood still. When it passed muster, and lay a glaring alien amongst the rest, a sudden weakness assailed her.

"There, what did I say?" she laughed nervously, and leant against the table for support.

Monsieur Rénaud made no answer as he consigned his treasures to the safe, but, turning, felt for his daughter's hand. "Forgive me, Jeanne," he Raid. "I grow old. But, child, you are cold."

Jean took the pearl to Challier, who, after shaking his head over its various and imaginary defects, offered her a third of its value. She accepted. To her it seemed a stupendous sum, enough to pay expenses for months to come. That evening she hummed a song over her needlework, and went to meet André with lighter heart.

There was no reason why this harmless and highly successful method of supporting the household should not have been continued indefinitely. No reason, that is, except Challier. But he was not satisfied with it, and when Challier was not satisfied, others were soon made aware of the fact. He pointed out that one pearl was of little use to him. He would exchange, say, twenty more at the same generous figure, and make a consignment to Paris.

"But I do not wish to exchange twenty more," protested Jeannie.

"I understood it was a necklace of pipi that you had set your heart on," Challier leered at her across the counter. "One pipi hardly makes a necklace, mam'selle."

A sudden fear possessed Jeanne. What did he mean? How much did he know?

"When I wish to exchange more I will do so," she said evenly.

Challier inclined his head. "As you will. But unfortunately I cannot deal in that way."

"Then I will go elsewhere."

Jeanne had reached the door before Challier's voice again assailed her. "That, of course, is possible, but is it advisable?"

"Why not?" She turned and faced him squarely.

Challier made pretence of arranging his stock behind the counter. "You would hardly wish others to know," he suggested.

And suddenly it was borne in on Jeanne that he knew all. The revelation came with the force of a physical blow. But her voice was steady as she answered him: "I will consider the matter and let you know, Monsieur Challier."

"That is the wisest course, mam'selle. Believe me, it is not that I wish to persuade you against your will, but business is business even with so charming a customer as yourself. And when you come to consider this matter, I trust you will bear in mind that I am paying for your pearls—at present."

Which meant that by the simple threat of exposure he could force her to part with them for nothing. It was so. His tone of ghastly benignity followed Jeanne into the glare outside and echoed in her ears as she walked blindly to the house and flung herself face downward on the bed. She had not known such things as Challier existed. He had said that this was "business." Did "business," then, transform all men into beasts of prey? Perhaps. Perhaps even André … She was alone—alone in a new-found world that filled her with disgust and alarm.

And after an infinity of trouble the additional pearls became Challier's. At the time it seemed to Jeanne the only course. At least she received payment for them, and she could not be sure of even that in the future. So Monsieur Rénaud's toys had become a motley collection, an offence to the eye and practically worthless. More than once it seemed to Jeanne that he fingered them with suspicion. Certainly he played with them less. Was he tiring of his pastime? She prayed that it was so.

But on a day some two weeks later all thought of past or future was swept from her mind by a happening in Challier's store. She had gone there at his request, dreading the interview, yet not daring to evade it.

"Is it that you demand the remaining pearls?" she asked him coldly.

"No," said Challier, smiling down at her. "It is that I have a mind to return all I possess in exchange for one—the rarest of Monsieur Rénaud's collection."

Jeanne's eyes met his in puzzled scrutiny. "You mean the one he brought back from his last trip?"

"I mean yourself, mam'selle."

For a moment Jeanne was surprised into a betrayal of her true feelings. Her gaze rested on Challier with an abhorrence that would have seared another man; then, as self-possession returned, a smile parted her white lips.

"I fear I must disappoint you, Monsieur Challier. I am betrothed."

"Betrothed!" he mocked. "Calf love! What is that beside my offer—a sufficiency, a good name, an end to all your anxieties?" He was beside her. "I want you, Jeanne. I have watched you from the time when you played as a child in the sand. I want you, and what I want I am in the habit of getting," he added in a harsh crescendo as she shrank before him. "I have made you an honourable offer. Think!"

Jeanne stood very white and still. "I thank you for your offer," she said in a low voice, "but I have thought. And if you must know what I think, I would kill myself before accepting it!"

Even Challier was impressed by the cold finality of the tone. He stood silent a space, then laughed softly. "So that is the way of it? You flatter me, mam'selle. And would you apply such drastic methods to your father?"

"You mean"

"I mean that he is old, that there is no telling at his age and in his condition how he would take certain news that has been withheld from him overlong."

A low cry escaped Jeanne.

Her torturer stood nodding his head. "So you will, perhaps, think again, mam'selle. I trust you will think again.…"

Jeanne glanced to right and left like a wild thing at bay, then turned and fled into the sunshine across the strip of coral sand, through the narrow belt of palms, and so to the outer beach, where the surf thundered its welcome.

Challier awaited Jeanne's decision longer than he was in the habit of waiting for anything, but it was not forthcoming. More than once he saw her moving about the Rénauds' bungalow, but neither by word nor look had she recognised his existence. The delay puzzled and angered him. Finally he called, fully expecting to be met at the door by a vanquished and amenable Jeanne, but the old man heard his footfall and hailed him into the living-room.

"Challier, I'll swear!" was his greeting.

"Correct," said Challier. "But how did you know?"

The old man wagged his head sagely. "I am not so helpless as some imagine. I carry my sight elsewhere than in my eyes, that is all."

"In your ears, perhaps."

"Yes, and in other places besides. But this is kind, Challier. I am alone. Pray be seated."

There was something uncanny in the old man's perception. Challier felt it as he sat there a trifle uneasily.

"I have come to make a request," he blurted suddenly.

Monsieur Rénaud bowed. "Name it," he invited.

"For the hand of your daughter Jeanne," said Challier. "You know me, m'sieur, I can only say that I love her before all else. Have you any objection?"

Monsieur Rénaud leant back in his chair and crossed his thin legs. "But this is sad," he said. "You are late in the field, my dear Challier. Jeanne is already betrothed."

"To a mere infant without prospects," Challier interposed. "But you cannot take such an affair seriously."

"I?" Monsieur Rénaud lifted his shaggy eyebrows. "Alas, I am not in a position to control such a matter. It is in Jeanne's hands, and I believe she takes it in all seriousness."

Challier shifted his position with impatient abruptness. "And I am convinced that I can persuade her to take it otherwise," he said shortly. "Have I your permission to do so?"

Monsieur Rénaud smiled and swung his slippered foot back and forth. "Permission?" he repeated. "Times have changed, Challier. It is for Jeanne to decide." "Very well, then," snapped Challier, and rose to go.

"But wait," interposed Monsieur Rénaud. "It is only right that one interested in my Jeanne should know the extent of her dot."

"It does not concern me," said Challier.

"No?" Monsieur Rénaud swung open the door of the safe and exposed to view an atrocious collection of multi-coloured pipi. "As an expert, do these not interest you, Challier?" The old man placed a finger to his nose and spoke in an absurd whisper. "They will be Jeanne's, all Jeanne's. Note the lustre, the delicacy of colouring! He will be a wealthy man, the husband of my Jeanne."

"They are indeed magnificent," exclaimed Challier, at a loss for other words, and as though they had been a signal. Monsieur Rénaud swung-to the door of the safe and crumpled into his chair.

He seemed on the instant to have shrunk into one incredibly old. The lines of his face had deepened. His unseeing eyes stared with terrible fixity at the opposite wall. He was thinking as only the blind can think, piecing together sounds and sensations of the past to form a mental picture of happenings he had never seen. A vague alarm seized on Challier. He was moving noiselessly towards the door when the old man's voice broke the silence, low, deliberate, strangely compelling.

"Not yet, Challier, You must not go yet. You are either kind, or Let me think. Sit down."

Challier obeyed in spite of himself. "I fail to understand," he said, with feigned unconcern.

"You fail to understand," repeated Monsieur Rénaud grimly, "but that is perhaps natural. Let me explain by asking a question. How came you to be so glib a deceiver? Out of consideration for me?"

"Deceiver?"

"Yes, for you must have seen as clearly with your eyes as I with the senses remaining to me that those are not pearls as you and I understand them."

"Then you know?" The words were wrung from Challier in an involuntary undertone.

"Know? From the first I have known," declared Monsieur Rénaud. "Do you think such trash as lies in that safe would pass muster with me?"

"Then why do you allow the deception to continue?"

"That is a family matter." Monsieur Rénaud smiled reminiscently. "Still, so that you may follow my reasoning, and perhaps help me to a conclusion, you had better hear it. I allow the deception to continue because of a promise exacted from Jeanne many years ago—a death-bed promise that I chanced to overhear. I do not like such things. They are too uncompromising for the young, but there, it was made. I was never to know of the bank failure—you will remember it—never! It was, and is, Jeanne's life to keep that from me. And she will have broken her promise if I let her know that I have detected the substitution of trash for my beloved pearls. For that is what she has been driven to, Challier, to keep us alive. And how can she account for doing such a thing except by admitting that we are penniless? I tell you, we who are blind have time to think. So I continue to play with my pearls, though it is hard work sometimes, hard work."

Monsieur Rénaud paused, then leant forward with startling suddenness.

"And less than two weeks after that first substitution twenty more took place. Twenty at one fell swoop! Then I knew there must be something radically amiss. She had sold the first one to keep us alive. Where had the money gone in that short time to necessitate the sale of twenty more? It costs little to keep us alive, Challier. Someone was either taking advantage of her innocence and buying at a grotesque figure, or had tasted blood, and was bringing undue influence to bear on the child to secure more. In the one case he is a robber. In the other he is something worse."

Monsieur Rénaud smote the table.

"I am looking for that man, Challier!"

Challier moistened his lips. Not for the first time during this strange interview he was aware that there was something uncanny about it. The absolute logic of the old man's deductions—not to mention their accuracy—made it appear that he was gifted with second sight. Challier fought against the notion, but it survived.

"And what will you do when you find him?" he suggested ironically.

Monsieur Rénaud raised his clenched fist, then lowered it.

"Nothing," he said. "There is no need. I should like to know who the man is that will be dogged to his grave by every manner of ill-fortune, that is all."

"And why should that befall him?"

"You have no superstition?"

"None."

"You are to be envied. Most of us have, though some will not admit it. Frankly, Challier, I am sorry for this fellow. He does not know, he cannot know, what lies in store for him who takes advantage of the blind."

Challier stiffened in his chair. It was a well-known axiom in the Islands, and he had never thought of it. Bah! What childish absurdity! He rose and moved towards the door. The old man lay crumpled in his chair, staring, staring at nothing, yet there was not a doubt that in his own fashion he saw.…

"Au revoir, Monsieur Rénaud," Challier called back at him. "I wish you luck in your search."

But Monsieur Rénaud's search was ended. He had found his man.

What went on in Challier's store for the next week no one knew, for it was shut. But the Taumotus are a curious place, and superstition thrives there. Moreover it is difficult to avoid signs and portents when living alone on an atoll infested by them, and still more difficult when one's only company is the bottle.

When the authorities forced an entrance, they found a trembling wreck of a man, who could do no more than thrust into their hands a small square package containing pearls, and gibber about the eyes of Monsieur Rénaud.