The Beautiful White Devil

She shook hands with the handsome little midshipman as she spoke, and while she was doing so I had time to steal a look at the first lieutenant's face. The astonishment I saw depicted there almost caused me to laugh. He had been amazed at the beauty of the cabin; but that was nothing compared with the admiration he betrayed for the Beautiful White Devil herself. He murmured a confused, but not altogether inappropriate reply to her last speech, and then we sat down to dinner. Her companion, I learnt on inquiry, was suffering from a severe headache, and had elected to dine in her own cabin.

The dinner was in the chef's best style, and its cooking, serving, and variety, combined with the beauty and value of the table decorations, evidently completed the effect upon the officer that the cabin had begun. Alie herself was in excellent spirits, and talked with the wit and cleverness of a woman who has perfected an originally liberal education by continual and varied study of the world and its inhabitants. By the time the meal was ended and we had bade her good-night, the lieutenant was in a maze of enchantment.

We went on deck together, and once there, out of earshot of the cabin, his enthusiasm broke loose. I will spare you, however, a recital of all the extravagant things he said. Let it suffice that I gathered enough to feel sure that when he got back to Hong Kong he would add to, rather than detract from, the number of stories already in circulation about the too famous Beautiful White Devil. One promise, however, I took care to extract from both officers, and that was, not to mention my name in connection with the yacht on their return to civilisation. I made the excuse that if such a thing got known it might do me serious harm in the practice of my profession, and both men readily gave me their words that they would not breathe a syllable on the subject.

Their stay with us, however, was not to be of as long duration as we had expected, for early next morning we sighted a small brigantine, who, on being hailed, stated that she was bound for Hong Kong. Passages for the officers and their men were soon arranged, and, within an hour of picking her up she had sent a boat, we had bade our naval visitors good-bye, and were standing on our fictitious course again. As soon, however, as they were out of sight the helm was put up and we were making a bee line back to the settlement.

That evening as I was pacing the deck, smoking my cigar and wondering when the time would come for me to say farewell, I heard a light footstep behind me, and next moment Alie came to my side. We paced the deck for a little while, talking commonplaces about the beauty of the night, the speed of her vessel, and the visit of the man-of-war's men; then she drew me to the stern, and said:

"Do you remember your first night on board this boat, when we discussed the sea and the poets who have written of her?"

"It was the night of the first day I ever saw you," I answered. "Is it likely I should have forgotten it?"

"Some men forget very easily," she answered, looking down at the sparkling water. "But I'll do you the justice to say I don't think you are one of that kind."

"And you are right; I am sure I am not. I think if I were lying dead in my grave, my brain would still remember you."

She looked roguishly up into my face, and said:

"That is rather a big assertion for a medical man to make, is it not?"

"Bother medicine," I cried impatiently. "It reminds me of the outer world. And by the same token, Alie, I want to ask you something unpleasant again."

"And that is?"

"When I am to say good-bye to you?"

"To-morrow," she answered. "To-morrow night, all being well, we shall pick up a trading schooner off a certain island. Her owner is under an obligation to me, and will take you on board and convey you to Thursday Island. Thence you can travel home via Australia and the Canal or Honolulu and America, as you please."

I had expected that the parting was not far distant, but I did not think it would prove as close as this. I told Alie as much.

"It is the only opportunity that may serve," she answered. "And I must not keep you with me too long for your own sake."

Under cover of the darkness I managed to find and take her hand.

"It is only for a year, Alie. You understand that, don't you? At the end of a year you are to be my wife?"

"If you still wish it, yes," she answered, but so softly that I had to strain my ears to catch it. Then with a whispered good-night she slipped from me and went below.

At sundown next evening, surely enough, a small topsail schooner hove in sight from behind an island, and, seeing us, ran up a signal. It was returned from our gaff, and as soon as I read it I knew that my fate was sealed. Leaving Walworth to see my luggage brought up on deck I went down Alie's companion ladder to bid her farewell. She was seated on the couch at the further end, reading.

"The schooner has just put in an appearance and answered our signals," I began, hardly able to trust my voice to speak. "I have come to say good-bye. For both our sakes we must not let this interview be a long one. Alie, will you tell me for the last time exactly when I am to see you again, and where?"

"On the first day of May next year, all being well, I will be at an address in London, of which I will take care to acquaint you beforehand."

"But since you last spoke of that I have been thinking it over. Alie, you must not come to England, the risk would be too great."

"There will be no risk at all, and I shall take every precaution to ensure my own safety. You may rest assured of that," she answered. "But before you go I have a little keepsake for you, something that may serve to remind you of the Beautiful White Devil and the days you have spent with her, when you are far away."

As she spoke she took from the table, beside which she was now standing, a large gold locket. Opening it she let me see that it contained an excellent portrait of herself.

"Oh, Alie," I cried, "how can I thank you? You have given me the one thing of all others that I desired. Now, in my turn, I have a present for you. This ring" (here I drew a ring from my finger) "was my poor dead mother's last gift to me, and I want you to wear it."

I placed it on her finger, and having done so, took her in my arms and kissed her on the lips. This time she offered no resistance.

Then we said good-bye, and I went up on deck. An hour later the Lone Star had faded away into the night, and I was aboard the Pearl Queen bound for Thursday Island and the Port of London.

When I came to think of it I could hardly believe that it was nearly four months since Walworth had found me out in the Occidental Hotel, Hong Kong, and induced me to become the servant and at the same time the lover of the Beautiful White Devil.

CHAPTER XII

THE FIRST OF MAY

Arriving in Thursday Island, one of the hottest and quaintest little spots on earth, I was fortunate enough to catch a British India mail boat in the act of starting for Brisbane. I accordingly had my luggage conveyed to her and was soon comfortably installed aboard her. The voyage from Torres Straits, along the Queensland coast, inside the Great Barrier Reef, though it boasts on one hand a rugged and almost continuous line of cliffs marked with such names as Cape Despair and Tribulation, and upon the other twelve hundred miles of treacherous reef, is quite worth undertaking. I explored the different ports of call, and, on reaching Brisbane, caught the train for Adelaide, embarked on board a P. and O. mail boat there, and in less than six weeks from the time of booking my passage was standing in the porch of my own house in Cavendish Square, had rung the bell, and was waiting for the front door to be opened to me.

It was a cold winter's afternoon; an icy blast tore through the Square and howled round the various corners, so that all the folk whose inclement destinies compelled them to be abroad were hurrying along as if their one desire were to be indoors and by their fires again without loss of time.

Presently my old housekeeper opened the door, and, though I had telegraphed to her from Naples to expect me, pretended to be so overwhelmed with surprise at seeing me as to be incapable of speech for nearly a minute. I managed to get past her at last, however, and went into what, in the days of my practice, had been my consulting room. The fire was burning brightly, my slippers were toasting before it, my writing table was loaded with books and papers as usual, and a comfortable easy chair was drawn up beside it. Everything was exactly as I had left it fourteen months before, even to the paper knife still resting in a half cut book, and a hastily scrawled memo upon the blotting pad. There was something almost ironical about this state of stagnation when I thought of the changes that had occurred in my own life since last I had used that knife and written that memorandum. I told the old housekeeper to let me have my dinner at the usual hour, and having done so, asked her the news of the Square. Her reply was not important.

"James [her husband] an' me, sir," she said, "'ad the rheumatiz at the beginning of the winter, the young postman with the red whiskers 'ave got married to the parlour maid as burnt herself so bad three years back, at number 99, and the little gal with the golden curls across the way fell down the airey and broke her leg two months ago come next Friday."

Such was the chronicle of the most important occurrences in that quiet London Square during my absence.

After dinner I returned to my study, wrote two or three letters, and then drawing my chair up to the fire, sat down to think. Outside the wind howled and the rain dashed against my windows, but my thoughts were very far away from Cavendish Square; they were flying across the seas to an island, where lived a woman whom I had come to love better than all the world. Closing my eyes, I seemed to see the yacht lying in the little harbour under the palm clad hills; I went ashore, threaded my way through the tangled mass of jungle, and passed up the path to the bungalow on the hillside. There I found Alie moving about her rooms with all her old queenly grace; then like a flash the scene changed, and we were back on the yacht's deck in the typhoon. I saw the roaring seas racing down upon us, heard the wind whistling and shrieking through the straining cordage, noticed the broken bulwarks, and by my side, Alie in her oilskins, with her sou-wester drawn tight about her head, clinging to the rail with every atom of her strength. But all that was past and over, and now for twelve months – nay, to be exact, eleven, – I was to be the staid, respectable London householder I had been before I visited the East. After that – but there, what was to happen after that, who could tell?

After a while the termination of my pipe brought my reverie to an end, so I took up a file of papers from the table and fell to scanning the last few numbers. Suddenly a headline caught my eye and rivetted my attention. It was a clipping from a Hong Kong paper, and read as follows:

"THE BEAUTIFUL WHITE DEVIL AGAIN."

"After a silence of something like four months the Beautiful White Devil has again done us the honour of appearing in Eastern waters. On this occasion, however, her polite attentions have been bestowed upon Singapore, from which place she has abducted, with singular cleverness, a young English doctor, whose acquaintance she had made in Batavia, and with him a certain well-known resident by name Ebbington. These two affairs were managed with that dexterity which the Beautiful White Devil has taught us to expect from her, the sequel, however, we have yet to learn. Surely, and we say it for the fiftieth occasion, it is time some definite steps were taken by Government to bring about the capture of a woman who, while being a picturesque and daring enough subject for a novel, has been a continual menace and danger to the commerce of the East for a greater number of years than the editorial chair cares to reckon."

I cut the paragraph out and, having placed it in my pocket-book, turned to the next issue published a week later. Here I found another quarter column devoted to her exploits. This one was also from the Hong Kong paper and ran as follows:

"THE BEAUTIFUL WHITE DEVIL'S LATEST AND GREATEST EXPLOIT."

"Last week we described what may be considered two of the cleverest and most daring exploits in the whole of the Beautiful White Devil's extraordinary career. We refer to the abduction of an English doctor, travelling in the East in order to study Asiatic diseases, and a well-known figure in Singapore society, Mr. Arthur James Ebbington, whose bay pony, Cupid, it will be remembered, won the Straits Settlement's Cup last year. The whereabouts of these two gentlemen have not yet, so we learn, been discovered, but to compensate for that we have to chronicle another, and perhaps more serious, act of violence on the part of this notorious character. The facts of the case are as follows:

"On Saturday morning last the mail steamer Bramah left Singapore for Hong Kong, having on board a number of distinguished passengers, including the new admiral of the China Station, Sir Dominic Denby, his flag lieutenant, Mr. Hoskin, and a prominent new government official for Hong Kong, Mr. Barkmansworth. There were also among the passengers six gentlemen of unassuming appearance, who, as far as could be judged, seemed to be total strangers to each other. The names they booked under were, as we find by a perusal of the shipping company's books, Matherson, Calderman, Burns, Alderney, Braham, and Balder.

"The first described himself as a missionary, the second was presumably a tourist, the third a tea merchant, the fourth an English newspaper correspondent, the fifth an American mill owner, and the sixth an Indian civilian on furlough. On Sunday morning early, the officer of the watch sighted a sail some few points off the starboard bow. From all appearances it was a large schooner yacht, flying a distress signal. On nearer approach it was seen that she had suffered considerable damage, her topmasts appearing to have been carried completely away.

"On inquiring her name it was elicited that she was the schooner yacht Sagittarius, belonging to the Royal Cowes Yacht Squadron, and owned by Lord Melkard, the well-known Home Rule Peer, who was supposed, at the time, to be cruising in these waters. Suspicion being thus entirely diverted, Captain Barryman brought his steamer as close as was prudent and signalled to the yacht to send a boat, which request was immediately complied with. Meanwhile, however, the attention of the officers on the bridge being rivetted on the yacht, two of the men before enumerated, Matherson the missionary, and Balder the Indian civilian, contrary to rules, made their way on to the bridge and implored the captain and chief officer to stand by the smaller vessel, which they declared to be sinking. Then without warning, on receiving a signal from below, these two, to all appearances eminently peaceable gentlemen, drew revolvers from their pockets and covered the astonished officers. The remaining members of the gang by this time had posted themselves at the entrances to the first and second saloons, the engine-room, and the fo'c's'le, and refused to allow anyone to come on to or to leave the deck.

"When the boat came alongside Mr. Barkmansworth, the official before described, who had just had his bath and was completing his toilet in his cabin, was called up from below and ordered to descend into her. After some argument, and a considerable amount of threatening, he complied with the request and was pulled over to the yacht. Once there, he was seized, stripped to the skin, dragged up to a triangle, and remorselessly flogged. He was then sent bleeding and almost unconscious back to the steamer, where he was immediately placed under the doctor's care. On the return of the boat alongside, the six desperadoes, who had all the time been mounting guard, as before described, entered it and were conveyed to the yacht, which immediately steamed off in a southwesterly direction.

"That this last insult to the Powers-that-Be will have the result of inducing them to take more effective action against this notorious woman is too much to expect. But with a reckless confidence somewhat unusual to us, we are now pinning our faith on the newly arrived naval authority, the more so as he was himself a witness of the whole disgraceful affair. We can only point out one fact, and that is, that unless this woman be soon brought to justice, travelling by mail boat in Eastern waters will be a thing of the past. When steamers are stopped, and well known and respected government officials publicly flogged in mid-ocean, it is evident that affairs are coming to too atrocious a pass altogether."

Putting this criticism into my pocket-book with the other, I took a glimpse at my locket and went to bed.