Pastoral Affair, Page 2

the gloom.

  Colonel Glinka looked behind him and saw that there were others thatthey had passed within a very few feet of, standing upon every shelf andledge that afforded a foot-hold above the trail. Dozens and dozens ofthem.

  "Maybe we had better scram out of here, Joe," Abdul suggested.

  "I perceive that you are trying to frighten me," Colonel Glinka said."It won't work."

  A stone rattled behind them.

  "What was that?" Colonel Glinka demanded, turning around quickly. "Who'sthere?"

  * * * * *

  Something moved in the shadows, edging into the deeper shadows of therocks. It was the pursuing female of earlier that afternoon.

  Abdul Hakkim ben Salazar, in deep, abdominal disgust, groaned.

  "Come here, you!" Colonel Glinka commanded. "Come on over here. Don't beafraid, my little one--I won't hurt you."

  She advanced ever so little, a shapeless white wraith attracted by thesyrup in his voice. He took one step forward. Carefully she retreated astep.

  "Come now," Colonel Glinka said. "Surely it is time that we met. For youmay as well know that I am now the master of this island. Now andforevermore, so far as you are concerned, my child. Perhaps I may letyou help me clear up a little of its mystery."

  She kept a maddening five or six feet between them, somehow. He couldnot lessen the distance without alarming her. And so he balanced himselfupon the balls of his feet and lunged.

  She gave a little cry, stumbled and fell, rolling over and over into adark little depression beside the path as he clutched at her robe. Thegarment, still in his hand, unwound easily, peeling her very much likean apple.

  "I beg your pardon," Colonel Glinka said, scrambling after her upon hishands and knees, groping for her with outstretched arms. "I beg--" Hishand touched something which might have been her ankle. He seized it,held it for a moment, and then, shuddering, let it go, drawing back hishand as if it had been stabbed. By now the night was quite dark.

  Colonel Glinka scrambled to his feet, half instinctively raised thedeadly Malacca cane.

  "Don't do it, Joe!" cried Abdul, coming up from behind him and shovinghim hard.

  The shot went wild, but the sound of it, echoing up and down the ravine,started an ominous, new sound, the growing, staccato murmur of manyvoices, a rattling of stones, a hundred different movements in theblackness.

  Colonel Glinka fired the last bullet more wildly still, hurled theMalacca cane at them, and ran.

  * * * * *

  Abdul Hakkim ben Salazar, who had been many leaps ahead of him, arrivedbreathless at the front gate of the villa, opened it, dived through,locked it behind him, and threw himself upon the grass to catch hisbreath.

  There was a cheerful glow in the darkness. The slight, grotesque figureof Dr. Stefanik and his pipe emerged from the shadows.

  "Ah," Abdul breathed, "where were you, Sidi, when I was out there dyingfor you?"

  "Hiding up the tallest cinnamon tree, like a monkey," Dr. Stefanik said.

  They sat there upon the grass for a long while in companionable silence,heeding the sounds of the night, which was balmy and infinitelypeaceful.

  There came a high-pitched, long-drawn-out scream from somewhere on theridge.

  "They got him," Abdul said.

  "And now they will pluck him, I suppose," said Dr. Stefanik. "There, bythe way, is a thing that even _I_ have never completely understood aboutthem. Their insatiable curiosity, of course, is a vestigial trait thatwill pass, but this other drive, I fear, this rather alarming passionthat they have shown for the up-breeding of the species may be someuniversal of life itself that no man may touch or alter."

  Down the path from the ridge, a small, white-robed figure came running,far ahead of the others, bent upon her own schemes of evolution.

  Abdul crouched lower in the shadows. "That one makes even the heart of aman swell within his breast," he whispered, "for she does not ever giveup."

  "That no man may touch," Dr. Stefanik repeated, and nodded his shaggyhead wisely. "As an idealist, I may have given them shoes andenlightenment, but I did not give them this, and so they are notaltogether mine. _His_ kind still professes to believe in the commondenominator and the common level, seeking to drag down the few fromtheir gilt palaces and haul up the masses from the muck. Tell me, as aHadj who is, at the same time, undoubtedly vermin-ridden, do _you_believe in the equality of men--or can you honestly wish it?"

  "All of us to be Effendis?"

  "Something like that."

  Abdul Hakkim ben Salazar thought about it for a time with furrowed brow."No, Sidi," he said at last, "for then there would be no one to chaseus."

  The female stopped, knelt in the path.

  "What is she doing now?" Dr. Stefanik asked.

  "She is taking off her shoes, in order to run faster than me."

  "'... And cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth uponthe earth after his kind'! And yet you told Glinka _I_ made them!"

  "Ah, but not out of _what_, Sidi," Abdul said.

  The female, with a hopeful little bleat, arose and tucked her shoesunder her arm, for youth is hope and kids will be kids, and off shewent, clip-clop, clip-clop, down the rocky path to the sea.