“I am new to it,” explained Coryndon, and his voice sounded tired, as though the Pagoda had been a little too much for him.

Joicey did not reply; he was looking away, and Coryndon followed his eyes.  Near the wide staircase, and just about to go up it, a man was standing, talking to a friend.  He was dressed in an ill-cut suit of white, with a V-shaped inlet of black under his round collar; he held a topi of an old pattern under his arm, and the light showed his face cadaverous and worn.  Joicey was holding the arm of his chair, and his under-lip trembled.

“Inexplicable,” he muttered, and drank with a gulping sound.

“What did you say?” asked Coryndon politely.

“Say?  Did I say anything?  I can’t remember that I did.”  The Banker’s voice was irritable, and he still watched the clergyman.

“What strikes me about the Pagoda is the strong Chinese element in the design.  I am told that there are a lot of Chinamen in Mangadone.  I should like to see their quarter.”

“Hartley should be able to arrange that for you.”

Joicey was evidently growing tired of Coryndon’s freshness and enthusiasm, and he passed his hand over his face, as though the damp heat of the night depressed his mind.

“Hartley is very busy,” said Coryndon, with the determination of a man who intends to see what he has come to see.  “I don’t like to be perpetually badgering him.  Could I go alone?”

“You could,” said Joicey shortly.

“I want to miss nothing.”

Coryndon turned his head away and looked at the crowded room, fixing his gaze on a whirring fan that hung low on a brass rod, and when he looked round again, Joicey had got up and was making his way out into the night.  Fitzgibbon was surrounded by several other men, and there was no sign of his friend Hartley, so he got up and slipped out, standing hatless, until his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness.

The strong lights from the veranda encroached some way into the gloom, and, here and there, a few people still sat around basket tables, enjoying the evening air.  Coryndon looked at them, with his head bent forward, a little like a cat just about to emerge through a door into a dark passage.  For a little time, he stood there, watching and listening, and then he turned away and walked out along the footpath, as though in a hurry to get back to his bungalow.

XIII

PUTS FORWARD THE FACT THAT A SUDDEN FRIENDSHIP NEED NOT BE BASED UPON A SUDDEN LIKING; AND PASSES THE NIGHT UNTIL DAWN REVEALS A SHAMEFUL SECRET

Some ten days after Coryndon had taken up his quarters with Hartley, he informed his host that he intended to disappear for a time, and that he would take his servant, Shiraz, with him.  He had been through every quarter of Mangadone before he set out to commence operations, and the whole town lay clear as a map in his mind.