THE MAN FROM GUIANA - 3

The sudden black night of the tropics settled. A black, limitless sea was the firmament, a black reef the somber horizon where the tide of stars surged up and broke. A breeze blew in from the straits, tepid and briny; it wandered across the city, acquiring the scent of warm soil and over-ripe fruit; and drifted lazily into the gardens of the Oost-Indie, where trees and men alike shivered as it whispered of fever and worse.

Dinner being over, the usual groups collected on the veranda. (You will find them at any caravansary along the equator soon after nightfall, men who probably have nothing in common except a desire to talk.) Cigar-ends smoldered. Ice clinked as "boys" moved back and forth with trays; this augmented by the drone of voices and mosquitos.

The man of the blue slendong, emerging from the lighted interior, glanced right and left at the gleaming cheroots and likened them whimsically to the cones of distant volcanoes. After a pause he strolled toward a table at the end of the veranda, quite aware that a man had followed him from the billiard-room. He sat down, not even glancing at the white figure that passed. The latter paused a few feet beyond, then turned.

"May I share your table?"—a genial British voice.

He who called himself Garon nodded; made a gesture. The other seated himself and tapped the bell for a "boy."

"Won't you join me?" he inquired. "A man has to keep his liver afloat somehow down here, and the Oost-Indie has just the proper mixture—a pale-green, frosty drink, with a slice of orange floating in it, for all the world like a swollen goldfish." He laughed, frankly pleased with his own simile. "That reminds me of those fighting-fish in Siam. Ever see the little beggars?"

"Yes"; thus Garon, smiling to himself with grim satisfaction.

A "boy" approached silently and took their order.

"You're a stranger in Surabaya, aren't you?" came from the man whose face formed a pale oval above the dead white of his linens.

Garon murmured affirmatively and drew out cigarettes, passing them, not without a purpose. The man took one and lighted it. A flickering glow upon long, narrow features; a glimpse of scars on the wrists.

"I noticed you when you arrived," went on the voice from the pale oval; an oval that advanced from the gloom and receded as the man drew on his cigarette. "Does your cockatoo perform?"

"I do not train birds," Garon answered. "I collect them. I bought that one on Thursday Island."

"Collect them?—to stuff and exhibit in museums?"

The Frenchman was still smiling to himself. "I buy and sell them."

"I see. A broker of birds. Novel business."

Garon laughed; no humor in it.

"It is not a business; it is a precaution. Wherever I go I carry some sort of bird; then, if there rises any emergency, I sell it."

"But don't you grow attached to them?"

Attached! Garon almost laughed again. He said, "Sentiment does not enter into business."

"Birds, eh?" mused the other. He chuckled. "Thursday Island.... Hm-m.... Ghastly place. You didn't by any chance run across the Black Parrot down there, did you?"

Garon smiled, an expression unobserved in the darkness, and restlessly fingered the lapel of his coat.

"A black parrot?"—simulating thoughtfulness. "Is there such a bird? I know of the great black cockatoo which naturalists call——"

"Surely," interrupted the other, "surely you've heard of the Black Parrot!"

"I confess ignorance. You see," he lied, "I have just come up from the New Cumberlands. I have been buried for ... for five months."

The "boy" came then with the drinks. The rattle of ice sounded cool, for the breeze had gone. In the breathless hush the voices from the several groups along the veranda melted into a languorous murmur. Even the trees sighed faintly, as though oppressed by the heat and the stillness.

After a moment the man of the scarred wrists resumed.

"Le Perroquet Noir; that's what he's called at Cayenne. The Black Parrot. Sounds romantic, doesn't it? Fancy anything being romantic in this day!"

"But who is he?" pressed Garon. "Why is he called that?"

A chuckle. "May as well ask who the devil is." A pause, then: "Perhaps he is the devil sojourning among mortals for a spell. Recruiting. If so, he began near home; Guiana's just across from Hades, you know. But, devil or not, he's raising particular hell in the penal colony. The officials believe he's an escaped relégué from Ile Diable, a fellow named Letourneau, a garroter. They think he's helping others....

"But you asked why he's called the Black Parrot, didn't you? Well, I've heard one version. A French officer from St.-Laurent told me the story; used to belong to the Corps Militaire des Surveillants. There was a murderer, a swarthy brute, son of an Annamite woman and a merchant of Hai Fong, who was sent to Guiana. The prisoners dubbed him the Black Parrot. Don't know why; perhaps he looked like one. Soon after he reached the colony he killed a chantier with a machete. Horrible affair. It didn't take the Tribunal Maritime Special long to decide to introduce him to Madame Guillotine. Picture the scene...."

He gestured, and sparks fell from his cheroot like meteors from a comet. Garon was staring at his glass.

"Picture the scene," the former repeated. "The colorless dawn.... Why are executions usually at daybreak, can you tell me?... Le Perroquet, shut in his cell, hears the dread summons, 'C'est pour aujourd'hui,' and is initiated into what they call la toilette de la mort. Horrible, these preparations for death. Then he is marched into the courtyard of the condemned. I say, picture the scene: the throng of prisoners, there by compulsion, the guards and the big, dark brute on the scaffold—a half-caste, you remember—with arms bound and collar cut away. Perhaps a priest beside him; Monsieur de l'Ile Diable, the headsman, waiting. Not a chance of escape. How do you suppose he felt, this callous creature, twice a murderer? Do you imagine he was afraid? Sebillot—he's the officer who told me the story and who saw the execution—said he smiled, smiled as if he knew something grimly amusing, smiled at Madame Guillotine. You can see he was a—a hard customer, as the Americans put it. Just before tying him under the blade he was allowed to speak; that's customary, you know. 'You may cut off my head,' he said or words to that effect, 'but I will come back and repay.' A foolish threat, vain.... So they guillotined him, this brute. Sebillot—he was standing close by—swears that the head of Le Perroquet Noir smiled as it dropped into the basket. Ridiculous, these illusions a man has at times.

"A week or two later, Letourneau, the garroter, escaped. Following that were a number of other escapes—or evasions, as they say in Guiana. Then, one day, the very man who had guillotined the Parrot was drowned. No one saw it or knew how it happened. His body was found in the river; not a mark on it. An accident, the colonial governor pronounced it. Poetic justice, you say? The prisoners said another thing, that it was the vengeance of the Black Parrot. Fantastic, isn't it?...

"But men continued to escape. And after each disappearance the surveillant principal received a card, most mysteriously of course, bearing an inscription something like this: 'Le Perroquet Noir—viens me chercher.'... It goes like a shilling-shocker, doesn't it?... The prison officials are quite mystified. How do these men get away, through the jungle?—or do they put to sea and land somewhere further along the coast? In either event, there's the danger of being captured by bush negroes; those black fellows are anything but tame, I'm told, and the surveillants don't encourage gentle tactics. Where do you suppose these convicts go after they've escaped? I've heard that at Paramaribo there's a society to help escaped déportés. I've heard other things, too; for instance, this yarn I picked up in Samarang."

He paused; sipped his liquor; resumed.

"Some sailors had collected in a bar along the waterfront. You know how they talk; a bit of the sewer in their words. Conversation turned to the Black Parrot. One of the chaps said he knew of an amazing rogue such as one reads of in novels, who hired men to steal priceless art treasures, ornaments and jewels with a history, and he in turn sold them to collectors and rich fools for fabulous sums. He was a sort of gentleman buccaneer; his life was like a romance. And, the sailor chap went on to say, perhaps the Black Parrot was this rogue and he had struck upon the idea of collecting a flock—adopting it, as it were, from the jailbirds of Cayenne. An excellent way to gather a faithful band, so the sailor chap maintained. He claimed he knew a fellow, a shell-hunter, who indulged in questionable business, so this fellow got his crew by picking up beach-combers and setting them on their feet."

He of the scarred wrists laughed—a soft, genial laugh. Garon merely smiled and continued to tug at his lapel.

"But sailors," observed the stranger, "have the reputation of being more interesting than veracious. This buccaneer de luxe may have been a fabrication; fact is, I fancy he had his origin in a bottle. At any rate, it's a good tale."

He picked up his glass. Garon, in the act of lighting his burnt-out cheroot, glimpsed a smile on the long, narrow face. Even after the match expired and they were in darkness, two pale ghosts at the very frontier of the stars, he imagined he could still see the smile. Rather mocking. Rather haunting.

"You, being a broker of birds," suggested the man with the scarred wrists, humorously, "should be interested in Monsieur the Parrot. If you catch him you'll profit a pretty penny. Something of a task, eh? The question is: Who is he? Letourneau, the garroter? Or that amazing rogue I heard of in Samarang? Or the ghost of Le Perroquet Noir? As the Black Parrot himself would tell you, viens me chercher!"

Garon regarded the other grimly; lifted his glass.

"I go on the next boat to Singapore," he announced deliberately. "And there"—a shrug—"well, it is not likely I shall find the Parrot there.... To your hospitality!"

Later that night Garon went into the city. Mr. da Vargas, who saw him leave the hotel, wondered where his guest, that quixotic person who affected a blue slendong and carried a cockatoo, was going at that hour. Not being clairvoyant, he could not know that the Frenchman was bound for the beer-hall of Oei Moo Lim. But the man with the scarred wrists knew. He made it a point to know.