Murray Leinster

“ His face did not even move a muscle.
“There is another woman in the Tuan Vetter’s house,” said Buro Sitt. “Who also loves him. Will it be the custom of the white men to send her away when my daughter goes to him?”
“He might,” said the doctor tonelessly, “and he might not. It would be considered disgraceful to him among other white men to have one woman living in his house if he were not married to her. It would be doubly disgraceful to have two. And of course it would be called disgraceful in the women. They would be scorned by all white men. ”

“ The doctor threw a shoe at him and went back to sleep.
“Son,” he told Cary, “you forget two things. Buro Sitt did not come out here to ask us to lecture Vetter. He did have a reason for coming out here. And Vetter has a swelled head. Go to sleep.”
A minute later he was snoring.
I woke at sunrise, listening to noise of the surf down at the sea splashing and roaring among the mangrove roots. It’s always strangely loud at daybreak. And the jungle was making noises as the night things went to their hiding places and the day things came out again. ”

“ He sat down and laughed while I saw Buro Sitt quivering and almost—almost leaping for him. But two soldiers came rushing in. They’d heard the crashing glass. And they led Buro Sitt away, with more despair on his face than I thought any human being could show.
I waited for a signal from the doctor, but he looked on composedly. Vetter turned to us, laughing.
“One needs to be omniscient, eh? To know their secret thoughts. There is no other woman. ”

“ Then the doctor said thoughtfully, “I wonder what he’s really up to.”
“It isn’t what he’s going to do,” said Cary angrily. “It’s what I’m⸺”
“You’re going to do nothing,” said the doctor calmly. “Vetter thinks he is lord of creation, which he isn’t, but he is the lord of Kuramonga. Also he has some little tin soldiers. You can’t do anything direct, and as for reporting him—Well, we’re civilians and foreigners to boot. The powers that be would pay absolutely no attention to us. We’d better leave it up to Buro Sitt.” ”

“ Cary began to talk angrily, spouting what Malay he knew with his whole vocabulary of Chinese thrown in to make his meaning clear. The main point of his speech was that he’d like to wring Vetter’s neck and would do so at the first favorable opportunity. Buro Sitt listened without a flicker of expression on his face. He had himself in hand again.
“Tuan,” he said evenly, to the doctor, “will you speak to him, and urge that he sends away this other woman? It will not even be safe for my daughter. There is always poison⸺”
“I’ll remember,” said the doctor, not quite directly. ”

“ Such things are not to be expected when you have been very much bored by two days of unvaried contemplation of mangrove swamps on the one hand, and totally empty sea on the other. So we on the Shikar—most promising name for a devilish slow and unexciting tub—tacked in. ”

“ The handle stuck out of it, and the handle was that of the kris the young Malay with the hawk-like eyes had been caressing while he sat with Buro Sitt on our boat deck.
“M-my God!” said Cary, shaken and sick. “He—he⸺”
“He died,” said the doctor firmly, “of fever. A special sort that always follows paranoia. I’m a doctor and my report will stand, if we get him buried before the gunboat gets here. Fever, Cary, fever.”
And his report did stand. I heard later that the next Political to take Vetter’s post made shocked reports of how Vetter had been mistreating the natives. ”