crossed the Place de la Concorde.
“You have finished your post-graduate work, I expect,” said Stenhouse. “Are you going to practise in the States?”
“Ultimately, I may,” replied Adams. “I have always intended doing so; but I have to feel my way very cautiously, for the money market is not in a particularly flourishing state with me.”
“Good heavens!” said Stenhouse, “when is it with a medical man, especially when he is just starting? I’ve been through that. See here, why don’t you start in Paris?”
“Paris?”
“Yes, this is the place to make money. You say you are thinking of starting in some American city; well, let me tell you, there are very few American cities so full of rich Americans as Paris.”
“Well,” said Adams, “the idea is not a bad one, but just for the present I am fixed. I am going on a big-game shooting expedition to the Congo.”
“As doctor?”
“Yes, and the salary is not bad—two thousand francs a month and everything found, to say nothing of the fun.”
“And the malaria?”
“Oh, one has to run risks.”
“Whom are you going with?”
“A man called Berselius.”
“Not Captain Berselius?” asked Stenhouse, stopping dead.
“Yes, Captain Berselius, of No. 14 Avenue Malakoff. I have just returned from having déjeuner with him.”
Stenhouse whistled. They were in the Rue du Mont Thabor by this, in front of a small café.
“Well,” said Adams, “what’s wrong?”
“Everything,” replied the other. “This is the house where my patient lives. Wait for me, for a moment, like a good fellow. I shan’t detain you long, and then we can finish our talk, for I have something to tell you.”
He darted into the café and Adams waited, watching the passers-by and somewhat perturbed in mind. Stenhouse’s manner impressed him uncomfortably, for, if Captain Berselius had been the devil, the Englishman could not have put more disfavour into his tone. And he (Adams) had made a compact with Captain Berselius.
The Rue du Mont Thabor is a somewhat gloomy little street, and it fitted Adams’s mood as he waited, watching the passers-by and the small affairs of the little shops.
At the end of five minutes Stenhouse returned.
“Well?” said Adams.
“I have had no luncheon yet,” replied Stenhouse. “I have been so rushed. Come with me to a little place I know in the Rue St. Honoré, where I can get a cup of tea and a bun. We will talk then.”
“Now,” said Stenhouse, when he was seated at a little marble-topped table with the cup of tea and the bun before him. “You say you have engaged yourself to go to the Congo with Captain Berselius.”
“Yes. What do you know about him?”
“That’s just the difficulty. I can only say this, and it’s between ourselves, the man’s name is a byword for a brute and a devil.”
“That’s cheerful,” said Adams.
“Mind you,” said Stenhouse, “he is in the very best society. I have met him at a reception at the Elysée. He goes everywhere. He belongs to the best clubs; he’s a persona grata at more courts than one, and an intimate friend of King Leopold of Belgium. His immense wealth, or part of it, comes from the rubber industry—motor tires and so forth. And he’s mad after big game. That’s his pleasure—killing. He’s a killer. That is the best description of the man. The lust of blood is in him, and the astounding thing, to my mind, is that he is not a murderer. He has killed two men in duels, and they say that it is a sight to see him fighting. Mind you, when I say ‘murderer,’ I do not mean to imply that he is a man who would murder for money. Give the devil his due. I mean that he is quite beyond reason when aroused, and if you were to hit Captain Berselius in the face he would kill you as certain as I’ll get indigestion from that bun I have just swallowed. The last doctor he took with him to Africa died at Marseilles from the hardships he went through—not at the hands of Berselius, for that would have aroused inquiry, but simply from the hardships of the expedition; but he gave frightful accounts to the hospital authorities of the way this Berselius had treated the natives. He drove that expedition right away from Libreville, in the French Congo, to God knows where. He had it under martial law the whole time, clubbing and thrashing the niggers at the least offence, and shooting with his own hand two of them who tried to desert.”
“You must remember,” said Adams, taking up the cudgels for Berselius and almost surprised himself at so doing, “that an expedition like that, if it is not held together by a firm hand, goes to pieces, and the result is disaster for everyone. And you know what niggers are.”
“There you are,” laughed Stenhouse. “The man has obsessed you already, and you’ll come back, if you go, like Bauchardy, the man who died in the hospital at Marseilles, cursing Berselius, yet so magnetized by the power of the chap that you would be ready to follow him again if he said ‘Come,’ and you had the legs to stand on. That is how Bauchardy was.”
“The man, undoubtedly, has a great individuality,” said Adams. “Passing him in the street one might take him for a very ordinary person. Meeting him for the first time, he looks all good nature; that smile——”
“Always,” said Stenhouse. “Beware of a man with a perpetual smile on his face.”
“Yes, I know that, but this smile of Berselius’s is not worn as a cloak. It seems quite natural to the man, yet somehow bad, as if it came from a profound and natural cynicism directed against all things—including all things good.”
“You have put it,” said Stenhouse, “in four words.”
“But, in spite of everything,” said Adams, “I believe the man to have great good qualities: some instinct tells me so.”
“My dear sir,” said Stenhouse, “did you ever meet a bad man worth twopence at his trade who had not good qualities? The bad man who is half good—so to speak—is a much more dangerous villain than the barrier bully without heart or soul. When hell makes a super-excellent devil, the devil puts goodness in just as a baker puts soda in his bread to make it rise. Look at Verlaine.”
“Well,” said Adams, “I have promised Berselius, and I will have to go. Besides, there are other considerations.”
He was thinking of Maxine, and a smile lit up his face.
“You seem happy enough about it,” said Stenhouse, rising to go. “Well, ‘he who will to Cupar maun to Cupar.’ When do you start?”
“I don’t know yet, but I shall hear to-night.”
They passed out into the Rue St. Honoré, where they parted.
“Good luck,” said
