PAGE 5
As deep as the sea
by
As he moved swiftly away, watching his long strides, she said, proudly, “As deep as the sea.”
After a moment she added: “And he was once a gambler, until, until” she–glanced at the open book, then with sweet mockery looked at her hands–“until ‘those lucid, perfect hands bound me to the mast of your destiny.’ O vain Diana! But they are rather beautiful,” she added, softly, “and I am rather happy.” There was something like a gay little chuckle in her throat.
“O vain Diana!” she repeated.
* * * * *
Rawley entered the door of the hut on the hill without ceremony. There was no need for courtesy, and the work he had come to do could be easier done without it.
Old Busby was crouched over a table, his mouth lapping milk from a full bowl on the table. He scarcely raised his head when Rawley entered–through the open door he had seen his visitor coming. He sipped on, his straggling beard dripping. There was silence for a time.
“What do you want?” he growled at last.
“Finish your swill, and then we can talk,” said Rawley, carelessly. He took a chair near the door, lighted a cheroot and smoked, watching the old man, as he tipped the great bowl toward his face, as though it were some wild animal feeding. The clothes were patched and worn, the coat-front was spattered with stains of all kinds, the hair and beard were unkempt and long, giving him what would have been the look of a mangy lion but that the face had the expression of some beast less honorable. The eyes, however, were malignantly intelligent; the hands, ill-cared for, were long, well-shaped, and capable, but of a hateful yellow color like the face. And through all was a sense of power, dark and almost mediaeval. Secret, evilly wise, and inhuman, he looked a being apart, whom men might seek for help in dark purposes.
“What do you want–medicine?” he muttered at last, wiping his beard and mouth with the palm of his hand, and the palm on his knees.
Rawley looked at the ominous-looking bottles on the shelves above the old man’s head, at the forceps, knives, and other surgical instruments on the walls–they at least were bright and clean–and, taking the cheroot slowly from his mouth, he said:
“Shin-plasters are what I want. A friend of mine has caught his leg in a trap.”
The old man gave an evil chuckle at the joke, for a “shin-plaster” was a money-note worth a quarter of a dollar.
“I’ve got some,” he growled in reply, “but they cost twenty-five cents each. You can have them for your friend at the price.”
“I want eight thousand of them from you. He’s hurt pretty bad,” was the dogged, dry answer.
The shaggy eyebrows of the quack drew together, and the eyes peered out sharply through half-closed lids. “There’s plenty of wanting and not much getting in this world,” he rejoined, with a leer of contempt, and spat on the floor, while yet the furtive watchfulness of the eyes indicated a mind ill at ease.
Smoke came in placid puffs from the cheroot–Rawley was smoking very hard, but with a judicial meditation, as it seemed.
“Yes, but if you want a thing so bad that, to get it, you’ll face the devil or the Beast of Revelations, it’s likely to come to you.”
“You call me a beast?” The reddish-brown face grew black like that of a Bedouin in his rage.
“I said the Beast of Revelations–don’t you know the Scriptures?”
“I know that a fool is to be answered according to his folly,” was the hoarse reply, and the great head wagged to and fro in its smarting rage.
“Well, I’m doing my best; and perhaps when the folly is all out we’ll come to the revelations of the Beast.”