Contango (Ill Wind) Read Online Free PDF Page A

not been permitted to attend the earlier sessions, but newspaper reports
had already given him some idea what to expect. Yet though he had thus
prepared himself for the small insolences of cross-examination, it had
certainly never struck him that he would be treated less like a witness than
a prisoner on trial. Grimly, after his first hour of questioning, he
perceived that things were to be even worse than had seemed possible. His
words were being misquoted, his actions misdescribed, and his motives
misinterpreted. With all his awareness of unpopularity, he had never guessed
that even the bitterest dislike could frame such a conspiracy, or that, if
framed, it could prevail with reasonable persons. But perhaps the men and
women facing him were not reasonable. They represented him, for instance, as
having condoned the murder of a white man by a native, and of having
interceded with authority on the latter’s behalf. It was implied that
he had definitely taken the part of the native Cuavanese in a matter
affecting white prestige. His mission of pacification to the Sultan was held
up as an act of humiliating unwisdom equivalent to handing a hostage to the
enemy. He had, it was to be inferred, deliberately led Franklyn to his death.
At this point in the proceedings Mrs. Franklyn broke down and sobbed audibly
for several moments, while the chairman stuttered out a few sentences of
sympathy. When the cross-examination was continued, Gathergood was
uncomfortable as well as grim, and created a definitely bad impression on
listeners already predisposed to receive one; his very carefulness in
choosing words, which was normal to him, was taken for over-
subtlety—as when, for instance, he answered: “No, it
wasn’t that I thought Naung Lo innocent; I only thought that he might
not be guilty.” This, spoken in slow, deliberate tones, sent a hot
draught of exasperation across the room.
    He was asked, of course, about that final tragic pilgrimage to the
Sultan’s palace with Franklyn, and he described it with an exactness
that made no glimmer of appeal for sympathy. The truth was, his anger, always
slow to rise, was now engulfing him in the blackest bitterness of soul. He
would not, by a word or by a movement of a muscle, plead with these people
who were so obviously bent on vilifying him. He sat rigid in the
straight-backed seat, his blue eyes fixed in a stare that only occasionally
quickened, and only at one spectacle—the clock that ticked away his
ordeal. Once or twice, faint with the heat, he found his attention wandering,
and generally it was some outdoor scene that flashed momentarily before him,
some remembered spot on one of his jungle expeditions, the place where he had
found the sciuropterus or that Polypodium carnosum. And then, breaking in
upon such ill-timed tranquillities, would come the chairman’s rasping
monotone: “Are we to understand, Mr. Gathergood… So, Mr. Gathergood,
it amounts to this, that you… Now, Mr. Gathergood, let’s be quite
clear about it—you say you … ” And so on.
    Yet the Agent was never near breaking down under the strain. He was upheld
by his bitterness; relentlessly he gave reasons why he had done this or had
omitted to do that, and even the major’s querulous: “But surely,
man, you must have realised … ” only drew from him a quiet: “I
didn’t realise it, anyway.” Once the naval commander interjected,
apparently to the assembly in general: “Of course we must all remember
how easy it is to be wise after the event”; and Gathergood gave him a
swift glance in which just more was visible than mere assent. But on the
whole he preserved an outward emotionlessness that antagonised his hearers as
much as it disappointed them. The commander tried sometimes to counter this
by skilfully leading questions; he remarked, for instance, at one juncture:
“I should think, Gathergood, you must be feeling yourself rather an
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