Satan's Bushel Read Online Free PDF Page A

either.
    “‘You’re at an impasse with him,’ I said. ‘He can’t understand why you should be permitted to cross the British Empire in the management of its own teak in its own forest, and his official mind is extremely vexed.’
    “No answer.
    “‘He says the tree will be cut,’ I said.
    “The rite apparently had been concluded. The serpentine notes of the reed pipes had now a kind of rhythm, coming nearer, and there was a sense of heavy bodies stirring. The elephants were passing the house. Dreadwind got up to look out again.
    “‘It won’t be cut,’ he said, returning.
    “‘It’s my own blundering fault,’ I said, ‘that I can’t make you see or feel why I have thrust myself into this thing.’
    “‘Why?’ he asked.
    “There I hung for a minute.
    “‘I don’t know why,’ I said. ‘I may have thought I did. Now that you ask me, I don’t. No matter why. Say it pleases me to give you the right to command my friendly offices. There is something to be done, if only we can think of it, and I am anxious to do it.’
    “‘I know,’ he said very simply, putting forth his hand. ‘But there is nothing to be done.’
    “‘I’ve told you the commissioner is an old friend of mine. I’ve told you also that he is obstinately minded to cut down your tree.’
    “‘He won’t, though,’ said Dreadwind.
    “‘But,’ I said, ‘you can’t just sit here with your finger in the lion’s eye. There would never be any peace. You don’t want to keep up this ghastly mummery outside.’
    “‘It’s distasteful,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t think of anything else, and it works.’
    “‘If there was a reason,’ I said suggestively. ‘Almost any sort of reason. The commissioner is not official to the core. I know him very well.’
    “‘There isn’t,’ said Dreadwind, and that was final. No further that way.
    “I went away knowing just as much as when I came, but with the resolve——”
    “You didn’t see the woman?” Goran asked.
    “Not that time. I saw not the faintest trace of her. I’ve told you it was a double house, a kind of twin affair. I was in one part of it only—but with the resolve, as I was saying, to pry one teak tree loose from the British Empire. I had no case. The use of friendship is that in a pinch it needs none.
    “‘All right,’ said the commissioner. ‘Show me a way out.’
    “That was easy enough, once the mind were inclined. Teakwood was an article of commerce. If an American wished to buy a certain quantity more or less and would agree to cut and deliver it to himself, when, if and as he wanted it, subject to all the local uses and customs, and, furthermore, if he agreed to take it all from a certain forest area to be indicated by metes and bounds—why, what if that area contained only one tree? and what if he never took it at all? There was really no obstacle. The cutting or not cutting of that particular tree was of no interest to the department of forests, because it stood all alone.
    “‘Quite!’ said the commissioner. ‘You do know how to beat the government.’
    “The next morning a sheaf of papers went up the river—the teakwood contract in duplicate, long but lucid; an official covering note from the commissioner to Mr. Dreadwind, and a personal note from me telling him what it was all about. And with that done I went the way of my own business.
    “I heard from the commissioner that the contract had been returned to him, duly signed, and nothing more until one day on my return journey a messenger found me with a note from Dreadwind asking me to visit him.
    “He came to the river bank to greet me.
    “‘Be a little careful,’ he said as we turned into the path. ‘I find that nothing happens if you give everybody plenty of room. There’s a——’
    “As he spoke it was there, standing in the path, barring our way—a cobra on its dignity. We stopped of course. I waited to see what he would do. He was in no haste to do anything. For some