Chapter 3

“I get it monthly.” He was gazing dreamily out of the window, across the
water to the white line of surf where the lazy Pacific swell lifted and
beat on a great coral reef. “A most prosperous business, though this
month the remittance has not arrived. Most strange; most peculiar. The
boat came in as usual, but nothing for me. And so you can imagine my
feelings of pleasure when I found yesterday afternoon a quite
considerable lump of ambergris on the shore. The trouble is that the
dealer is such a robber. A scandalous price, sir, he gave
me–scandalous. Still, better than nothing. Though I am afraid my less
fortunate confrères outside will have to suffer for his miserliness.
Charity and liquor both begin at home. It is the one comfort of having
the club, one can escape from them.”

I glanced into the street, and there I saw his confrères. Five haggard,
unshaven human derelicts clustered under the shade of a palm tree,
eyeing the door of the club hungrily, wolfishly, waiting for this
product of a university to share with them some of the proceeds of his
find.

“As you see,” he continued affably, “they are not quite qualified for
election even to the Tampico club.” He dismissed the thought of them
with a wave of his hand. “Tell me, sir, does the Thames still glint like
a silver-grey streak by Chelsea Bridge as the sun goes down? Do the
barges still go chugging past Westminster? Do children still sail boats
on the Round Pond back London way?”

And for the life of me I could not speak. Suddenly, with overwhelming
force the unutterable pathos of it all had me by the throat, so that I
choked and muttered something about smoke going the wrong way. Hopeless,
helpless, unredeemable, MacAndrew had said. Aye–but the tragedy of it;
the ghastly, fierce tragedy. Back London way—-

With wistful eyes he was staring once more over the wonderful blue of
the sea, and he seemed to me as a man who saw visions and dreamed
dreams. Dreams of the might have been; dreams of a dead past. And then
he pulled himself together and ordered another whisky and soda. He was
himself once more–Raymond Blair–drunkard and derelict; and as for me,
the moment of overwhelming pity had passed.

I was in Tampico–and facts were facts. But it left its mark–that
moment: through all that followed the memory of the haunting tragedy in
his face stuck to me. Maybe it made me more tolerant than others were:
more tolerant certainly than Jim Maitland. For it was in Tampico that I
first met Jim, and Blair was the unwitting cause of it.

It must have been a month or five weeks later. The fortnightly boat had
just come in, and I intended to leave Tampico in her next day. It was
tea-time, and, as I turned into the club, I saw a stranger lounging on
the veranda. And because in the outposts of Empire one does not wait for
an introduction, I went up to him and spoke. He rose as I reached him,
and I noticed that he was very tall.

“I’d better introduce myself,” he said with a faint, rather pleasant
drawl. “My name is Maitland–Jim Maitland.”

I looked at him with suddenly awakened interest. So this was the man of
whom the Assam tea-planter had spoken–the celebrated Jim Maitland who
lived and didn’t vegetate.

“My name is Leyton,” I answered, “and I’m glad to meet you. Several
strong men had to be helped to bed a few weeks ago after the shock they
got when I said that not only had I never met you, but that I’d actually
never heard of you.”

He grinned–a slow, lazy grin–and then and there I took to him. And,
strange to say, after all these years the memory of him which lives
freshest in my mind is the memory of that first evening before I knew
him at all.

If I shut my eyes, though it’s fifteen years ago, I can still see that
immaculately dressed figure–tall, lean and sinewy, the bronzed
clean-cut face tanned with years of outdoor life–and clearest of all,
the quite unnecessary eyeglass. Of the inward characteristics that went
to make up Jim Maitland–of his charm, of his incredible lack of fear,
of his great heart, I knew nothing at the time. That knowledge was to
come later. On that afternoon in Tampico I saw only the outside man,
and, in spite of the eyeglass, I pronounced him good.

“Yes–I know most of the odd corners out here,” he said as we sat down,
and I rang for a waiter. “Though funnily enough I’ve never been to
Tampico before.”

“What’s yours?” I said as the waiter appeared.

“Whisky and soda, thanks,” he answered, stretching out his long legs in
front of him.

“Yes–as I say–I’ve never been here before. I’ve just arrived in the
boat, and I want to get off in her again to-morrow rather particularly.”

A peculiar look, half cynical, half amused, came into his eyes for a
moment–a look to the meaning of which I had no clue. And then the
amusement and the cynicism changed, I thought, to sadness, but, maybe, I
was wrong, and it was only my imagination. Certainly his eyes were
expressionless as they met mine over the top of his glass.

“Here’s how,” he said. “You know this place well?”

“Been here six weeks,” I answered. “Going to-morrow myself.”

“Six weeks should be enough for you to tell me what I want to know. I
joined the _Moldavia_ at Port Said, and struck up an acquaintance with a
little woman on board. She was all by herself–extraordinarily helpless,
never-been-out-of-England before type and all that–and she was coming
here. In fact, she’s come this afternoon by the boat to join her
husband. I gather he’s a fruit merchant in Tampico on rather a big
scale. Well, when we berthed there was no sign of him on the landing. So
I took her up to that shack of an hotel, and started to make inquiries.
Couldn’t find out anything, so I came along here.” He put down his glass
suddenly and rose. “Hullo! here she is.”

I glanced up and saw a sweet-looking girl coming towards us along the
dusty street. Her age may have been about twenty-five, but her wonderful
freshness was that of a girl of seventeen. And it seemed to me as if
Tampico had vanished, and I was standing in an old English garden with
the lilac in full bloom.

“Mr. Leyton,” murmured Maitland, and I bowed.

She nodded at me charmingly, and then gave him the sweetest and most
beseeching of smiles.

“I couldn’t wait in the hotel, Jim,” she said. “It’s a horrible place.”

“The Tampico hotel,” I laughed, “is not an hotel but a sports club for
the insect world.”

She sat down daintily, and I thought of the few leather-skinned products
of Tampico. And then–why, I know not–I glanced at Jim Maitland. And
his eyes were fixed on the girl, with that same strange, baffling
expression in them that I had noticed before–the expression that in
years to come I was destined to see so often. But at the moment I
remember thinking that it was, perhaps, as well that he was going by the
boat next day. Strange things are apt to happen in the Tampicos of this
world–things which are not ordained by the Law and the Prophets.