Mr. Gopala sucked smoke into his lungs and suddenly ceased to look, in his boo-gay clothes, like any sort of a comic figure. The button eyes looked like flint rock.
“My name, of course, is not Gopala.” He looked directly at Dr. Temble. “My brother spoke to me of his plan to get our monies out of Pakistan. He spoke of this honorable Dr. Temble, who, out of the goodness of his heart, and for a small fee, would aid him, I cautioned my brother. He would not listen. He should have listened. If he had, he would not have been struck over the head and tumbled into the stream at night.”
“He was a stubborn man, and a gullible man, but I was fond of him. I knew of his death two days after it happened. I examined the body. It was no great feat to book passage on the same boat as you, Dr. Temble. Money speaks loudly in any tongue. After I studied you and your wife and your two... helpers, and that other woman, the greedy one, I was prepared to act.”
He smiled at the cigarette in his hand. “Though I am not, in many ways, a devout Hindu, I do ascribe to our rules against the taking of life. So, much as I might have enjoyed it, I could not work directly. Mr. Branch proved to be an easy problem. I had merely to ask him if he had been playing the American game of poker. He said that he had not. I then told him that I must have made a mistake, because I was certain that I had heard his friend, Mr. Welling, promising to Dr. Temble that Mr. Branch would cash in his chips before they reached Los Angeles. Mr. Branch was quite unexpectedly clever about the mode of death, I thought.”
“It is easy to play the part of the slightly stupid person who overhears interesting fragments of conversation. Dr. Temble, you will remember my speaking to you of seeing the Farrow woman and Mr. Branch in amorous closeness in the night on the boat deck and hearing her say something to Mr. Branch about 'poisoning the old fool’. Then I waited to see which one you would remove. It was an interesting wait. I rather thought you overdid the part where you demanded to know what had become of her. She was behind you on the life line. An excellent opportunity in all the confusion. I assume you were motivated by jealousy as well as fear.”
“You devil!” Temble whispered.
“And it was not difficult in your nervous condition to make you attack Mr. Branch and Mr. Dolan. I rather hoped that Branch would die and Dolan would escape. So you see I got my wish. Now Mr. Atkinson has brought all this to a head sooner than I had hoped. I rather thought he was beginning to consider me as a factor. Now, of the original five only Dr. Temble and you, Mrs. Temble, remain. I could not have him kill you or you him as I have learned to consider you as an innocent party to this adventure of his, motivated by a rather questionable loyalty. And, Mr. Dolan, you are merely a greedy fool. Your god is luck. But all your life it hasn’t been bad luck which has brought on catastrophe, merely bad judgment. It has been a most interesting game.”
“You talk as though it were over, Gopala,” Dolan said slowly.
Gopala shrugged. “Isn’t it?”
“There is the treasure,” Dolan said.
“I shouldn’t worry about that, Mr. Dolan. My brother wished the treasure transported to Calcutta and put in the vault of Lloyd’s Bank there. I saw to it that his wishes were fulfilled. Our family wealth never left Calcutta. It was removed while the Bjornsan Star was still at the river dock. An intermediary explained the situation to Captain Paulus and gave him a small gift in return for his cooperation. If, Mr. Dolan, for the sake of a treasure which was never on the ship I could have encouraged you to kill Dr. Temble, I would have... how do you say it... racked up a perfect score...”
Dr. Temble sprang to his feet, knocking his chair over backward. He screamed at Gopala, “You lie! You lie!”
Gopala looked up at him with unconcealed amusement. “Poor little man,” he murmured. “Poor little professor.”
Temble wheeled before anyone could guess his intent and ran from the room. De Beauharnais stood up. “Why don’t you let him go?” Gopala said. “He can do no harm, except to himself.”
Dolan put his face in his hands. After a long moment he looked up. “I’ve done nothing I should lose my ticket for, have I?” he said defiantly.
“You might even be commended for beaching the ship here,” Gopala said.
Dolan walked heavily to the doorway and out into the night.
Gopala said, with striking tenderness, “Mrs. Temble, this has all been most difficult for you. I am sorry that I had to be the one to allow you to find out that your husband was capable of killing a woman.”
Sara managed a smile. “I really don’t think it matters. I really don’t think it has mattered for a long time. I think I will go to bed now. Good night, gentlemen.”
The squat, sturdy trading vessel churned through the placid sea. Malcolm stood on the afterdeck beside Sara, looking back toward Dakeet, low on the horizon.
“You’ll be able to forget, Sara,” he said.
She glanced at him. “There would be more to forget, Mal, if you hadn’t turned me away when you did, so that I couldn’t see it happen. What do you suppose he was after?”
Mal shrugged. “I don’t know. Some crazy idea of diving down into the hold himself to prove that Gopala was lying, that Gopala was trying some trick. But he was clumsy with that outrigger canoe and his eyesight was so bad that when he tumbled out, he probably didn’t even notice the band of shovelnose sharks that had come in through the gap in the reef. It didn’t last long. The way to think of him, darling, is to remember how, in the beginning, he was good to you. But there was madness in him ever since he got his hands on that treasure.”
There was a polite cough behind them. They both turned. Mr. Gopala, wearing a wine red shirt from A. Hayaka’s stock, and a pair of white duck trousers too large for him, beamed at them. “This one,” he said to Sara, “is a good man, but with a tiredness in his soul. You will bring him back to life, you know. He will grow from your strength, but it will take a long time.”
Mal frowned. “You’re a pleasant little guy in some ways, but you’ve got a knack of keeping your nose in other people’s affairs.”
Mr. Gopala’s smile was not dented. “Quite true.” He pulled a small chamois bag up out of his shirt. It was tied around his neck by a leather thong. He reached into it with two thin brown fingers and pulled out a green stone the size of a hazelnut.
He held it out to Sara and put it in her hand. His smile grew broader. “You see, there is always some treasure. Not much, maybe. But a little. It may be only my conscience speaking. Or it may be that I yearn to be young again. It is for you. For both of you. There is a curse on it, however. If you should ever separate, it will turn to glass. And the longer you stay together, the deeper will grow the green fire in its depths.”
He bowed ceremoniously and turned away.
“How deep can we make that fire, dearest?” she said.
“Deeper than deep,” he answered as she stood tall and proud and unafraid beside him.