Everett, his eyes on fire with triumph, his fingers trembling, tore open
the envelope.

Madame Ducret wrote that her husband and herself felt that Mr. Everett
was suffering more severely from the climate than he knew. With regret
they cancelled their invitation to visit them, and urged him, for his
health's sake, to continue as he had planned, to northern latitudes.
They hoped to meet in Paris. They extended assurances of their
distinguished consideration.

Slowly, savagely, as though wreaking his suffering on some human thing,
Everett tore the note into minute fragments. Moving unsteadily to the
ship's side, he flung them into the river, and then hung limply upon the
rail.

Above him, from a sky of brass, the sun stabbed at his eyeballs. Below
him, the rush of the Congo, churning in muddy whirlpools, echoed against
the hills of naked rock that met the naked sky.

To Everett, the roar of the great river, and the echoes from the land he
had set out to reform, carried the sound of gigantic, hideous laughter.




THE SPY


My going to Valencia was entirely an accident. But the more often I