Portuguese rascals! I should never hear the last of it. We must keep it
dark."

From quite other motives, among which his native delicacy was the
principal, Heyst was even more anxious to bind himself to silence. A
gentleman would naturally shrink from the part of heavenly messenger
that Morrison would force upon him. It made Heyst uncomfortable, as it
was. And perhaps he did not care that it should be known that he had
some means, whatever they might have been--sufficient, at any rate, to
enable him to lend money to people. These two had a duet down there,
like conspirators in a comic opera, of "Sh--ssh, shssh! Secrecy!
Secrecy!" It must have been funny, because they were very serious about
it.

And for a time the conspiracy was successful in so far that we all
concluded that Heyst was boarding with the good-natured--some said:
sponging on the imbecile--Morrison, in his brig. But you know how it
is with all such mysteries. There is always a leak somewhere. Morrison
himself, not a perfect vessel by any means, was bursting with gratitude,
and under the stress he must have let out something vague--enough to
give the island gossip a chance. And you know how kindly the world is
in its comments on what it does not understand. A rumour sprang out that
Heyst, having obtained some mysterious hold on Morrison, had fastened
himself on him and was sucking him dry. Those who had traced these
mutters back to their origin were very careful not to believe them. The
originator, it seems, was a certain Schomberg, a big, manly, bearded
creature of the Teutonic persuasion, with an ungovernable tongue which
surely must have worked on a pivot. Whether he was a Lieutenant of the
Reserve, as he declared, I don't know. Out there he was by profession a
hotel-keeper, first in Bangkok, then somewhere else, and ultimately in