CHAPTER X.
THREE PORTALS Not till after dinner, that evening, did Rudolph rouse from his stupor.
With the clerk, he lay wearily in the upper chamber of Heywood's house.
The host, with both his long legs out at window, sat watching the smoky lights along the river, and now and then cursing the heat.
"After all," he broke silence, "those cocoanuts came time enough." "Didn't they just ?" said Nesbit, jauntily; and fingering the plaster cross on his wounded forehead, drawled: "You might think I'd done a bit o' dueling myself, by the looks .-- But I had _some_ part.

Now, that accident trick.

Rather neat, what?
But for me, you might never have thought o' that--" "Idiot!" snapped Heywood, and pulling in his legs, rose and stamped across the room.
A glass of ice and tansan smashed on the floor.

Rudolph was on foot, clutching his bandaged arm as though the hurt were new.
"You!" he stammered.

"You did that!" He stood gaping, thunderstruck.
Felt soles scuffed in the darkness, and through the door, his yellow face wearing a placid and lofty grin, entered Ah Pat, the compradore.
"One coolie-man hab-got chit." He handed a note to his master, who snatched it as though glad of the interruption, bent under the lamp, and scowled.
The writing was in a crabbed, antique German character:-- "Please to see bearer, in bad clothes but urgent.