The Corona Kelfordi

by Ralph Stock

THE CORONA
KEFFORDI

By RALPH STOCK

THE shot had hardly stabbed the hot, steaming silence, when the bush seemed to wake as from a stupor. Something crashed in the distance, wings drummed overhead, and quite close a cock—some hoary deserter from a plantation chicken run—crew raucously.

But Charteris was waiting for something else, and presently it came, in a series of low, snuffling grunts. He waited, rifle to shoulder, then fired again as a gigantic boar, with long, uplifted snout and blood-flecked jaws, crashed out of the bush and fell in a quivering heap on the track.

Charteris inspected his bag with satisfaction. He had heard that there was rough country and the chance of a bush pig among the hills of Vanua Levu, and for once rumour had spoken true.

In answer to his whistle, Johnnie muttered "Io saka," out of habit, and clambered down from a neighbouring dabi tree.

"Vinaka, Yinaka!" he chuckled, shuffling round the carcass and clucking with admiration.

"String him up," said Charteris, turning on his heel. "You can come back to-night. We must strike water soon."

Half a mile further on he came to a halt at the edge of an open glade, and swore softly. Someone was before him, comfortably ensconced in a speckless tent beside a spring in the volcanic rock. It was an ideal camping-ground, and the next might be anywhere. Besides, what in thunder were "speckless" tents doing among the hills of Vanua Levu? Charteris determined to quench a five-hour thirst and find out.

It was not difficult. He was lying full length, with his face immersed in the deliciously cool water, when a voice came from somewhere above him—

"Would you prefer a cup of tea?"

It was a gentle, refined voice, with a precise English accent that fell on Charteris's ears like music of bygone days. He turned, and looked up to find a tall man of perhaps sixty, with rather long hair, a straggling grey beard, and horn-rimmed spectacles, watching him gravely. His general appearance suggested the missionary.

"Thanks," said Charteris, "I should," and a few minutes later was inside the mysterious tent, sprawling luxuriously in a deck-chair, and speculating on the contents of a bundle, wrapped in banana leaf, hanging from a nail on the centre pole.

"I suppose I ought to introduce myself," he said. "My name's Charteris, and I'm after bush pig."

His host smiled and bowed with an old-world courtesy as he manipulated the spirit-stove.

"Mine is Kefford," he said, in the same precise manner, but with a twinkle of his pale blue eyes behind their horn-rimmed glasses, "and I am after orchids."

"Thank Heaven!" sighed Charteris. "I thought you were a missionary."

"You don't like missionaries?"

"I neither like nor dislike them," said Charteris, "so long as I don't have to depend on them alone for exchange of ideas. But orchids—I didn't know there was an orchid in all Fiji."

"Nor I," exclaimed the other, his gaunt face lighting up at mention of the cherished word, "nor I. But this is a wonderful country, Mr.—er—Charteris, a truly wonderful country, and it has been overlooked. I spent four months in Borneo and six in Siam before it occurred to me to try the South Pacific Islands; but I have been rewarded. In three weeks here I have done better than during all those months."

He got up from the camp-bed where he had been sitting, and commenced to untie the sinnet lashings of the banana leaf bundle with thin, nervous hands.

"I know nothing about it," warned Charteris. "My intelligent interest stops at bush pig, I'm afraid."

"Ah, but they are wonderful," said Kefford, on his knees now, sorting out bulbs and stalks with an almost frenzied eagerness. "Even to those who do not understand, they must be wonderful. Look at that! In another month it will have bloomed. The petals and sepals will be milk white, splashed with an exquisite shade of chocolate. The lip will be orange-tinted and the pouch dark brown. I only know of twelve others. One belongs to Griffiths, of Stone, Staffordshire. Another——"

Suddenly he paused and squatted back on his heels.

"Another," he went on more slowly, "belongs to Sir James Raymond. You have heard of him?"

Charteris smiled and shook his head.

"Not Sir James Raymond, of Bishop Stortford?" Frank incredulity was written on the collector's face. "He is a wealthy man, Mr. Charteris—a very wealthy man—and he has the finest collection in the United Kingdom, which means the world. It is a curious thing, but the same idea must have struck Raymond and myself at much the same time, though we were then seventeen thousand miles apart, for when I landed at Levuka, the first thing I read in the local paper was the announcement of the arrival of his agent, a man Burns by name." His voice shook with some emotion that Charteris was at a loss to understand.

"But why should that matter?" said Charteris. "Surely Fiji is big enough to hold the two of you."

Kefford's thin lips twitched into a rather wan smile.

"One would imagine so," he said, "but Mr. Burns seems to think otherwise. He has been following my footsteps like a shadow for the past three weeks."

"Do you mean he is here—now?"

"He is camped—it is a very elaborate camp, Mr. Charteris, with every modern device for comfort in the tropics—half a mile eastward, with fifteen boys supplied by the Governor. Can I get you another cup of tea?"

"Thanks, no. But why should he want to follow you like this? What can he gain by it?"

Kefford's smile savoured of compassion this time, as he re-wrapped his orchids with the tenderness of a mother putting her child to bed, and hung them on the centre pole.

"Knowledge," he said, without the least assumption. "Mr. Burns is fully aware that I know more than he does—that where I go, he cannot do better than follow. He is very thorough. I have seen his boys lurking behind trees and slipping away when they think I am not looking; but I have very quick eyes, Mr. Charteris, very quick, indeed, though you might not think it."

"Can't you steal a march on him and get away?" suggested Charteris, warming to the subject.

"I have tried and failed," said Kefford wearily, "and now it is too late. I have reached my Mecca here, and to move away would mean leaving the spoils to the enemy."

"The skunk!" muttered Charteris.

"Hardly that," the other rejoined mildly. "Say, rather, a man of few sensibilities egged on by a promise of one thousand pounds to find a new variety."

"He told you that?"

"No, but I know it to be Raymond's custom. He tried to engage me once. I told him that, if I found an unknown species, it would be a physical impossibility for me to part with it for fifty thousand."

"You have met Burns?"

"Several times."

"How does he behave?"

"He is always pleasant, polite. He comes over in the evenings, as a rule."

"To your camp?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'm—what infernal cheek!"

Charteris got to his feet, walked to the tent door and back again.

"Look here, Mr. Kefford," he said, "I won't apologise for meddling in an affair that doesn't concern me, because it's a habit of mine, and, what's more, I do it out of vulgar curiosity; but, if you have no objection, I should like to camp here and watch the fun."

Kefford's pale blue eyes grew round behind their glasses.

"If you think you will extract any entertainment——" he began.

"I'm easily amused," said Charteris, "and I may be of use. Where are your boys?"

"To tell you the truth, Mr. Charteris, I am not altogether sure. Some time ago I sent them to gather firewood."

"Where did you pick them up?"

"At the mission."

"Ah, that accounts for it!"

"They are unusually intelligent."

"I don't doubt it," said Charteris, noting the pile of unwashed tin plates and litter of empty corned beef tins outside the tent door. "Far too intelligent. I suppose you've been living on unadulterated tinned beef for three weeks."

Kefford smiled his wan smile.

"Really," he said, "I hardly noticed——"

"Well," said Charteris, "perhaps you'll notice a brace of pigeon and a slice of bush pig, or, if you don't, it won't be Johnnie's fault."

Half an hour later Charteris's camp was made. He never carried a tent, for the reason that Johnnie's improvised shelters of branches and green banana leaf were equally watertight and a great deal cooler.

When Kefford's boys returned—two sleek youths in "store" shirts and spotless sulus, gingerly carrying an armful of brushwood apiece—they received the shock of their lives.

"What have you been up to?" snapped Charteris. "Combing your hair? Get to work on the fire, you. And you, clean up. Look at those plates! And sling those bullamacow tins half a mile out of here before all the ants on Vanua Levu get at us! Lift your feet!"

For a moment they stood regarding this apparition of authority in stolid amazement, then obeyed. Thereafter, Johnnie's dignified delight at having someone to order about was almost pathetic.

That evening, after a meal that had the extraordinary effect of causing Kefford to leave the topic of orchids for over half an hour, Mr. Burns strolled into camp. He was a stout man with a red-ochre face and an exaggerated manner that seemed to be striving after genial openness.

"Good evening, gentlemen," he observed, stooping in the low doorway to mop an immaculate solar topee. "Quite a family gathering, eh? May I come in? Thanks. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Charteris"—this in response to Kefford's introduction, "It is a pleasure to happen on company—and such company—in the wilds. Ah, bush pig? Yes, I have seen, or, rather, heard, several during my rambles. But we are after other game, are we not, Mr. Kefford?"

"Yes," said Charteris, filling his pipe between his knees. "I don't think we shall poach on one another's preserves, do you?"

The other shot him a quick glance, then laughed boisterously.

"No, indeed, no," he said, rubbing his fat red hands together, "if there are any preserves on Vanua Levu."

He talked a great deal about nothing in particular, but always, Charteris noticed, his glance kept reverting to the banana leaf bundle on the centre pole.

"Well," he said at last, turning to Kefford with the air of a father humouring information from his child, "and how have we been getting on to-day?"

Charteris saw the old man's figure stiffen slightly, his thin lips contract, but his glance, too, went instinctively to the precious bundle.

"Fairly well, thank you, Mr. Burns," he returned, in his precisest manner, "very fairly well."

"Ah, I'm glad to hear that. Personally, I have reason to congratulate myself to-day. I came upon a variety of the odontoglossum, but the lip is pink instead of chocolate-coloured. I wonder if that could be a peculiarity of the Fijian species? It seems to me——"

Charteris watched the poison at work. Kefford unbent, reluctantly but surely. In spite of his dislike for this man, the collector mania swept all barriers aside. He became interested, enthusiastic. The end was inevitable. The bundle was hoisted down from the tent pole and opened out again, the thin hands moved deftly amongst its contents, while Burns bent over them with straining eyes, and finally Kefford held aloft a delicate waxen flower.

"Do you mean this?" he queried, with shining eyes.

"Ah, I might have known you'd have it," said Burns, with well-simulated disappointment. "There's no getting the better of you, Mr. Kefford."

The thing was so ridiculously easy that it sickened Charteris instead of amusing him.

The following evening he waited for Kefford as long as a voracious appetite allowed, then ate dinner alone. About eight o'clock, as the soft, transparent darkness was settling down on the camp, a gaunt figure emerged from the bush-and staggered towards the tent. It was Kefford.

His ducks were caked with mud from the waist down, his shirt was smeared with it, his beard full of it. He was hatless, sweating, and breathless, and he moved like a drunken man trying to hurry.

Charteris went out to meet him, but Kefford took not the faintest notice beyond brushing him aside and diving into the tent.

"Matches—lantern!" he kept muttering. "Where are the matches?"

Charteris lit the lantern and stood back, while Kefford turned the place upside down in a feverish search for something. At last he found it—a battered note-book close beside him on the folding-table—pounced on it with a muttered exclamation, and devoured it through mud-flecked glasses.

For perhaps two minutes there was silence, save for the rustling of paper and heavy breathing, then Kefford crumpled up on the camp-bed, made a queer little noise, half laugh, half gasp, and fainted.

"The Corona Keffordi!" he mumbled, almost as soon as his eyes fluttered open. Then he seemed to notice Charteris for the first time. He swung on to the edge of the bed and blinked across at him in a sort of radiant daze.

"I tried the swamp to-day, Mr. Charteris. It stretches for miles and miles to the westward. It quakes as you pick your way from tussock to tussock, and it is impossible to stand in one spot for more than a few seconds. I have no idea how many times I fell in, but something impelled me to go on. I doubt if anyone has been as far over that swamp as I have to-day. I am quite sure I could never do it again." He paused and blinked reflectively, then went on in the same precise little sentences. "It is exceedingly difficult to watch overhead and yet pick one's way over a swamp, but I managed it by allowing three seconds' rest every few yards. Longer than that was, as I have said, impossible, and I was beginning to wonder how I should get back, when I caught sight of something white above my head among the branches of a ti tree. It was the Corona Keffordi. I have no idea how I climbed that tree, or how I returned here; but, thank Heaven, here I am, Mr. Charteris, and here"—he swung the mud-caked specimen box attached to his belt on to his knees and prised it open—"here is the Corona Keffordi!"

His hand trembled as he held out the flower, a delicate waxen thing drooping from a stalk still embedded in the ti tree bark.

Charteris examined it with interest. He had caught something of the other's enthusiasm.

"Is it rare?" he asked.

"Rare!" Kefford gave an hysterical cackle of exuberation. "It is unknown, Mr. Charteris, unknown! Do you realise what that means? It is the Corona—you notice the crown formation—the Corona Keffordi! Ah, you cannot understand," he went on, taking down the bundle from the tent pole and placing his rarest treasure in a compartment of leaf and moss to itself with trembling hands. "When a man has orchids, he has no need of children. They are his children; he can tend them, breed them, perhaps give his name to them, though it is given to few to do this. I have done it. It may be that others of the same species will be found in the future, though it is unlikely—one might search those swamps for a year and not find this one's duplicate—but even then it would not be the Corona Keffordi. Don't you see?"

"Yes, I see," said Charteris. "It's confoundedly interesting, but hadn't you better change your things before you get dengue?"

"Good evening, gentlemen," boomed a voice, and Mr. Burns's bulky form filled the doorway. He took in the situation at a glance, and Charteris lay watching his simulated enthusiasm while Kefford discoursed on his find with the exuberance of a schoolboy over a new pocket-knife. His gaunt face was transformed. Three years had dropped from his shoulders.

"I congratulate you, Mr. Kefford," said Burns. "I congratulate you most heartily."

Kefford beamed and blinked through his mud-stained glasses.

For the next two days Kefford rested on his laurels, as he put it. But Charteris knew it was a case of necessity. The struggle in the swamp, the frenzied excitement, had done their work, and the reaction had set in. The collector's face was still radiant, but his body failed to respond to the exuberance of his mind. He was weak, pitiably weak. Charteris saw the shadow of dengue fever hovering over him, and routed out the medicine case.

Then one night, as he lay staring through the mosquito netting into the velvety darkness, and wondering exactly what he ought to do, something black and hardly discernible moved slowly across the glade, paused, and moved on again. He lay quite still, watching it for upwards of half a minute; then, as it approached Kefford's tent, he thrust the netting aside and made one frantic dive. It was the only thing to do, and even then he was barely in time. His outstretched hand came into contact with something warm and greasy that instantly slid from his grasp. It was a man's ankle, and its owner, smarmed with cocoanut oil and mother-naked, bounded to his feet like a black indiarubber ball and sped for the bush.

Fijians can run, but so could Charteris. Again and again he gripped some part of the fugitive's wriggling, dodging anatomy, and again and again it melted through his fingers until, in sheer exasperation, he leapt blindly with outstretched arms and bore him, still writhing, to the ground. Even then it was like wrestling with a conger-eel. Charteris was never sure of his grip until he had a bulky strand of six-inch-long hair wrapped about his fist. Then a yell broke the stillness of the night, and the writhings died down to convulsive cringings.

"Ah, you stop him! You stop him!" squealed the unhappy youth. "I think Missi Keffodie call—I go quick!"

"Yes, on your belly, you young snake! Get up!" Charteris dragged him to his feet by the hair, and carefully changed his hold to the left hand. It was Samuel, one of Kefford's mission boys.

"Now listen to me," Charteris went on. "You go back to your new boss and tell him I sent you to ask him if he'd be so good as to come and do his own dirty work—savvy? Then you can vamose to where you came from; it's the only place that'll hold you."

Samuel nodded as emphatically as the grip on his hair allowed, and stared at his captor with bulging eyes. It was too dark to find suitable material, so Charteris did the best he could with his bare hand, and polished it off by assisting Samuel three yards of the way with a well-directed foot. Then he turned towards camp, crawled under the mosquito net, and slept till dawn.

Kefford was in a bad way. For two days his temperature hovered round 102.8, and on the second Charteris moved him from the stifling tent to his own cooler quarters, and set out with the rifle in search of pigeon broth in embryo.

It was noon when he returned, to stand at the edge of the glade and stare for one brief moment at the extraordinary scene before him. Johnnie was standing with inanely drooping jaw, watching Kefford, in striped pyjamas, grovelling amongst the charred remnants of the tent and uttering strange little cries of alternate hope and disappointment. To all intents and purposes, the man was mad. His eyes bulged from his head; his singed beard was flecked with foam. It took all Charteris's strength to wrestle him to the bed.

"Corona Keffordi!" he laughed, and collapsed.

"What happened?" said Charteris, with his knee still on Kefford's chest.

Johnnie lifted his eyes to heaven for assistance.

"Dunno, saka," he said. "Missi Keffodie him all right—ongo." He pointed down at the bed. "Me, me all right—ongo." He indicated the improvised camp kitchen with a nod of his bullet head. "Me make him drink. Tent him go 'Puff!' all quick."

Charteris nodded and drew the medicine case to his side.

That evening Burns strolled into camp. Charteris could not help admiring his masterly assumption of concern at the "accident."

"Most unfortunate, Mr. Charteris," he intoned, shaking his head and looking down on Kefford's tossing form beneath the mosquito, net. "And the orchids, too—after all the work and worry—too bad, too bad!" He clucked softly, sympathetically, until Charteris, who was kneeling at the sick man's side, knew that he must speak or burst.

"You've missed your vocation, Mr. Burns," he said evenly and without looking round. "You ought to have been an undertaker."

There was a pause, then Burns's voice came in an altered tone.

"What you mean by that, Mr. Charteris, I'm sure I don't know; but if I can do anything—anything—I hope you will let me. I have a spare tent, and perhaps my medicine case——"

For some reason he stopped as Charteris got slowly to his feet and faced him squarely.

"If you want to get out of here," he said, in a low, distinct monotone, "with a face that your Bishop Stortford friends will recognise, I give you until I have counted ten. One!"

For the next ten seconds Burns's face was a study in changing emotions. Offended dignity, defiance, appeal, disgust, were all reflected in turn and abandoned as useless. He wagged his fat hands impotently.

"If you will explain——"

"Two!" said Charteris.

"What the devil d'you mean by——"

"Three—four!"

"Really, I must ask you to——"

"Five—six—seven!"

Burns cast one last look of exquisite loathing at his inflexible adversary, shrugged his shoulders, and turned on his heel.

But a few seconds later he was smiling as he walked briskly down the bush track to camp.

The next day Charteris was kept busy, but on the second he went far enough afield to assure himself that Burns and his retinue had vanished.

On his way back to camp, he unhitched a banana leaf bundle from the lower branch of a dabi tree close to the edge of the glade, and rehung it near the sick man's bed.

Kefford was lying very still, staring stonily at the mosquito net. Charteris lifted it and knelt at his side.

"Do you think you're strong enough to stand a bit of good news?" he asked.

Kefford regarded him with pale blue, lack-lustre eyes that suddenly seemed to start from his head. He struggled valiantly on to an elbow.

"Lie still," commanded Charteris, forcing him gently back. "It's all right. It is the Corona Keffordi, and the rest."

"But I don't understand," panted Kefford.

"That doesn't matter in the least," said Charteris. "I thought they might be safer out of the tent, that's all."

"But how did you know?"

"I didn't know—I only thought."

"Thought—thought what?"

"That they would be safer out of the tent. Lie down! I'll bring them to you."

*****

Three months later Sir James Raymond, alone in his barn-like dining-room at Bishop Stortford, laid down a newspaper and rang the bell.

"Ask Mr. Burns if he will kindly see me at once," he told the footman.

"I thought," he said, when Burns had been motioned to a chair on the other side of the fire, "I thought you said Kefford was doing no particular good out there."

"Not when I left, Sir James." Burns looked vaguely apprehensive.

"Then he must have done remarkably well in a very short time afterwards. Why did you leave until you had done equally well? I set no time limit."

"I—er—conscientiously believed I had exhausted the resources of the country."

"And yet in this paper"—Sir James tapped the printed page with a skinny forefinger—"I read he has just returned—only three weeks after yourself—with the very varieties you have brought, and an unknown species he is going to christen the Corona Keffordi."

Burns wriggled on the edge of the chair and glared at the fire.

"He must have found another," he muttered, with a queer abstraction.

"Another?" snapped Sir James.

"I mean he must have found it—yes, he must have found it very soon after I left. What bad luck—what terribly bad luck! I'm exceedingly sorry, Sir James."