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
Sourabaya. He dragged after him up and down that section of the tropical
belt a silent, frightened, little woman with long ringlets, who smiled
at one stupidly, showing a blue tooth. I don't know why so many of us
patronized his various establishments. He was a noxious ass, and he
satisfied his lust for silly gossip at the cost of his customers. It
was he who, one evening, as Morrison and Heyst went past the hotel--they
were not his regular patrons--whispered mysteriously to the mixed
company assembled on the veranda:
"The spider and the fly just gone by, gentlemen." Then, very important
and confidential, his thick paw at the side of his mouth: "We are among
ourselves; well, gentlemen, all I can say is, I don't you ever get mixed
up with that Swede. Don't you ever get caught in his web."
CHAPTER THREE
Human nature being what it is, having a silly side to it as well as
a mean side, there were not a few who pretended to be indignant on no
better authority than a general propensity to believe every evil report;
and a good many others who found it simply funny to call Heyst the
Spider--behind his back, of course. He was as serenely unconscious of
this as of his several other nicknames.
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