Verstork was much too late.  
After the scene in the hut near the Djoerang Pringapoes, he ought at once to have jumped into the saddle and there and [258]then have galloped off to Santjoemeh; thus he might possibly have succeeded in warding off the storm that was gathering over his head. As it was, he had allowed another to forestall him. It was not long before he found that out.
 
“So!—that is your report of what has taken place!” said van Gulpendam, in the most offensive and sneering tone imaginable, when the Controller at length, after having long been kept waiting and after having times out of number paced up and down the front-gallery, had been admitted into the presence of his chief.
 
“So—that is your report is it? It seems to me you have taken your time about it! Yesterday, before noon, the information had already reached me. A pleasant dinner time for me when such things are occurring in my residency. But the gentlemen, it seems, were amusing themselves with hunting. Oh, yes! anything may be going on in their district, then they see nothing, they hear nothing!”
 
“But, Resident—” Verstork ventured to say.
 
“Hold your tongue, sir,” cried van Gulpendam, savagely, “I have asked you no question, when I do it will be time enough to answer, and then, I suspect, you will have no reply to make.”
 
Verstork was standing there, in the office of his superior officer, pale as death and unnerved and biting his lips with suppressed rage.
 
“I cannot say, Mr. Verstork, that you have clapped on too much sail—you have been somewhat slow in making me acquainted with these painful events.”
 
“Resident, I—”
 
“I did not put any question,” again roared van Gulpendam, with a look of scorn and contempt upon his subordinate, “please hold your tongue!”
 
“It appeared to me, Resident, that—”
 
“Be silent, I say! I only have a right to speak—”
 
Verstork, however, took no heed of this rude interruption, and quietly went on: “—That you made some remarks about the time of my presenting my report. If that be so, I feel it my duty, nay my right, to exculpate myself.”
 
“If you will not keep silence,” shouted van Gulpendam, “I will call—” he was on the point of making a mistake, he was just going to say the boatswain’s mate; but he checked himself and said, “I will call my chief constable and have you removed out of my presence.”
 
“Hark you, Mr. van Gulpendam,” said Verstork drawing [259]himself up to his full height, and speaking with much dignity, “Hark you, I am neither your corporal nor your boatswain of the watch. And, further, let me tell you that if you continue to address me in such terms I will lodge a complaint against you with the Secretary for the Home Department, or better still, with the Governor General!”
 
It was now van Gulpendam’s turn to change colour, he saw that he had gone a little too far. He had so long been accustomed to see every one bowing down before him and putting up with all his whims and fits of bad temper, that he never thought of checking himself in the presence of Verstork, whom he had always looked upon as an easy-going and good-tempered fellow. He now, however, at once drew in his horns and said in a very different tone:
 
“Pardon me, Mr. Verstork, you know I am of a sanguine temperament. I am, moreover, very much vexed at not receiving this news from one of my officers in the first instance. Come, take a seat, I should like to run my eye over this report.”
 
The Controller sat down, while the resident at his desk turned his back to the light and began reading the document. Outside the office, a couple of police oppassers were pacing up and down, attracted, no doubt, to the spot by the high tone of voice in which the conversation had been carried on. In a moment or two van Gulpendam again broke out—“I thought as much—I had been warned of this—” But, checking himself, he said no more, and went on reading.
 
“Resident,” said Verstork, “may I beg leave to inquire against what you have been warned?”
 
Van Gulpendam looked up over the sheet of paper he held in his hand, and fixing his eye on the controller’s face which was turned to the light, he said, with an assumed air of dignity:
 
“Mr. Verstork, you really ought to try and cure yourself of the bad habit you seem to have contracted of interrogating your superiors. Believe me that kind of thing makes a very bad impression. I do not mind telling you what warning I have received, not, mind you, because you demand the information; but because I consider it only fair that you should know. It will probably bring you to the conclusion that you had better take back this report and modify it altogether.”
 
“Modify my report, Resident?” exclaimed Verstork; but, without noticing the interruption, van Gulpendam continued:
 
“I have been informed that you intend to represent matters [260]in such a light as to make it appear that a successful attempt has been made on the honour of this Javanese girl.
 
“But, Resident,” said Verstork, very gravely, “this question concerns a person who is in your service, who is the baboe—I may almost say—the companion, of your own daughter.”
 
“And who, as such,” said van Gulpendam, interrupting him, “ought to be a person of unblemished character. I quite agree with you there. Unfortunately, she is nothing of the kind. Only a few days ago she was roaming about outside the house for the whole night, and then came in with a long rigmarole about a forcible abduction of which she pretended to have been the victim. Now again, for the second time, she is out at night, and this time she is found in the possession of opium. She is the daughter of a smuggler—you know that as well as I do, seeing that on Saturday last there was a murder committed in her father’s house, of which, luckily, you sent me timely notice. She is engaged to be married to another opium smuggler; and now it has been proved that she is a smuggler herself. At present she is safe under lock and key, and I am glad of it, as it will spare me the trouble of driving the brazen-faced slut out of my premises.”
 
“But, Resident,” resumed Verstork, as soon as his chief paused for a moment to take breath, “when we came running up to her cries for help, she was naked, bleeding, her hair dishevelled. Everything in fact pointed to—”
 
“A desperate resistance to the police,” broke in van Gulpendam. “I know all about that. Did you examine her?”
 
“No, I did not.”
 
“Very well, that examination I have ordered the medical authorities to hold, and see there,” continued the Resident, as he looked out of the window, “why, unless I am mistaken, that is the carriage of the chief medical officer now stopping at the gate! We shall soon get to the bottom of this business.”
 
Almost immediately after this the chief constable came in to announce the arrival of the Surgeon General. The latter advanced to the Resident’s chair, shook hands very ceremoniously, and then went through the same process, but much more familiarly, with the Controller.
 
“Ha, Verstork—you here?” he said.
 
Before, however, the Controller had time to reply, the Resident, turning to the doctor, said:
 
“Take a seat, doctor—well?—”
 
“No question of any such thing, Resident!” [261]
 
“Indeed—now did I not tell you so? But the girl was wounded they told me.”
 
“A few scratches of no importance whatever—mere trifling skin-wounds and a little blood!”
 
“There was therefore no stu—stu—what did you call it?”
 
“Stuprum violentum—Oh, no, no! nothing of the kind. Here is the formal certificate properly filled in—that will be sufficient to satisfy all objections.”
 
“Thank you, doctor—much obliged to you.”
 
“Now, Resident, I must beg you to excuse me. I must be off at once as I have a number of visits to pay. Good-bye, sir—good-bye, Verstork.”
 
“No excuse required, doctor,” said van Gulpendam, “don’t let me detain you; good-morning!”
 
As soon as the medical officer had disappeared van Gulpendam turned to Verstork and said:
 
“You heard that—didn’t you, Mr. Verstork?”
 
“Oh, yes, I heard it; but my conviction is not the least shaken.”
 
“It is not?”
 
“No, Resident.”
 
“Well, for all that,” said van Gulpendam, airily, “I advise you to heave to.”
 
“To heave to? I don’t understand you,” said Verstork, though all the time he understood perfectly.
 
“I will express my meaning in plainer terms,” returned van Gulpendam, very deliberately, “I advise you, as I have done already, to take back this report and to modify it.”
 
“Why should I do so, Resident? Why do you give me that advice?”
 
“Because, in the first place, the facts mentioned in it are twisted, exaggerated, and represented from a prejudiced and partial point of view.”
 
“Resident!” interrupted Verstork.
 
But without heeding him van Gulpendam went on:
 
“In fact that paper reads like a sensational report, which evidently is aimed at attaining some ultimate object. And then again there occur in it passages which most certainly will be highly displeasing to the Government. Here, for instance, is one of them:”
 
The Resident turned over the leaves of the document, and seemed to be looking for a certain passage; having found it he read as follows: [262]
 
“Allow me also to state that my official career of twelve years has taught me that the opium-monopoly is an imperium in imperio; that in order to promote the opium-trade everything the people loves and honours is trampled upon and trodden under foot. The opium-farmer does not trouble himself in the least about police regulations or about penal statutes, his satellites simply enter people’s houses and violate the right of domicile; his spies and his policemen—at all events the police which he has in his pay—have no scruples whatever, and pay no respect to anything. A European would make himself liable to severe punishment were he to treat the natives in the manner in which the refuse of mankind, if only they are in the opium-farmer’s employ, dares to treat them. These opium-agents have respect neither for the husband, the wife, nor the daughter. In the houses, aye even on the public roads, they strip them, they search them in the most disgusting manner, and never trouble themselves about any protest at all. These scoundrels, sheltering themselves under the impunity which the opium monopoly casts over them, inflict upon the natives the most horrible insults frequently to satisfy their own passions, sometimes merely for the purpose of revenge. A sad proof of this is the treatment to which the Javanese girl, Dalima, has been subjected.”
 
The Resident paused here for an instant and fixed a penetrating glance upon his subordinate; but the latter as steadily returned his gaze.
 
“You see,” he continued, “when I read such rant as that, then I am forced to suspect”—and here the high functionary significantly tapped his forehead with his finger—“that there is something wrong with you here!”
 
“Resident! exclaimed Verstork, “you are forgetting yourself!”
 
“Not at all, my dear sir, for by writing thus, what do you in fact tell me, in so many words? What but this: that in your districts these domiciliary visits and these searches on the high roads are necessary to prevent the illegal sale of opium. You know, even better than I do, that quite lately there have in your districts been several very ugly revelations. I have only to call to your mind the capture at Moeara Tjatjing, the capture at Kaligaweh in the house of Pak Ardjan, and now again smuggled opium is found with Setrosmito and with his daughter Dalima. Suspicions may perhaps have arisen in my mind that Banjoe Pahit is a hot-bed of smuggling; but [263]now your most intemperate language confirms my worst fears.”
 
“Resident!” cried Verstork no longer able to contain himself, “however great is the respect which I am bound to feel for your mature judgment, yet I cannot allow these words of yours to pass without protesting against them. For, in the first place, you insinuate that I have been guilty of neglect of duty with regard to the opium-traffic, and, in the next, you suggest that this neglect of duty on my part has made Banjoe Pahit a hot-bed of the smuggling-trade. I am, however, perfectly well acquainted with the duties which the Order of 1867 imposes upon me, and, allow me to assure you, I am too conscientious to neglect those duties.”
 
“My dear Mr. Verstork, I did not intend——” interrupted van Gulpendam.
 
“Give me leave to continue,” resumed Verstork; “I have been attacked, I now defend myself against your imputations, it is my duty to do so, and I claim it as my right. I positively and utterly deny that Banjoe Pahit is a hot-bed of smuggling.”
 
“Do you intend to tell me then,” cried van Gulpendam, “that no smuggling is carried on there?”
 
“I do nothing of the kind, Resident,” replied Verstork, “were I to do so that would be saying what I know to be untrue. My district lies right along the open and everywhere accessible coast of the............