Chantel, humming a tune, reached for his helmet, and rose.  He paused, struck a match, and in an empty glass, shielding the flame against the breeze of the punkah, lighted a cigarette.

“Since we have appointed our dictator,” he began amiably, “we may repose—­”

From the landing, without, a coolie bawled impudently for the master of the house.

“Wutzler!” said Heywood, jumping up.  “I mean—­his messenger.”

He was gone a noticeable time, but came back smiling.

“Good news, Gilly.”  He held aloft a scrap of Chinese paper, scrawled on with pencil.  “We need expect nothing these ten days.  They wait for more ammunition—­’more shoots,’ the text has it.  The Hak Kau—­their Black Dog—­is a bronze cannon, nine feet long, cast at Rotterdam in 1607.  He writes, ‘I saw it in shed last night, but is gone to-day.  O.W.’  Gentlemen, for a timid man, our friend does not scamp his reports.  Thorough, rather?  Little O.W. is O.K.”

Chantel, still humming, had moved toward the door.  All at once he halted, and stared from the landward window.  Cymbals clashed somewhere below.

“What’s this?” he cried sharply.  The noise drew nearer, more brazen, and with it a clatter of hoofs.  “Here come swordsmen!”

“To play with you, I suppose.  Your fame has spread.”  Heywood spoke with a slow, mischievous drawl; but he crossed the room quickly.  “What’s up?”

Below, by the open gate, a gay grotesque rider reined in a piebald pony, and leaning down, handed to the house-boy a ribbon of scarlet paper.  Behind him, to the clash of cymbals, a file of men in motley robes swaggered into position, wheeled, and formed the ragged front of a Falstaff regiment.  Overcome by the scarlet ribbon, the long-coated “boy” bowed, just as through the gate, like a top-heavy boat swept under an arch, came heaving an unwieldy screened chair, borne by four broad men:  not naked and glistening coolies, but “Tail-less Horses” in proud livery.  Before they could lower their shafts, Heywood ran clattering down the stairs.

Slowly, cautiously, like a little fat old woman, there clambered out from the broadcloth box a rotund man, in flowing silks, and a conical, tasseled hat of fine straw.  He waddled down the compound path, shading with his fan a shrewd, bland face, thoughtful, yet smooth as a babe’s.

The watchers in the upper room saw Heywood greet him with extreme ceremony, and heard the murmur of “Pray you, I pray you,” as with endless bows and deprecations the two men passed from sight, within the house.  A long time dragged by.  The visitor did not join the company, but from another room, now and then, sounded his clear-pitched voice, full of odd and courteous modulations.  When at last the conference ended, and their unmated footsteps crossed the landing, a few sentences echoed from the stairway.

“That is all,” declared the voice, pleasantly.  “The Chow Ceremonial says, ‘That man is unwise who knowingly throws away precious things.’  And in the Analects we read, ‘There is merit in dispatch.’”