Hawaii - James Michener [323]
But after a while his New England conscience, undaunted by forty-eight years in the tropics, made him reason: "The children must not be left in that contaminated house another minute. Rescue now might save them from the disease, whereas an hour's delay might give it to them," so in the darkness before dawn he led his wife to the Chinese house, gently wakened the children so as not to frighten them, undressed them so that not a shred of their old garments came with them, and carried them into the Whipple home.
When this was done, Dr. Whipple studied his watch and thought: "Nyuk Tsin and her man have had two hours' lead. It will be all right to call the policemen," and he sent a servant after the officials. When they arrived he reported: "Mun Ki has leprosy. We must burn the house and everything in it," and with his own matches he ignited both the Chinese house and the cooking shed. Then, pointing to the Nuuanu Valley, he said, "I think they headed for those hills."
Throughout the morning he expected the police to appear with the two Chinese, but their capture was delayed. The afternoon also passed, and so did the evening, without the Whipple servants' being apprehended. This seemed strange to the doctor, and early next morning he inquired of the police what had happened.
"There's no trace of them," the officers explained.
"I'm sure they went up the Nuuanu," Dr. Whipple assured them.
"If they did, they vanished," the police replied.
An ugly thought came to the doctor and he asked, "Did you look at the foot of the Pali?"
"We thought of suicide," the police assured him, "and we studied the Pali rocks, but they didn't jump."
Day by day the mystery deepened. Nyuk Tsin and her dream-spinning husband had accomplished the miracle Mun Ki had relied upon: they had fled to the mountains and had somehow disappeared. Fortunately, the quack herbalist and his two spies had had the good luck to report Nyuk Tsin's suspicious behavior to the police before Dr. Whipple did: "We are sure she is hiding her husband, who is mai Pake." So they got their reward, and the herbalist often pointed out to his friends: "If I had waited till next morning, the leper would have been gone and I would have received nothing. This proves that it is always best to perform your duty promptly and let the sluggards lie abed lazily till the next convenient day."
At the end of a week the police came again to Dr. Whipple and confessed: "We've been to every grass house between here and the other seacoast. No Chinese. We've been wondering if your servants could have doubled back and gone into hiding somewhere right around here. You spoke of arrangements made by the woman to give her children away. Which families did she choose?"
A minute search of those premises also failed to reveal the fugitives, so the police said, "We are faced by a mystery. Somehow Nyuk Tsin and her husband have made themselves invisible." And so as far as active energy was concerned, the official search for the leper ended.
On the night that Nyuk Tsin led her husband through the Whipple gate, and then turned back to close it lest the dogs escape, she walked rapidly toward the mountains, and as she stepped boldly forth Mun Ki, trailing a few paces behind, could not help seeing her big, unbound feet and