ll it give me indigestion?" At Matadi he asked, "If I drink this
will I die?"

Upsher told him of a feud then existing between the chief of police and
an Italian doctor in the State service. Interested in the outcome only
as a sporting proposition, Upsher declared the odds were unfair, because
the Belgian was using his black police to act as his body-guard while
for protection the Italian could depend only upon his sword-cane. Each
night, with the other white exiles of Matadi, the two adversaries met
in the Cafe Franco-Belge. There, with puzzled interest, Everett watched
them sitting at separate tables, surrounded by mutual friends, excitedly
playing dominoes. Outside the cafe, Matadi lay smothered and sweltering
in a black, living darkness, and, save for the rush of the river, in
a silence that continued unbroken across a jungle as wide as Europe.
Inside the dominoes clicked, the glasses rang on the iron tables, the
oil lamps glared upon the pallid, sweating faces of clerks, upon the
tanned, sweating skins of officers; and the Italian doctor and the
Belgian lieutenant, each with murder in his heart, laughed, shrugged,
gesticulated, waiting for the moment to strike.

"But why doesn't some one DO something?" demanded Everett. "Arrest them,
or reason with them. Everybody knows about it. It seems a pity not to DO
something."

Upsher nodded his head. Dimly he recognized a language with which he
once had been familiar. "I know what you mean," he agreed. "Bind 'em
over to keep the peace. And a good job, too! But who?" he demanded
vaguely. "That's what I say! Who?" From the confusion into which
Everett's appeal to forgotten memories had thrown it, his mind suddenly
emerged. "But what's the use!" he demanded. "Don't you see," he
explained triumphantly, "if those two crazy men were fit to listen to
SENSE, they'd have sense enough not to kill each other!"

Each succeeding evening Everett watched the two potential murderers with
lessening interest. He even made a bet with Upsher, of a bottle of fruit
salt, that the chief of police would be the one to die.

A few nights later a man, groaning beneath his balcony, disturbed his
slumbers. He cursed the man, and turned his pillow to find the cooler
side. But all through the night the groans, though fainter, broke into
his dreams. At intervals some traditions of past conduct tugged at
Everett's sleeve, and bade him rise and play the good Samaritan.
But, indignantly, he repulsed the