you're only up against Follet?" I pressed him.

"I ain't up against anybody. Miss Eva'll settle her own affairs."

"Excuse me." And I made the gesture of withdrawing.

"Don't get het up under the collar," he protested. "Only I never did
like this discussing ladies. She don't cotton to me for some reason. I'm
free to say I admire her very much. I guess that's all."

"Nothing I can do for you, then?"

Stires lighted a pipe. "If you're so set on helping me, you might watch
over Ching Po a little."

"What is he up to?"

"Don't know. But it ain't like him to be sitting round idle when there's
harm to be done. He's got something up his sleeve--and a Chink's
sleeve's big enough to hold a good-sized crime," he finished, with a
grim essay of humor.

"Are these mere suspicions on your part, or do you know that something's
up?"

"Most things happen on Naapu before there's been any time for
suspicion," he rejoined, squinting at his pipe, which had stopped
drawing. "These folks lie low and sing little songs, and just as you're
dropping off there's a knife somewhere.--Have you heard anything about
the doings up yonder?" He indicated the mountain that rose, sharply cut
and chasmed, back of the town.

"Trouble with the natives? No."

"This is the time o' year when the heathen begin to feel their oats.
Miss Eva, she's interested in their superstitions. They don't usually
come to anything--just a little more work for the police if they get
drunk and run amuck. The constabulary is mostly off on the spree. They
have gods of wood and stone up in the caves yonder, you know. But it's
always a kind of uneasy feel to things till they settle down again."

I leaned against a coil of rope and pursued the subject. "But none of
the people you and I are interested in are concerned with native orgies.
We are all what you might call agnostics."

"Speak for yourself, sir. I'm a Methodist. 'Tain't that they mix
themselves up in the doings. But--well, you haven't lived through the
merry month of May on Naapu. I tell you, this blessed island ain't big
enough to hold all that froth without everybody feeling it. Just because
folks don't know what's going on up yonder it kind of relaxes 'em. I
don't say the Kanakas do anything they shouldn't, except get drunk, and
joy-ride down waterfalls, and keep up an infernal tom-toming. But it
sort of gets on your nerves. And I wouldn't call Naapu straitlaced,
either. Everybody seems to feel called on to