man--you, my dear sir, a common street snipe.
What would a woman like that, with that novel, impassioned, barbaric,
foreign dance, be worth to a man on your Broadway? Eh? But obstacles!
Obstacles! You have her not on Broadway. It is too many thousand miles,
and you have no money. But see, if you were a man to grasp things, a man
to 'hit the nail in the head,' to 'boost,' to 'go big'--then would not a
man like me, who turns everything to gold--would he not say to you
quickly enough, 'See here, my dear sir, but let me put so much money
into the undertaking myself?'"

Under the explosions of cigar smoke, Signet continued to hold the trader
with his eyes; seemed to consume him with the fixed, dry fire of his
gaze. Not fathoming, as with a singular intuition I had fathomed, the
profound purposes of the Dutchman, Signet saw only the implied promise
in his words.--The trader broke out once more with a sardonic and
calculated spleen:

"But, no! Obstacles! A sniveling little animal sees only obstacles. The
obstacle not to be mounted over--those three husbands. There they lie
tonight on Nakokai's platform--this beautiful, incredible 'Queen
Daughter'--this gold goddess of the 'Shame Dance'--and about her those
three husbands. Ah, my dear sir, but their big, lithe muscles! That is
too much! To imagine them leaping up at the alarm in the moonlight, the
overpowering and faithful husbands. No, he cannot put out his hand to
take the gift. _Pah!_ He is a criminal in nature, but he is afraid of
the police, even here. He is not a man for the big life in these
islands. He will never do anything. Those faithful, strong watch-dogs of
husbands! Those strong, destructive muscles! Dear, good God, that is too
much to think of--Look, my dear sir!"

He was speaking to me, as if Signet were less than the very pebbles at
the step. He got up, striking the floor heavily with his boots, and I
followed him into the house, where he took a lighted candle from a
stand. Buried in our shadows, silent footed, Signet pursued us as the
trader had meant him to do. I persist in saying that I perceived the
thing as a whole. From the first I had divined the maneuver of the
Dutchman.

"Look!" he repeated, flinging open a door and thrusting in the candle to
cast its light over ranks and ranges of metal. It was the gun room of
the Residence. Here dwelt the law. Shotguns, repeating rifles, old-style
revolvers, new, blue automatics. An arsenal!

"Big brown muscles