"But lies come easy
to him, I guess. Miss Eva wouldn't be the first he'd fooled."
"Do you know anything about him?"
"Not a thing, except what sticks out all over him. For a man's eyes,
that is. You never can tell what a woman will see."
I left him poking in the dust with his spanner.
I dined that night at Lockerbie's. There was no Mrs. Lockerbie, and it
was a man's party. Follet was there, of course, and Schneider, too, his
teeth and his clothes whiter than the rest of ours. I was surprised to
see Schneider, for Lockerbie had suspected the Teuton of designs on his
very privately and not too authentically owned lagoon. Lockerbie did a
fair business in pearls; no great beauties or values among them, but a
good marketable cheap product. But no one held out very long against any
one on Naapu.
Schneider was drunk before he ever got to Lockerbie's that night. It was
part of the Naapu ritual not to drink just before you reached your
host's house, and that ritual, it soon became evident, Schneider had not
observed. I saw Lockerbie scowl, and Follet wince, and some of the
others stare. I could not help being amused, for I knew that no one
would object to his being in that condition an hour later. The only
point was that he should not have arrived like that.
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