But it
sort of gets on your nerves. And I wouldn't call Naapu straitlaced,
either. Everybody seems to feel called on to liquor up, this time o'
year. If it isn't one pretext it's another. Things folks have been kind
of hesitating over, in the name of morals, they start out and perform,
regardless. The authorities, they get worried because a Kanaka's spree
lands him, like as not, in a blackbirder. Mighty queer craft hang round
at this season. There ain't supposed to be anything doing in these
blessed islands that ain't aboveboard, but 'tisn't as though the place
was run by Americans."
"And I am to watch Ching Po? Where does he come in?"
"I wish't I knew. He makes money out of it somehow. Dope, I suppose. Old
man Dubois ain't his only customer, by a long shot."
"Ching Po isn't likely to go near French Eva, is he? They don't speak,
I've noticed."
"No, they don't. But that Chink's little ways are apt to be indirect.
She's afraid of him--afraid of the dust under her feet, as you might
say."
Stires puffed meditatively at his pipe. Then a piratical-looking
customer intervened, and I left.
Leisurely, all this, and not significant to the unpeeled eye. And then,
within twenty-four hours of the time when I had left Stires, things
began to happen. It was as if a tableau had suddenly decided to become a
"movie.
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