The circumstantial evidence I had before me as I walked back to my own
house led inevitably to one verdict. I could almost reconstruct the
ignoble pidgin-splutter in which Ching Po had told Stires, and was even
now telling Follet. The wonder to me was that any one believed the
miserable creature. Truth wouldn't be truth if it came from Ching Po.
Yet if two men who were obviously prepossessed in the lady's favor were
so easily to be convinced by his report, some old suspicions, some
forgotten facts must have rushed out of the dark to foregather with it.
French Eva had been afraid of the Chinaman; yet even Follet had
pooh-poohed her fears; and her reputation was--or had been--well-nigh
stainless on Naapu, which is, to say the least, a smudgy place.
Still--there was only one road for reason to take, and in spite of these
obstacles it wearily and doggedly took it.
Joe, of course, was still absent; and though I was never more in need of
food, my larder was empty. I would not go to Dubois's and encounter
Follet and Ching Po. Perhaps Madame Mauer would give me a sandwich. I
wanted desperately to have done with the whole sordid business; and had
there been food prepared for me at home, I think I should have
barricaded myself there. But my hunger joined hands with a lurking
curiosity.
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