--Why not, indeed? But who now was the "fool?"
Signet, in the course of the afternoon, brought forth gravely a bill of
sale, making over in an orderly fashion to B.R. Signet, New York,
U.S.A., the real and personal property of the trading station at Taai,
and "signed" in the identical, upright, Fourteenth Street grammar-school
script, by "the Dutchman."--I understood Signet. Signet understood me.
The thing was not even an attempt at forgery. It was something solely
formal--as much as to say: "This is understood to be the basis of our
mutual dealings. You will see I am owner of this place."
As for the Dutchman:
"Oh, the Dutchman? Well, he decided to go away. Go home."
Before the incalculable sang-froid of this rail bird, movie usher, alley
dodger, and hanger-on at dancing academies, I could not so much as
summon up the cheek to ask what he had done with the body. You'll say I
ought to have acted; that I ought at least to have got up and left him.
That shows two things--first, that you've never been a trader in the
islands; second, that you cannot at all comprehend how--well, how
_stunning_ he was. Sitting there, a single fortnight removed from cotton
pants and the beach, crime-stained, imperturbable, magnificent! Spawn of
the White Lights! Emperor of an island! How's that?
"It's a rich island," he impressed upon me with an intention I was yet
to plumb.
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