"Oh, yes. That!" I murmured. "It's got something--something--that
tune.--But how can you remember it?"
"_She_ helps me out. I'm trying to put it in shape."
Indeed, when I left that night and before my oarsmen had got me a
cable's length from the beach I heard the strumming resumed, very
faintly, up in the dark behind the Residence; still tentatively, with,
now and then through the flawless hush of the night, the guiding note of
a woman's voice. (A woman profoundly mystified.)
A rehearsal? For what? For that almost mythical Broadway half around the
bulge of the world? Had the fool, then, not got beyond _that_? Yet?
Here he was, lord of the daughter of a queen, proprietor of a "gold
mine." For Signet was not to be hoodwinked about the commercial value of
Taai. All afternoon and evening, as through the two days following,
while my promised cargo was getting ferried out under the shining
authority of the pump gun, he scarcely let a minute go by without some
word or figure to impress upon me the extent of his "possessions." To
what end?
Well, it all came out in a burst on the third evening, my last there. He
even followed me to the beach; actually, regardless of the Dutchman's
nephew's boots and trouser legs, he pursued me out into the shadows.
"A gold mine! Don't be a damned boob, Dole.
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