"As you like. Well, the letter goes on to advise us that the next thing America and France and Great Britain are going to gamble over is rubber. Not collected wild rubber, you understand, but rubber estates where the vines can be planted and cultivated. K.'s evidently going in for Company Promoting, and as a preliminary he instructs me to get options of suitable territory. He's got an idea that an uncleared estate on the Coast here, which could grow rubber if it had the chance, can be bought at the rate of a case of gin per thousand acres; and if you've a fancy for untouched bush, and a doubtful title, I daresay that is so." "But one can get a clear title, I suppose, if one takes the trouble?" Mr. Smith's pipe finally refused even to bubble, so he started to clean out its more obvious horrors into Carter's wash basin. He went on between the throes of this nice operation--"Depends who you mean by 'one.' If you're hinting at yourself, I have no doubt you could manage it, because--you're a very painstaking young man, and I'm sure--you see yourself as a partner of K. O'Neill already. Isn't that so?" "That might do when I'm ready, sir," said Carter laughing, "unless I see something better in the meantime. But as a point of fact I wasn't setting up myself as a man to see through the tangle of African land transfer." "If you were referring to me, I shouldn't recommend you to bet on the result, unless the odds are big on your side. And mark you I've been dabbling in West African real estate at intervals for five-and-twenty years"--he pointed to the crown of his bald head--"that's what's worn my hair so thin in places. You get your eye on a piece of land here, you get all the local evidence you can rake up as to who is owner, and you pay that man and put up your buildings. If within the next six months more than three other owners don't turn up with absolutely flawless-looking titles, you'll be lucky. It's a case of pay each of them in turn, or clear out." "But surely there's the alternative of doing neither?" "Certainly, if you can get the Government to back you up, and that's the rarest thing imaginable. You see any land trouble of that kind, whatever the rights or wrongs of it may be, always means a war when the white man refuses either to pay or quit. The local kings and ju-ju men always snap at the chance. Well, we needn't argue this out any further. I know all the districts in at the back here where rubber can be grown, and I shall go off on a trip up country and see what I can do in the way of negotiations. I leave you in charge here at Malla-Nulla. Your particular object in life will have to be keeping down expenses." "You think there will be no trade then?" "Not now the King of Okky has closed the roads," said Smith decisively.