"Dash it," said the old man fiercely, "do rouse up and interest yourself in something. What the deuce has a white sultana got to do messing around the Coast factories, especially O'Neill and Craven's? And let me tell that's what's happening." "Is the mythical lady setting everybody by the ears and preparing for a holy something?" "That's the maddening part of it. They all seem to like her. She's stirring up everybody, she's upsetting your factory and mine, she's dragged the man with the red head in adoration to her feet and then spurned him from her, and she's even captured the warm and profane Cappie Image as one of her servitors." "Poof! blarney old Image! Now, that proves you've got onto a fairy tale." Mr. Smith thumped an emphatic fist on the hard stamped floor beside him. "I tell you I have not. The bush telegraph never lies. You may misunderstand it, but if you take time and trouble, and dig deep enough, you'll always come to the truth of things. As sure as we are sweating in this bush village here, there's a white woman on the Coast turning all the business there upside down." "I've got it," said Slade. "K. O'Neill's tired of having all his bright ideas comfortably shelved by you and me, and so his new happy thought is to send his fascinating typewriter out to hand instructions over in person, and wait till they're put through. Your Carter and my Laura would be just the sort of enthusiastic young people to fall in with a scheme like that. But I must say the conquest of Image beats me. It would take a heap more than a hen typewriter to tame Cappie Image-me-lad." "Yes, I thought of all that, but there's one blessed thing that upsets it completely. The Oomsha is making headquarters at the Dutch factory at Mokki, and building a fort there. Now, play on that." "Weather too hot," said Slade. "Whe-ew! I wish the breeze would come." "Dash it, man, think! A white woman building a fort up at Mokki." "Sounds buccaneerish, or I'll tell you what, German." Slade sat up with a sudden spurt of unaccustomed energy and ran the perspiration off his face with a forefinger. "By gad! I didn't think of that, but picture the joys of having a beastly German in at the back of us, with a Government subsidy, and a price-cutting apparatus all complete." "Yes," said Swizzle-Stick Smith grimly, "and also picture to yourself the eminently British Captain Image yielding to the soft blandishments of a German Frau. He'd as soon think of making himself amiable to a gorilla. No, that theory's wrong. The thing stumps me, and I'm sure if it's too big for me, it's outside your size." "Quite so," said Slade, who had dropped back into his normal slackness after the spurt of energy. Then he screwed up his eyes tightly as the hot air was split with a succession of piercing yells and screeches. "Good Lord, what's that?" the old man called out.