The less said about Schneider, the better; which means always that there is a great deal to say. In this case, there was perhaps less to say than to surmise. He did not give himself away--to us. Schneider had turned up on a trading schooner from Melbourne, was stopping at the hotel in one of the best rooms, and had a general interest in the potentialities of Naapu. I say potentialities advisedly, for he was not directly concerned, so far as I know, with any existing business there. He frequented everybody, and asked questions in the meticulous German way. He wandered all over the island--islands, I should say, for once or twice I saw him banging off in a creaky motor-boat to the other jewels of the necklace. Guesses as to his real business were free and frequent. He was a pearl-smuggler; the agent of a Queensland planter; a fugitive from justice; a mad scientist; a servant of the Imperial German Government. No one presumed to certitude--which was in itself a tribute to German efficiency. Schneider was blond and brush-haired and thick-lipped; he was unpleasant from the crown of his ill-shaped head to the soles of his ill-shaped shoes; but, though lacking in every charm, he was not sinister. He had seen curious places and amusing things, and could cap most adventures with something relevant; but his type and temperament prevented him from being a "good mixer," and he was not popular. Stires, however, had his own grievance, and his judgment of Schneider went deep. He did not mind the shape of Schneider's skull, or the hint of goose-step in Schneider's gait; but he minded, very much, the kind of interest that Schneider took in French Eva. He told me that, straight, emphasizing his statements with a rusty spanner, which he wielded in a curious, classical way, like a trident. According to him, Schneider was bothering the life out of the girl. "Always asking her to dress up and come over to chow with him at the hotel." And the spanner went down as if Neptune were rebuking the seas. "Does she go?" "No." "Well, then--can't you leave the lady to discourage him in her own way?" "She won't go to the ho-tel, because she hates Ching Po. But she walks out with him Sunday afternoons. He gives her gimcracks." "Then she likes him?" "There's no telling. She's a real lady." And the discouraged Stires beat, with his spanner, a refrain to his involuntary epigram. "She can take care of herself, can't she?" I had watched her deal with a drunken Solomon Islander, and did not see how Schneider could be a match for her. "I don't know." Stires's lazy drawl challenged the sunset. "Anything I can do?" I asked as I rose. "Unless you go in and cut him out," he meditated with a grin. "But I'm not in love with her," I protested. "You might take her to church." But I refused. Philandering was not my forte, and church, in any case, was the last thing I should venture to propose. "Why don't you go in yourself?"