"Evidently. You don't seem to be much affected." "So long as she's shipped him, that's all right," he drawled. "I can't make out what your interest in the matter is," I suggested. "Sure you can't," Stires began to whistle creakily, and took up some nameless object to repair. "How long is Schneider staying round these parts?" "Not long, I guess. I heard he was leaving on the Sydney packet next week." "So you're only up against Follet?" I pressed him. "I ain't up against anybody. Miss Eva'll settle her own affairs." "Excuse me." And I made the gesture of withdrawing. "Don't get het up under the collar," he protested. "Only I never did like this discussing ladies. She don't cotton to me for some reason. I'm free to say I admire her very much. I guess that's all." "Nothing I can do for you, then?" Stires lighted a pipe. "If you're so set on helping me, you might watch over Ching Po a little." "What is he up to?" "Don't know. But it ain't like him to be sitting round idle when there's harm to be done. He's got something up his sleeve--and a Chink's sleeve's big enough to hold a good-sized crime," he finished, with a grim essay of humor. "Are these mere suspicions on your part, or do you know that something's up?" "Most things happen on Naapu before there's been any time for suspicion," he rejoined, squinting at his pipe, which had stopped drawing. "These folks lie low and sing little songs, and just as you're dropping off there's a knife somewhere.--Have you heard anything about the doings up yonder?" He indicated the mountain that rose, sharply cut and chasmed, back of the town. "Trouble with the natives? No." "This is the time o' year when the heathen begin to feel their oats. Miss Eva, she's interested in their superstitions. They don't usually come to anything--just a little more work for the police if they get drunk and run amuck. The constabulary is mostly off on the spree. They have gods of wood and stone up in the caves yonder, you know. But it's always a kind of uneasy feel to things till they settle down again." I leaned against a coil of rope and pursued the subject. "But none of the people you and I are interested in are concerned with native orgies. We are all what you might call agnostics."