"It's not that!" he shouted. "If it had been, every one would have known it long since. Ching Po got it out of old Dubois. I shook Dubois out of his opium long enough to confirm it. I had to threaten him.--Ching Po's a dirty beast, but, according to the old man he told the truth. Ching Po did want to marry her once. She wouldn't, of course, and he's just been waiting to spike her guns. When he found out she really wanted that impossible Yankee, he said he'd tell. She had hysterics. He waited for her outside the Mauers', hoping, I suppose, it would work out another way. When we appeared, he decided to get his work in. He probably thought she had sent for us. And he was determined no one should stop him from telling. Now do you see? Come on." He pulled at my arm. "In heaven's name, man, _what_ did he tell?" I almost shrieked. "Just the one thing you Yankees can't stand," Follet sneered. "A touch of the tar-brush. She wasn't altogether French, you see. Old Dubois knows her pedigree. Her grandmother was a mulatto, over Penang way. She knew how Stires felt on the subject--a damn, dirty ship-chandler no self-respecting officer deals with--" "None of that!" I said sharply. "He's a good man, Stires. A darned sight too good for the Naapu grafters. A darned sight too good to go native--" Then I stopped, for Follet was hardly himself, nor did I like the look of myself as a common scold. We did not find Stires, and after an hour or two we gave up the search. By dusk, Follet had got to the breaking-point. He was jumpy. I took him back myself to the hotel, and pushed him viciously into Ching Po's arms. The expressionless Chinese face might have been a mask for all the virtues; and he received the shaking burden of Follet as meekly as a sister of charity. I bought some tinned things for my dinner and took my way home. I should not, I felt sure, be interrupted, and I meant to turn in early. Madame Mauer would be telling the tale to her husband; Follet would, of a certainty, be drunk; and Stires would be looking, I supposed, for French Eva. French Eva, I thought, would take some finding; but Stires was the best man for the job. It was certainly not my business to notify any one that night. So I chowed alone, out of the tins, and smoked a long time--alone--in the moonlight. * * * * * It was not Stires, after all, who found her, though he must have hunted the better part of that night. It was three days before she was washed ashore. She was discovered by a crew of fishermen whom she had often beaten down in the way of business. They brought her in from the remote cove, with loud lamentations and much pride. She must have rocked back and forth between the shore and the reef, for when they found her, her body was badly battered. From the cliff above, they said, she looked at first like a monstrous catch of seaweed on the sand Her hair--