"But what mortal use is he to me?"
Captain Image's pipe worked hard and he spoke in jerks. "Rubber palaver. Owe-it Slade's the smartest man at dem rubber palaver on the Coast."
"Pooh! That slackster!"
"That's where you're making the usual mistake. Slade's got his faults. He wastes his money, he never pays his bills, he sponges for all eternity, and he makes out he was born lazy. But don't you believe him. Who got Miss Kate all these rubber properties that she's floated off into such whacking big companies?"
"Miss Kate O'Neill."
"No more than you did, me lad. It was just Owe-it Slade. And to think," Captain Image added with a sigh, "I always put that man down as a borrowing waster, and never even hustled him to collect cargo for me. Why, if I'd known then what I know now, I could have bought rubber lands through him, for a half surf boat full of gin, that I might have sold to a company myself, and dined off turkey in my own house ashore every day for all the rest of my natural life. Why, my Christian Aunt! I might even have married, if I'd worked him properly."
Captain Image dabbed with his forefinger on Carter's coat sleeve and left a print of tobacco ash. "You buy up Owe-it Slade, me lad, and not only is your fortune made, but—well," he added rather lamely, "you buy him up and just remember I told you to."
"But—what were you going to say?"
"Well," said Image desperately, "I didn't intend to tell you, but all up and down the Coast, and in the hotels in Las Palmas, and even in the bars and offices here, the boys don't like the way Miss Kate is playing it on you. It's all right for a girl to take to business, if she's built that way, but she ought to play the game. Of course the general idea is, me lad, that you and she started sweet-hearting and had a turn-up, but of course I'm in the know, and I've called 'em dam' liars every time they've started that tale, and told 'em about Laura and how you were fixed up long before Miss Kate came down onto the Coast. Why, Carter-me-lad, I've backed up my words with bets to that extent that if you were to marry the lady now by any kind of accident, I should stand to lose what with one fiver and another, a matter of two hundred and fifty pounds."
Carter laughed. "That puts it finally out of the region of possibility, doesn't it? I can't let you lose a pile like that. But all the same I'm not going to interfere with Miss O'Neill. If Slade's useful to her, let her keep him. I'm much obliged to a lot of officious idiots for sympathizing with me, but really they're moving on a lot too fast. It will be quite time for other people to be sorry for me when I start in to be sorry for myself. Besides, I thought you, at any rate, were a strong admirer of Miss O'Neill's?"