“Are you like all these others? By God! I was passing the opium den here a few minutes ago, and I heard Hip Sing say something like that: What have I to do with David? Was I responsible for his death? Any man can come to your front door and kill himself. He was a friend of mine. I didn’t see much of him before he died; I was busy with the vanilla.”
Llewellyn swept us with an inclusive glance.
“Now you fellows have got to stop bringing up this David matter when I come in here, or I’ll quit this club.”
Hallman answered him, spitefully:
“For Heaven’s sake, Llewellyn, I never heard a living soul mention David before, except at first, when there was so much curiosity. You’re bughouse.”
Fung Wah sat there, his small, astute eyes, in a saffron face, fixed alternately upon the speakers, with an appraising grimace but half-veiled. And as he sipped his grenadine syrup and soda water, he admired his three-inch thumbnail, the token of his rise from the estate of a half-naked coolie in Quan-tung to equality with these Taipans, the whites of Tahiti. He may or may not have known what rumors there were, but wanting the good-will of all influential residents in his widening scheme for money-making, he tried to soften the asperities of the interchange:
“Wa’ss mallah, Mis’ Le’llyn?” he asked. “Ev’ybody fliend fo’ you. Nobody makee tlouble fo’ you ’bout Davie. My think ’m dlinkee too muchee, too muchee vahine, maybe play cart, losee too muchee flanc. He thlinkee mo’ bettah finish.”
The words of Fung Wah were poison in the ears of Llewellyn. He leaned forward and, raising his forefinger, pointed it at the Chinese.
“Aue! You hold your damned yellow mouth!” he said huskily. “I’ll get out of the islands if you people keep up this any longer. I’m sick of it all. That old liar Morton has made my good name black in Tahiti. Everybody knows the Llewellyns. God damn him! I ought to have killed him when he threatened me in the Tiare!”
He took my untouched glass of Dr. Funk, and gulped the mixture, nervously. Then he stood up unsteadily.