“Now Gulpie, that is my secret. You will see, the opium contract will produce four or six hundred thousand more. Don’t therefore let us have any troubling about it before the time. Now let us change the subject. How is it,” she continued, “that you took so coolly what I just now told you about Anna? about Anna, you know, and van Nerekool?”
“Come,” said the Resident, “let us have our breakfast, Anna is not coming down it seems, and I have no time to spare.”
“All right,” said his wife, “let us have breakfast, but that will not, I hope, prevent you from answering my question?”
Van Gulpendam shook his head.
“Pass the coffee, nènèh,” said Laurentia to her maid Wong Toewâ.
When the two cups of fragrant coffee stood before the pair, and each had cut a piece of bread, had buttered it, and spread upon it a thin slice of smoked venison, the lady, still anxious to have her answer, asked:
“Well now, Gulpie dear?”
“If I am ever to succeed in getting more out of the opium contract,” said he musingly, “I shall probably want van Nerekool’s help.”
“His help? What? for the opium contract?” said Laurentia, with an innocent smile, as if she understood nothing at all about the matter.
“Just listen to me,” replied her husband. “If Lim Ho, in that matter, you know, of Ardjan, should be found guilty and condemned—why, then, his father Lim Yang Bing must, of course, be excluded from the competition altogether.”