"Will he spit it out to Follet?"
"You bet he will. But I've got a kind of a hunch Follet knew all along."
"I'm sure he didn't—whatever it is."
"Well, he does by now. They must be nearly back to the ho-tel. I'm kind of busy this morning"—he waved his hand round that idle scene—"and I guess—"
"Certainly. I'm going now." I spared him the effort of polishing off his lie. The man wanted to be alone with his trouble, and that was a state of mind I understood only too well.
The circumstantial evidence I had before me as I walked back to my own house led inevitably to one verdict. I could almost reconstruct the ignoble pidgin-splutter in which Ching Po had told Stires, and was even now telling Follet. The wonder to me was that any one believed the miserable creature. Truth wouldn't be truth if it came from Ching Po. Yet if two men who were obviously prepossessed in the lady's favor were so easily to be convinced by his report, some old suspicions, some forgotten facts must have rushed out of the dark to foregather with it. French Eva had been afraid of the Chinaman; yet even Follet had pooh-poohed her fears; and her reputation was—or had been—well-nigh stainless on Naapu, which is, to say the least, a smudgy place. Still—there was only one road for reason to take, and in spite of these obstacles it wearily and doggedly took it.
Joe, of course, was still absent; and though I was never more in need of food, my larder was empty. I would not go to Dubois's and encounter Follet and Ching Po. Perhaps Madame Maür would give me a sandwich. I wanted desperately to have done with the whole sordid business; and had there been food prepared for me at home, I think I should have barricaded myself there. But my hunger joined hands with a lurking curiosity. Between them they drove me to Madame Maür's.
The lady bustled about at once to supply my needs. Her husband was still away, and lunch there was not in any proper sense. But she fed me with odd messes and endless cups of coffee. Hunger disappeared leaving curiosity starkly apparent.
"How's Eva?" I asked.
Madame Maür pursed her lips. "She went away an hour ago."