As a matter of fact, Signet was not in the jail.
When I went ashore in mid afternoon, wondering a little why no naked biscuit-beggars or gin swallowers had swum out to bother me that day, I found the trader of Taai sitting on his veranda, blowing puffs of smoke from those fine Manila Club perfectos out into the sunshine. Beside him leaned a shiny, twelve-gauge pump gun which he jostled with an elbow as he bade me by word and gesture to make myself at home.
I'm quite certain I looked the fool. My eyes must have stuck out. Half a dozen times I started to speak. With some vacant, fatuous syllable I tried to break the ice. Strange as it sounds, I was never so embarrassed in my life.—For the trader of Taai, the blatantly obvious proprietor of the island's industry and overlord of its destinies—sitting there before me now with a pump gun touching his elbow—was this fellow Signet.
Till now I don't know precisely what had happened; that is to say, none of the details of the act, horrid or heroic as they may have been. All I seemed to have was a memory of the Dutchman's voice: "Why do you not kill me? Ha-ha-ha! Then you could take my property." And again an echo of his disdainful laughter at that fool, "Ha-ha-ha!" as, on some midnight, he had kicked his dinner guest and his "coolie cotton pants" out into the rain.—Why not, indeed? But who now was the "fool?"
Signet, in the course of the afternoon, brought forth gravely a bill of sale, making over in an orderly fashion to B.R. Signet, New York, U.S.A., the real and personal property of the trading station at Taai, and "signed" in the identical, upright, Fourteenth Street grammar-school script, by "the Dutchman."—I understood Signet. Signet understood me. The thing was not even an attempt at forgery. It was something solely formal—as much as to say: "This is understood to be the basis of our mutual dealings. You will see I am owner of this place."
As for the Dutchman:
"Oh, the Dutchman? Well, he decided to go away. Go home."
Before the incalculable sang-froid of this rail bird, movie usher, alley dodger, and hanger-on at dancing academies, I could not so much as summon up the cheek to ask what he had done with the body. You'll say I ought to have acted; that I ought at least to have got up and left him. That shows two things—first, that you've never been a trader in the islands; second, that you cannot at all comprehend how—well, how stunning he was. Sitting there, a single fortnight removed from cotton pants and the beach, crime-stained, imperturbable, magnificent! Spawn of the White Lights! Emperor of an island! How's that?
"It's a rich island," he impressed upon me with an intention I was yet to plumb. "Dole," he exclaimed, "it's a gold mine!"
"Is—is she here?" I ventured to demand at last.