The trip to Papeete from Mataiea by motor-car took only an hour and a half, and I was in another world, on the camphorwood chest at the Tiare hotel, by five o’clock.

“Mais, Brien, you long time go district!” exclaimed Lovaina.  “What you do so long no see you?  I think may be you love one country vahine!”

She rubbed my back, and said that Lying Bill, who had been at the Tiare for luncheon, hoped to sail in two days.  McHenry was to go with us as a passenger on the schooner.  Everybody knew everybody’s business.  Lovaina suddenly bethought herself of a richer morsel of gossip.  She struck her forehead.

“My God! how long you been?  You not meet that rich uncle of David from America?  You not hear about that turribil thing?”

She was on the point of beginning her narrative when the telephone rang, and she was called away.  I knew I would catch the before-dinner groups at the Cercle Bougainville, and walked there, waving my hand or speaking to a dozen acquaintances on the route.  I climbed the steep stairs, and at the first table saw Fung Wah, a Chinese immigrant importer and pearl merchant, with Lying Bill, McHenry, Hallman, and Landers, the latter only recently back from Auckland.  I was immediately aware of the sad contrast with Tautira.  The club-room looked mean and tawdry after so many weeks among the cocoas and breadfruits; the floor, tables, and chairs ugly compared with the grass, the puraus, the roses, and the gardenias, the endearing environment of that lovely village.  The white men before me had as hard, unsympathetic faces as the Asiatic, who was reputed to deal in opium as well as men and women and jewels.

Yet their welcoming shout of fellowship was pleasant, despite a note of derision for my staying so long away from the fleshpots of Papeete.  Pincher and McHenry were themselves lately arrived, but evidently had learned of my absence from Lovaina.

“What did you do?  Buy a vanilla plantation?” asked McHenry.

“Vanilla, hell!” said Hallman, whose harp had one string, “he’s been having his pick of country produce.”

Lying Bill said: 

“Well, you’d better pack your chest for the northern islands to-morrow if you’re goin’ with the Fetia Taiao.  We’11 be off for Atuona and Hallman’s tribe of cannibals nex’ mornin’.”

I sat down and quaffed a Doctor Funk, and then inquired idly: 

“Where’s David?”

“David!” said Hallman.  “For God’s sake! don’t dig into any graves!”

“’E’s a proper ghoul, ’e is,” Lying Bill said sarcastically. “’E thinks you’re a mejum!”

They all stared at me as if I were crazy, and I felt myself in an atmosphere of mystery, in which I had broached a distasteful subject.  I wondered what it could be, but determined to know at all hazards, reckoning on no fine feelings to hurt.

“What is the secret?” I asked.  “I’ve been away a few months, and haven’t heard the news.  Has David run off with Miri or Caroline?”