descent, with turned-out, shiny lips.  I found him lying extended on his back in a cane chair, odiously unbuttoned, with a large green leaf of some sort on the top of his steaming head, and another in his hand which he used lazily as a fan . . .  Going to Patusan?  Oh yes.  Stein’s Trading Company.  He knew.  Had a permission?  No business of his.  It was not so bad there now, he remarked negligently, and, he went on drawling, “There’s some sort of white vagabond has got in there, I hear. . . .  Eh?  What you say?  Friend of yours?  So! . . .  Then it was true there was one of these verdammte—­What was he up to?  Found his way in, the rascal.  Eh?  I had not been sure.  Patusan—­they cut throats there—­no business of ours.”  He interrupted himself to groan.  “Phoo!  Almighty!  The heat!  The heat!  Well, then, there might be something in the story too, after all, and . . .”  He shut one of his beastly glassy eyes (the eyelid went on quivering) while he leered at me atrociously with the other.  “Look here,” says he mysteriously, “if—­do you understand?—­if he has really got hold of something fairly good—­none of your bits of green glass—­understand?—­I am a Government official—­you tell the rascal . . .  Eh?  What?  Friend of yours?” . . .  He continued wallowing calmly in the chair . . .  “You said so; that’s just it; and I am pleased to give you the hint.  I suppose you too would like to get something out of it?  Don’t interrupt.  You just tell him I’ve heard the tale, but to my Government I have made no report.  Not yet.  See?  Why make a report?  Eh?  Tell him to come to me if they let him get alive out of the country.  He had better look out for himself.  Eh?  I promise to ask no questions.  On the quiet—­you understand?  You too—­you shall get something from me.  Small commission for the trouble.  Don’t interrupt.  I am a Government official, and make no report.  That’s business.  Understand?  I know some good people that will buy anything worth having, and can give him more money than the scoundrel ever saw in his life.  I know his sort.”  He fixed me steadfastly with both his eyes open, while I stood over him utterly amazed, and asking myself whether he was mad or drunk.  He perspired, puffed, moaning feebly, and scratching himself with such horrible composure that I could not bear the sight long enough to find out.  Next day, talking casually with the people of the little native court of the place, I discovered that a story was travelling slowly down the coast about a mysterious white man in Patusan who had got hold of an extraordinary gem—­namely, an emerald of an enormous size, and altogether priceless.  The emerald seems to appeal more to the Eastern imagination than any other precious stone.  The white man had obtained it, I was told, partly by the exercise of his wonderful strength and partly by cunning, from the ruler of a distant country, whence he had fled instantly, arriving in Patusan in utmost distress, but frightening the people by his extreme ferocity,