Tales of Chinatown, Sax Rohmer [mobile ebook reader .TXT] 📗

“Stop when we pass the next lamp and give me a light for my pipe.”

“Why?”

“No! don't look round,” warned my companion. “I think someone is following us. And it is always advisable to be on guard in this neighbourhood.”

We had nearly reached the house in Wade Street, Limehouse, which my friend used as a base for East End operations. The night was dark but clear, and I thought that presently when dawn came it would bring a cold, bright morning. There was no moon, and as we passed the lamp and paused we stood in almost total darkness.

Facing in the direction of the Council School I struck a match. It revealed my ruffianly looking companion—in whom his nearest friends must have failed to recognize Mr. Paul Harley of Chancery Lane.

He was glancing furtively back along the street, and when a moment later we moved on, I too, had detected the presence of a figure stumbling toward us.

“Don't stop at the door,” whispered Harley, for our follower was only a few yards away.

Accordingly we passed the house in which Harley had rooms, and had proceeded some fifteen paces farther when the man who was following us stumbled in between Harley and myself, clutching an arm of either. I scarcely knew what to expect, but was prepared for anything, when:

“Mates!” said a man huskily. “Mates, if you know where I can get a drink, take me there!”

Harley laughed shortly. I cannot say if he remained suspicious of the newcomer, but for my own part I had determined after one glance at the man that he was merely a drunken fireman newly recovered from a prolonged debauch.

“Where 'ave yer been, old son?” growled Harley, in that wonderful dialect of his which I had so often and so vainly sought to cultivate. “You look as though you'd 'ad one too many already.”

“I ain't,” declared the fireman, who appeared to be in a semi-dazed condition. “I ain't 'ad one since ten o'clock last night. It's dope wot's got me, not rum.”

“Dope!” said Harley sharply; “been 'avin' a pipe, eh?”

“If you've got a corpse-reviver anywhere,” continued the man in that curious, husky voice, “'ave pity on me, mate. I seen a thing to-night wot give me the jim-jams.”

“All right, old son,” said my friend good-humouredly; “about turn! I've got a drop in the bottle, but me an' my mate sails to-morrow, an' it's the last.”

“Gawd bless yer!” growled the fireman; and the three of us—an odd trio, truly—turned about, retracing our steps.

As we approached the street lamp and its light shone upon the haggard face of the man walking between us, Harley stopped, and:

“Wot's up with yer eye?” he inquired.

He suddenly tilted the man's head upward and peered closely into one of his eyes. I suppressed a gasp of surprise for I instantly recognized the fireman of the Jupiter!

“Nothin' up with it, is there?” said the fireman.

“Only a lump o' mud,” growled Harley, and with a very dirty handkerchief he pretended to remove the imaginary stain, and then, turning to me:

“Open the door, Jim,” he directed.

His examination of the man's eyes had evidently satisfied him that our acquaintance had really been smoking opium.

We paused immediately outside the house for which we had been bound, and as I had the key I opened the door and the three of us stepped into a little dark room. Harley closed the door and we stumbled upstairs to a low first-floor apartment facing the street. There was nothing in its appointments, as revealed in the light of an oil lamp burning on the solitary table, to distinguish it from a thousand other such apartments which may be leased for a few shillings a week in the neighbourhood. That adjoining might have told a different story, for it more closely resembled an actor's dressing-room than a seaman's lodging; but the door of this sanctum was kept scrupulously locked.

“Sit down, old son,” said my friend heartily, pushing forward an old arm-chair. “Fetch out the grog, Jim; there's about enough for three.”

I walked to a cupboard, as the fireman sank limply down in the chair, and took out a bottle and three glasses. When the man, who, as I could now see quite plainly, was suffering from the after effects of opium, had eagerly gulped the stiff drink which I handed to him, he looked around with dim, glazed eyes, and:

“You've saved my life, mates,” he declared. “I've 'ad a 'orrible nightmare, I 'ave—a nightmare. See?”

He fixed his eyes on me for a moment, then raised himself from his seat, peering narrowly at me across the table.

“I seed you before, mate. Gaw, blimey! if you ain't the bloke wot I giv'd the pigtail to! And wot laid out that blasted Chink as was scraggin' me! Shake, mate!”

I shook hands with him, Harley eyeing me closely the while, in a manner which told me that his quick brain had already supplied the link connecting our doped acquaintance with my strange experience during his absence. At the same time it occurred to me that my fireman friend did not know that Ah Fu was dead, or he would never have broached the subject so openly.

“That's so,” I said, and wondered if he required further information.

“It's all right, mate. I don't want to 'ear no more about blinking pigtails—not all my life I don't,” and he sat back heavily in his chair and stared at Harley.

“Where have you been?” inquired Harley, as if no interruption had occurred, and then began to reload his pipe: “at Malay Jack's or at Number Fourteen?”

“Neither of 'em!” cried the fireman, some evidence of animation appearing in his face;