THE DUMPLING

THE OPIUM DEN.

THE DUMPLING

A DETECTIVE LOVE STORY
OF A GREAT LABOUR RISING

BY

COULSON KERNAHAN

Author of

"GOD AND THE ANT," Etc.

Illustrated by

STANLEY L. WOOD

New York

B.W. DODGE AND COMPANY

1907

Copyright, 1906

By WILLIAM T. BELDING

NEW YORK

Copyright, 1907

B.W. DODGE AND COMPANY

NEW YORK

To

Lord and Lady Northcliffe:

WITH SINCERE REGARD.

29, Cannon Place,
Brighton
June 6th, 1906.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

[ In the Opium Den Frontispiece ]
[ "There peered through a broken pane of glass ... the white and wicked face of the Dumpling." ]
[ "The Dumpling was making a desperate dash for liberty" ]
[ "I fell back in incredulous horror" ]

THE DUMPLING.

PROLOGUE.

It was an impudent thing to do!

No matter how scorching the July sun, no matter how alluring the thought of paddling out to ascertain whether the richly wooded lake-side looked equally lovely from the water; no matter how cunningly old Satan had spread his snare of mischief "for idle hands to do," by guiding me to the very spot where the little boat lay moored at the water's edge; no matter with what sophistry these, and many other excuses which I pleaded to a pricking conscience, seemed to mitigate the offence, the fact remains that I acted in a way which was as impudent as it was unpardonable.

The owner of the property generously allowed the public to use a particular footpath through the park. Hence my offence in straying from the permitted footpath and in exploring unpermitted copses and woodlands, until I came to this beautiful sheet of water, was for that very reason all the more graceless and heinous.

But in July, when the holiday spirit is in one's blood, and when all the world is holiday-making with us, the conventionalities exist only to be set aside. Chaste matrons who, in chill December, would consider that to exhibit more than two inches of stocking above the ankle would be to pass the high-water mark of propriety, and even, to save a new skirt from being muddied, would hesitate to hitch that garment higher by another inch, will, in demoralising July, discard these same stockings altogether, and disport and display themselves, knee-bare, with never a blush, upon the beach at Margate or at Brighton.

And I who, when in my proper mind and in dress-coated, white-chokered garb, would not so much as pass a lady in the stalls of a theatre without first apologising for troubling her and asking for her permission, acted on this occasion, and under the demoralising spell of holiday-making and midsummer madness, as any other bounder would act on a Bank Holiday. No hand had pulled aside the drawn lodge-blind to gaze at the intruder as I entered the park gates; no surly keeper had pointed me to a notice board, warning all and sundry that the public must keep to the footpath, as I strolled along; no tradesman's cart had rattled briskly up the drive to receive or to deliver orders; and when between an avenue of trees I caught a glimpse of the house, it looked so shuttered and sleepy, that I was persuaded "the family"—whoever the family might be—was away, and that none would come to warn me of my trespass. Then the path I had taken, between the trees, had led me down to the water's edge and to the very spot where the boat lay moored.

Thrusting conscience and the conventionalities aside, I seated myself and sculled lightly out to the middle of the lake. For a good half-hour I pulled hither and thither as my fancy prompted, and as the various views to be obtained from the water seemed most alluringly to open; and then, shipping the sculls, I lay down full length in the bottom of the boat, my arm under my head as a pillow, and my face turned skyward to the sun.

I suppose I must have dropped off into a doze, from which I was aroused by a slight rippling of the water. Being only half awake I did not trouble myself greatly about the matter. "A swan passing," I murmured sleepily; "or possibly a water-rat or moor-hen. Let 'em pass. They're quite welcome, and I'm too comfortable to stir."

But stirred I soon was, and to some purpose. Had my boat been lying at the wooded lake-side, instead of in the centre of this beautiful sheet of water, I should have thought at first that a wind-blown branch of July's own roses had dipped down to rest her unopened blossoms upon the frail craft's side. For suddenly, upon the gunwale of the boat—just as if a handful of blush rose-buds had shyly peeped over—there appeared four of the tiniest, daintiest, most exquisitely tapered finger-tips that ever were seen upon mortal hand. Pink, petite, faultlessly formed and finely proportioned, with pearly, oval nails, as symmetrically cut, as perfectly set and polished as rare opals, the finger-tips upon which I looked were so lovely that a king might have craved, as a royal boon, permission to stoop his lips to kiss them. In all the wide world I was ready to swear there was only one other set of finger-tips as beautiful, and the very next instant that other set, like love-bird hastening to perch beside its mate, was laid upon the edge of the boat, which now began to rock sideways, as if someone in the water were working up impetus for a spring.

"Lazy bones! lazy bones! Wake up! wake up!" cried a merry voice; and then—Venus rising from the foam was not half so beautiful—there bobbed up, framed in clinging golden hair, at the side of the boat, the fairest young face, the most lovely head and neck and shoulders I have ever seen.

My awakening had come; and the whole thing had happened so suddenly that I do not know which of us was more surprised. All I do know is that the shame and consternation on her face at seeing me were so comic that, but for my anxiety to spare her blushes, I should have laughed outright. Small time, however, had I to laugh; small time had she to blush; for, in her dismay, she suddenly let go her hold of the edge of the boat, which, released from her weight, rolled over like a turning porpoise, as neatly tilting me out of the other side and into the water as if I had been a left crust shaken out of an up-gathered tablecloth by a housewife's hand.

That those who begin by playing the fool generally end by finding the fat in the fire is proverbial. In making free with other folk's property I had behaved not only like a fool, but like a mannerless schoolboy; and now, if the fat could not exactly be said to be in the fire, the fool was undoubtedly in the water. Fortunately for this particular fool he happened to be an expert swimmer, or my silly holiday escapade might have ended tragically for my fair capsizer as well as for myself. She, however, showed herself as what, in sporting parlance, is known as "a good pluck'd 'un."

A moment's hysterical screaming and frantic beating of the water may be passed by as no more than a concession to her sex, an acknowledgment of a woman's weakness, and can in no way be said to detract from the courage which she afterwards displayed. In the next instant she had grabbed me (somewhat painfully for me, I admit) by the hair, and manfully—if I may use that word of a woman—raising my head out of the water, had gasped agitatedly, "Can you swim?"

I do not deny that I behaved abominably. I was already as over head and eyes in love with this peerless Lady of the Lake as I had a moment ago been over head and ears in water; and to swim unromantically ashore, there perhaps to be handed over to the care of the local constable, with the prospect of being brought up before my fair capsizer's father (who was very possibly a magistrate) as a common trespasser, if not as a common thief, did not appeal to me as either romantic or as likely to further my suit. But to appear to owe my life to her, to be in a position to hail her as a heroine and as my preserver, and myself henceforth and for ever her grateful and adoring slave, who, even if he devoted all his remaining years to her service, could never hope to repay her for thus snatching him from a watery grave—to do this was to put myself in a very different light. Were I to admit that I could swim, she would, without the shadow of a doubt, haughtily point me in one direction, while she with equal haughtiness would swim away in the other. But to proclaim myself no swimmer, and consequently helpless, would constitute an appeal to her womanhood which she, being clearly an expert in the water, could not and would not refuse. To do so would at once establish a relationship between us more intimate than I could hope to attain in a twelvemonth spent or misspent in meeting her at her own home (even could I get invited there), or at the houses of mutual acquaintances, supposing such mutual acquaintances to exist. Frankly, I would have pawned my soul for another five minutes in her company. To speak the unpalatable truth meant that the five minutes would undoubtedly be denied me;—meant that she and I must part, never perhaps to meet again. To lie, meant not only making that coveted five minutes my own, but possibly meant more—immeasurably, infinitely more, than this. The thought of what that lie might mean, might win for me, turned my love-sick soul well-nigh delirious. It might mean (and to one man, at least, on earth Paradise seemed possible again) that a hand so soft, so delicate that I could have crushed a dozen such hands in my own huge grasp as easily as one crumples up a score of rose-leaves, yet so fateful for all its feebleness that, even as easily as one could crush the rose-leaves, so more easily could that tiny hand crush and kill the joy which was upspringing in my heart;—a hand so small that it could not span the half of my wrist, yet could hold the whole of my hopes and my heaven—a lie might mean that this tiny hand would for full five paradisiacal minutes be given into my care and keeping, while its owner should be my guardian angel, a wingless angel in a bathing dress, to guide me safely ashore!

Which was it to be—Truth or Falsehood?

"Speak the truth and you'll shame the Devil!" thundered Duty.

"Tell a falsehood, and you won't make a fool of yourself," whispered Desire.

Unhesitatingly I plumped for falsehood.

"I can't swim a stroke," I said.

We got ashore—or nearly so, at least; and that I in no way assisted to accelerate the journey will be plain, as the phrase goes, to the meanest intelligence.

But sit down in cold blood—if not, fortunately as I was then, in wet clothes—to describe that elysian passing, I may not.

Spirit readers of mine—if spirit readers of mortal book there be—who have been borne on angel pinions to heaven, may be able to enter into my feelings at being thus wafted through magic waters by an angel hand. Gross mortals of flesh and blood may not. But spirit readers have this advantage over me—that whereas they, at the end of their journey, saw the gates of Heaven open, I, at the end of mine, saw the gates of Paradise too rudely closed.

When we were some ten yards from the shore, and while I was rehearsing to myself the touching scene of our landing—I falling on my knees before her, and, in a voice which I intended doing my best to make appear broken with emotion, calling the heavens to witness that but for her I should now be weltering in my grave (I was not exactly sure what "weltering" meant, but it sounded wet and weedy and watery, and, as Milton had used the word in a similar sense, it could not be far wrong)—she, her beautiful eyes suffused with tears, one or two of which, I arranged, should drop upon my upturned worshipping face, would then bend over me and, laying a hand tenderly on my head, would sob, "My poor fellow! Do not give way. You are safe. The danger is past!"—while I was rehearsing this pretty and touching picture, she suddenly stopped. Thus far she had been swimming, and swimming strongly on her breast, striking out with her left arm and supporting my head with her right. Now, as I say, she stopped, and I feared that she was becoming exhausted.

"Put down your feet," she said, "and see if you can feel the ground."

I did so, and found that we were in water sufficiently shallow to allow me to stand upright with my chin well above the surface.

"Yes," I said, "we're safe. My feet are on the ground. How can I ever thank you? How can——"

"Then wade the rest of the way," she cut me short, cruelly. "Don't trespass any more! Don't take boats that don't belong to you, and don't get out of your depth again until you have learned to swim."

The next instant she had dived under and was gone, the flick of her tiny heels, as they came together when she threw them up, seeming like the snap of a derisive finger in my face.

Feeling, and looking, more foolish than I remember ever to have felt and looked before, I waded clumsily to the bank, telling myself, by way of comfort, that her curt dismissal and her sharp words were the result only of the inevitable reaction which comes after a time of tension and nerve strain. But from a clump of rushes, behind which I had reason to think my late rescuer lay hidden, came a sound suspiciously like suppressed laughter; and in somewhat of a temper—for no one likes to be ridiculed by a beautiful woman—I clambered up the bank, an ungainly figure, on all fours.

Again came that rippling music from behind the rushes; so, with a very scarlet face, and with as upright a carriage of head and body as I could assume—a carriage, which I may say for the benefit of the reader was intended to express wounded dignity, but which I had a sneaking suspicion savoured more of self-conscious stiffness and injured pride—I walked angrily away, some verses by Austin Dobson running in my head:

"And that's how I lost her—a jewel,
Incognita—one in a crowd,
Nor prudent enough to be cruel,
Nor worldly enough to be proud."

"Only my Incognita," I said to myself as I entered the hotel, "is 'prudent enough to be cruel' and 'worldly enough to be proud.' Never mind! I've found her, and by heaven! if mortal man can do it, I'll win her yet. How lovely she looked! How divinely lovely! And was there ever a woman since the world began with such beautiful hands?"

At this point my meditations were interrupted by the entrance of the waiter with an express letter in his hand for me, marked "Very Urgent."

It was from the editor of the Charing Cross Magazine.

"Dear Mr. Rissler," it ran. "Waldorf, the American millionaire, has bought the magazine. He's got a friend who has done some rather bad drawings of what he thinks looks like the inside of an Opium Den. But the chief has bought them, and has promised his friend to have an article written up to them, to go into the next number.

"You're the man to do it, and I want you to come back by first train, so as to root out an East End Opium Den this very night, and let us have copy to-morrow. Don't fail."

"H'm!" I said to myself, twiddling the letter between my fingers. "What a nuisance! I shall never rest till I have found out all about my Lady of the Lake, and I meant to have begun investigations this very night. But a poor devil of a writer of magazine articles and detective stories can't afford to offend the powers that be—especially so influential an editor as Harrison, or so wealthy a proprietor as Waldorf. So to London I must go, worse luck: to London I must go!"

Within half an hour I had changed my clothes, packed, paid my bill, and was in the train.

"Good-bye, my lovely Lady Disdain, my dear and lovely Lady of the Lake," I said, kissing my hand in the direction of my late escapade, as we puffed out of the station; "or rather au revoir, for soon, very soon, we shall meet again."

CHAPTER I.

THE OPIUM DEN.

I did not half like the look of things.

Of the two Chinamen who were placidly smoking opium in a corner of the opium den I had no fear. Though their bodies lay immovable as logs, the eyes of these Chinamen turned continually in their sockets, following my movements about the room. But they were merely idly curious, not threatening, in the intentness of their stare. They reminded me of pigs lolling on a muck-heap in the sunshine, too lazy to move, too lazy almost to blink, but keeping meanwhile a watchful eye upon the movements of an intrusive terrier.

What I did not like was the curious behaviour of the half-dozen men whom I had found knocking their heads together in a corner when I had entered. My appearance upon the scene had caused them to start apart so guiltily that I was convinced the conference they were holding was for no good purpose; and when, after a few whispered words, two of them stole softly out, and stationed themselves at the foot of the staircase as if to cut off my retreat, while two others got between me and the door, I could not but feel uneasy.

The two who remained—one of whom seemed to be the leader of the gang—were now holding a conference, the subject of which was evidently myself, and, judging by the lowering looks they cast in my direction, they were not about to move a resolution according me a vote of welcome.

On my road from Poplar Station to Limehouse Causeway I had not passed a single policeman, and no one, except the old negro to whom I had offered a couple of shillings if he would take me to a place where they "smoked the opium," had seen me enter the house. Accepting my offer, he had turned at right angles out of Limehouse Causeway, and walked for some distance till we came to a narrow court.

Out of this he had piloted me at right angles into another narrower and quite unlighted court, blocked up at the end by lath palings, and so forming a cul-de-sac. At the darkest and farthest corner he had stopped in front of what appeared to be an unlighted house, and pushing open a door which led into a dark and evil-smelling passage, had said: "In thar, sah!" had spat upon and pocketed my florin, and taken himself off.

I entered, and encountering no one, groped my way along the passage until it ended at a closed door, with a staircase immediately on the right. In my groping I chanced to put my fingers upon the handle. Turning it, I pushed open the door, and found myself in what seemed like a disused kitchen. There was a dresser along one side, and a copper for boiling clothes stood in a corner. The only light came from a small window opening upon a yard, and as the room was practically empty and unfurnished, I tiptoed out, and, closing the door silently, made my way up the staircase to the first landing. Here were two doors, under each of which a chink of feeble light was to be seen. I knocked at the nearest door, and receiving no answer, turned the handle. It was locked, but a scuffling noise within, and the prompt extinguishing of the light, told me that the room was not untenanted. Knocking at the second door, a gruff voice commended me so whole-heartedly and enthusiastically to the care and protection of one who, in polite circles, goes generally unmentioned, that, not desiring the further acquaintance of the party or parties on the other side of the door, I continued my way upstairs.

On the second landing was a window, immediately below which was the small walled-in yard that I had seen from the kitchen, and beyond this a patch of waste land. Just then the moon, which, like a cruiser with "lights down," had been gliding silently and unseen across the dark sea of the sky, came out for a moment from behind the clouds to sweep her searchlight over this enclosed patch of ground, as over alien waters; and, in the white surprise of the searchlight, I saw that dead cats, cabbage stalks, and offal of all sorts were rotting and festering on the unsavoury spot, and that beyond, on the other side of a dilapidated fence, was the river.

"From the point of view of a criminal," I said to myself, "this staircase offers unique advantages. For the committal of a crime, here, surely, is a vantage ground which is ideal and ready-made to hand. A stranger, ascending the staircase, as I am, in the dark, could be knocked on the head with impunity, and nobody be the wiser. Under cover of night, the body could be dropped out of the window, conveyed across that fever-breeding piece of waste land, and hoisted over yonder fence into the river. In an hour a corpse would be borne miles away from the scene of the crime, leaving never so much as a trace behind to tell how, and by whose hand, it came there."

The thought was not reassuring; and when, the next instant, I arrived at the topmost landing, and, on opening a door and entering the den, saw two evil-looking rascals hurry out to cut off my retreat by the staircase, while two others got between me and the door, as already described, I began to realise that the hospitality which seemed likely to be pressed upon me would not be of the nature of an invitation to stay to tea.

Just at this moment I was aware of a dull noise in the distance. There was a slight but ever-increasing vibration in the boards beneath me, a gathering rumble and roll as of approaching thunder, and with a hoarsely discordant shriek, an ear-splitting babel-tumult and roar, which seemed to shake the house to its foundations, an express train hurtled by, almost outside the very windows.

Under the present condition of electric communication, and with no apparatus, the sending of a telephonic message for help to the police office would have been scarcely less impossible of accomplishment than making known my present danger to anyone on board the train; yet so unreasoning are we in the causes which arouse or allay our nervousness, that the consciousness of my near presence to the railway did more to bolster up my courage than all my philosophy. "With the trains and their living freights so near at hand, I don't feel altogether cut off from the outside world," I said to myself; and as the two men in the corner were still whispering together, I plucked up heart to take stock of my surroundings.

The den was lit by a single paraffin lamp, to the unassisted industry of which I was at first inclined to ascribe the vile atmosphere of the place.

"That light we see is burning in my hall.
How far that little candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world,"

says Portia. The light which I saw burning in the den did not shed its beams very far; but in the matter of shedding smells in a world, nice or naughty, I judged its capacity at a low estimate as forty horse-power! An ordinary motor-car, in its most perfumed moments, leaves trailing clouds of glory and cherry blossom in its wake compared to that lamp's distribution of oily odours on the atmosphere.

Add to this the insufferable and sickening stench of opium—a stench which I can only compare to a choice blending of onions and bad tobacco—and the reader will not wonder when I say that my stomach signalled for full speed astern, by retching rebelliously under my breast-bone.

Greasy as was the atmosphere, the dirty yellow distempering of the walls was in places even greasier. The chief articles of furniture were two raised mattresses, the bare wall behind them being literally coated with dirt and grease, rubbed from the chaste persons and fastidious clothes of many smokers. Above these mattresses a crudely coloured and revolting representation of the Crucifixion was incontinently fastened, and upon the mattresses lay the Chinamen of whom I have already spoken.

Of the two men still whispering in the corner, the leader was of singular appearance. In figure he was dumpy and comfortably rounded, which was, I suppose, the reason of the nickname, "The Dumpling," which I afterwards heard applied to him. His neck was so short, and his huge head was set so closely upon his high shoulders, and thrust forward so prominently, as almost to suggest the hunchback. But if the figure was grotesque, the clean-shaven face was striking and powerful. It was absolutely grey in hue, like the face of a dead or dying man; but so far from being spare and haggard, as one would have expected from so unhealthy and colourless a complexion, the face, like the neck, was full, and the features of the fleshly aquiline type. The forehead was high and intellectual, but the eyes were his most singular feature. Accustomed as I am, as the phrase goes, "to read character," this man utterly baffled me, for the eyes of two totally different men looked out from the same head. On the occasion of which I am speaking his eyes, when they rested upon me, seemed the incarnation of all that is cunning, cruel, treacherous. Yet in the eyes of this same man, as I came to know him thereafter, I have seen the most singular and gentle melancholy.

Even on this eventful evening, when I saw him at his worst, his eyes, as he turned from me to the fellow to whom he was speaking, and for whom he seemed to entertain something like affection, softened as if in response to some inner workings of his mind, and I saw in their depths a dumb, inarticulate look like that one sees sometimes in the eyes of a dog.

As he was talking he turned suddenly—perhaps because of something which his companion had said—and looked me straight in the eyes. I shall no doubt be laughed at when I say that I was suddenly seized by the most singular sense of helplessness. My powers seemed paralysed at their centre. Minded as I was to struggle or to cry out against the influence he was exerting upon me, I could do neither. Then—whether the result of mesmerism or of thought suggestion on his part, or of a sort of second sight on mine, I cannot say; but I saw, as in a tableau, myself lying helpless upon my back, with this man kneeling on my chest, his eyes looking into mine as they were looking now, and an upraised knife in his hand.

What could it mean?

I am not a nervous, neurotic person, but a healthy, normal, open-air being, who has never dabbled in the mysteries of spiritualism, hypnotism, second-sight, or clairvoyance; nor had such tableaux as I saw when looking into this man's eyes ever before presented themselves to me.

For a moment he held me thus, and then there was the sound of a laugh. Whether it was the man then standing before me in the opium den who thus laughed, or whether it was the man I had seen kneeling on my chest, a knife in his hand and my life at his mercy, I do not know, and matters nothing, for the face was the same. Then suddenly he turned from me, another being altogether.

"No, don't, old man; think of the risk you run," I heard him say to his friend, laying a hand affectionately on the other's shoulder, those inscrutable eyes of his—all the cunning and cruelty gone—becoming liquid and appealing.

But to myself I said: "One day—perhaps within the next hour, perhaps to-morrow, perhaps in the far future—this man, knife in hand, will kneel over my prostrate and helpless figure, as I saw him kneel just now; and when that moment comes—come it to-night, to-morrow, or come it ten years hence—one of us two must leap the barrier which fences this world from the next, ere he shall escape. Which of us two shall it be? And when shall that moment come?"

As I so spoke the two men turned to me. Evidently they had arrived at some decision, and that they meant to do me a mischief, if not to murder me outright, I knew as surely as if someone had whispered their plans in my ear. Once again their leader fixed me with his eyes. Once again I was conscious of the same strange feeling of helplessness; and once again figures shaped themselves before me as in a tableau. Two men were lying in wait on a dark staircase to brain yet another man—myself—as he groped his way out.

CHAPTER II.

THE MAN WITH THE PICTURE-EYES.

"Good evening."

It was the leader of the gang who had spoken, smiling and rubbing his hands softly the one on the other, as pleased, apparently, as any purring cat.

"Good evening," I responded curtly.

"May we ask to what we owe the pleasure of your presence here?" he continued suavely, but watching me closely meanwhile.

"My presence here?" I said, as if surprised by the question. "Why shouldn't I come here, any more than you? It is a public place, isn't it? And I came here to smoke opium, as you and your friends have done, I suppose; just as one goes to a tavern for a glass of beer."

"Not at all," he replied. "This is a private house, just as much as your own house is, and you have no more right to force your way into it, than I have to force myself into yours. You stand in the position of a trespasser. For all I know to the contrary, you may even be what in America they call an area sneak-thief, except for the fact that you have sneaked your way to the top of the house instead of to the area. May I ask who directed you here? I must ask, for I insist upon having an answer."

"'Must' and 'insist' are not palatable words or pleasant," I said; "but I don't know that I have any objection to tell you. It was a negro match-seller whom I saw outside Poplar Station. I offered him two shillings if he would take me to an opium den, and it was to this house he led me."

"Ah! A negro match-seller, and outside Poplar Station. Oh, yes. I think I know the fellow. We must look into this."

He stopped to cast a sidelong glance at the other man, who nodded and, walking to the door, stood whispering to his two confederates outside. Fearing that they were planning to attack me from behind, I twisted my head slightly so as to keep half an eye and the whole of an ear towards them, but not so much so as not to have the other eye open to any movement of their leader, who was still in the room. As he was silent, I was now able to give both ears to the whispering outside; but what it was about I could not for all the sharpness of my hearing make out, except for the fact that I distinctly caught the words "Black Sam."

Then, greatly to my relief, the two men, with whom the fellow at the door was whispering, nodded and took their departure, clumping heavily down the staircase to the second landing, to the first, and thence to the door. Here I distinctly heard a sound as of the letting go of a spring latch, which in all probability locked the door from the inside. Then the door was banged to, as if to ensure that it was securely shut; but even this did not satisfy them, for, if I were not very much mistaken, they tried it, before leaving, by pushing heavily against it from the outside.

To know that the front door of the house was in all probability locked, and that, if my hosts and I came to hand-grips, my chances of escaping, by making a bolt for the street, were now cut off, was not reassuring. But I drew what consolation I could from the fact that the assailing force by which I was surrounded was reduced from six to four—two in the room and two on the staircase outside; and so I put as bold a face as I could upon it when the man, who had been cross-examining me, opened fire once more, his companion standing meanwhile just inside the door.

"And now, sir," resumed the counsel for the prosecution, "that we know to whom we are indebted for the pleasure of your company here, will you be so very good as to tell us why you are here at all?"

Thus far I had told him the truth, and I saw no reason why I should not continue to do so. It was Lord Beaconsfield, I think, who said that, when he wished to mystify his opponents, he almost invariably did so by telling them the truth. That being the last thing they expected from him, they would jump to the conclusion that the facts were the other way about, and so go hopelessly wrong at the start.

My reasons for deciding to be frank were based upon no such subtlety. That I had, quite unintentionally, blundered into a den of criminals, seemed evident; and undoubtedly the next best thing to do was to get out. I am not, I hope, altogether a coward, but one man, caught as I was, like a rat in a trap, is no match for four, possibly for six—for how was I to know that the two who had been stationed outside the door, and had apparently departed upon some errand, might not return? I could not even be positive that they had not been told off to wait for me in the dark court outside, so that in the event of my managing to escape unharmed from the house, they might prevent me from reaching the street. In coming to the place at all, I had beyond question put my head between the jaws of a lion; and the man who, with his head between a lion's jaws, plays the fool by trying to twist the beast's tail, must not be surprised if, within the next two seconds, his own head be not on speaking, or even on nodding terms, with his own body.

"I don't mind telling you why I'm here," I said civilly. "Why should I? It is only because I have been asked to write an article on opium dens for the Charing Cross Magazine. The den I visited once before in Ratcliff Highway has been pulled down, and a big Board School built on the site. I knew that there were dens somewhere in the neighbourhood of Limehouse Causeway, but I didn't know exactly where to find them, so I took the train to Poplar, gave a negro match-seller—who, I guessed, knew something of the locality—a couple of shillings to take me to 'where they smoked the opium.' He brought me here, where I am, and where apparently I ought not to be, judging by what you say. If I have intruded or trespassed, I'm sorry. So, with your kind permission, sir, I'll say 'Good evening' and take myself off."

"Stop a moment," he said, looking at me more amicably. "Your explanation is quite straightforward and satisfactory, and now that you've made it, I don't mind telling you the reason for what you must have thought strange behaviour on our part.

"This place, as you see for yourself, is an opium den, and these gentlemen," indicating the Chinamen on the mattresses, the two men at the foot of the stairs, and his companion, "are sailors. Opium smoking is forbidden among sailors in the employ of English vessels, and we thought when you came in that you were an officer from one of the vessels, who had managed to find out the den, and had come here to make yourself unpleasant. That is why I sent those men to guard the door and the stairs. If you had been what we thought you—well, I'm afraid you'd have been rather roughly handled. We don't intend to allow ships' officers, or anyone else, to come here interfering with our pleasures or with our takings, for, of course, we don't run the den out of charity. Now that I know it's all right, I'll just have a word with my friends on the stairs, and tell them that they needn't stand on guard any more. They'll be glad to get away, for they are thirsty rascals both, and were just off for a drink when you came in."

Taking his companion by the arm, he walked out upon the landing, where all four of them began whispering together.

Scarcely were they out of the room when, from the mattress where the two Chinamen lay, a single word, uttered softly, warningly, stealthily, almost in a whisper, under the breath, reached my ear.

It was my own Christian name, spoken in unmistakable English: "Max!"

CHAPTER III.

THE LUCIFER THAT SAVED MY LIFE.

Surprised, not to say startled, I certainly was, and all the more so for the reason that I recognised the voice of the speaker. It was that of my long time friend and at one time colleague, Robert Grant, the detective.

When I turned round—not suddenly or abruptly, for I feared to attract the attention, possibly the suspicion, of the four men still whispering on the landing—the two Chinamen were still sucking nonchalantly at their flute-shaped opium pipes, and still eyeing me, as I have already said, as pigs, lying on a muck-heap in the sunshine, eye a terrier who has entered their domain.

Stretching my arms, I affected to yawn, as if tired of waiting the result of the conference outside. Then, hands deep in my trousers pockets, I slouched leisurely across the room and bent over the Chinamen's mattress, as if to examine the picture of the Crucifixion which was plastered on the wall above.

The nearer of the two Chinamen made a great pretence of puffing noisily at his pipe, as if trying hard to prevent it from going out, but between each puff came a volley of whispered words in soft staccato:

"Make pretence to be friendly with them—disarm suspicion—but get away—if they'll let you—go to police station—say it's me—arrest the lot. Look out—they're coming—go away!"

The "they" were the leader and the other man.

They now returned to the room, still whispering, and the two who had been on guard at the head of the stairs, after noisily calling out "Good-night," made their way down, and so into the street, for we could distinctly hear them unlocking the door, which this time—as I did not hear it banged to—they had apparently left open.

"I don't think much of your Art Exhibition," I said, turning to the leader of the gang and jerking my thumb over my shoulder in the direction of the hideous representation of the Crucifixion, at which I had made pretence to be looking. "It reminds me of what I once said to a famous art critic and æsthete about a picture that hung in some cheap bachelor lodgings of mine.

"'I have a picture in my room,' I said to him, 'that will give your æsthetic senses a cold chill, not to say a shock. It's "Daniel in the Lions' Den," done in chromo—four colours—and loud enough to win a whistling match.'

"'How terrible!' said my friend. 'But I can imagine something even more terrible.'

"'What is it?' I inquired.

"'A poor lion in a den of Daniels,' was the reply."

I told this story, as the reader will have surmised, in pursuance of Grant's advice to "make pretence to be friendly," and apparently it had the desired effect, for the leader of the gang seemed amused.

"I think I can place the man who said it," he said. "I used to meet him often in Paris. No; we're not great on Art here, and that picture over the couch is a terror. I've made it all right for you with my friends. Would you like to smoke a pipe of opium, now you're here? You can if you like."

"That's very kind of you, but I don't think I'll stop to-night," I replied. "Fact is, you gave me a fright between you, for really I thought you meant knocking me on the head."

He laughed.

"All right; come some other night, if you like. I'm sorry if we frightened you, but of course we have to protect ourselves, and really I thought at first that you had come here to interfere with our customers and with our business. But it is all right now, and if you want to be off, we won't detain you. Good-night."

"Good-night," I answered pleasantly, glad to get away, and making for the door. With my hand on the handle I turned and looked back. My late host, the man whom I have called the leader, was standing—a sort of pocket caricature of Napoleon—his hands behind his back, and his short legs straddled widely apart. His great head, resting almost on his shoulders, was thrust forward, vulture-wise, the eyes glittering venomously out of the dead-white face. On the mattress behind him, the two men whom I had supposed to be Chinamen, but one of whom I now knew to be Detective Grant, pulled away at their pipes as nonchalantly as ever, the ghastly figure of the Crucified One stretching bare arms over them on the wall.

"Good-night," smiled the leader again. "Good-night, and bon voyage."

I do not know why I shuddered—perhaps out of fear for Grant; perhaps at the thought of the sacred figure of the Saviour in such surroundings; perhaps merely because I was tired and overstrained.

But with the shudder shaking me, almost like an ague, I turned, closed the door, and made my way down the stairs.

From the second landing window, the yard which lay immediately underneath and the stretch of waste land beyond, looked more darkly-desolate than ever. A single light on the far side of the river made a snake of fire, writhing and twisting as if in the throes of torturing agony upon the water. Otherwise, nothing moved, nothing stirred.

Arrived at the first landing I saw that the chink of light from under the two doors had gone, so that the stairs, leading down to the passage and to the kitchen door, were in absolute darkness. As I reached the bottom of the stairs and turned into the passage, I was immensely relieved to see that the front door stood ajar, evidently as the two men who had just gone out had left it. The whiff of outer air which blew through the opening was infinitely sweet after the reek and stench of opium in the den upstairs. My spirits rose at a bound. Surely I must have been mistaken in thinking the house other than merely a place for the smoking of opium. If anything illicit, anything in the nature of crime, were carried on here, the door would not have been left ajar, as I now found it, nor have been left unlatched and unlocked as it was when I had first come to the place.

All this went through my brain in a flash while my foot was between the last step of the staircase and the passage floor. Then suddenly the picture I had seen, when looking in the eyes of the leader of the gang, flashed before me—the picture of a man in a dark passage, as I at that moment was, and two other men waiting to brain him as he groped his way out.

"It's precious dark here!" I said aloud as if to myself, and in the most unconcerned voice I could assume. "I must go carefully, for I nearly came a cropper over the break-neck stairs in going up."

Meanwhile, I had been feeling stealthily in my pocket for a match-box.

Ah! I had it!

Slipping out a vesta, I struck it sharply, and placing the palm of my open hand between the flame and myself, so as to shade my own face and to cast what light there was in the direction of the door, I scanned the passage as if I had of a sudden become all eyes. Stretched across, just where it would take me over the ankle and so cause me to stumble forward, was a piece of wire. Behind the door, and with what looked like an iron bar, upraised ready to strike as I fell, was a man; and in case he failed to finish me, another—for I saw the white face of him peeping through the chink of the partly opened door—stood outside. And then, as the light in my hand suddenly flickered and went out, I heard behind me the stealthy steps of someone creeping down the stairs.

CHAPTER IV.

CRIMINALS, CHEMICALS, AND A CRUCIBLE.

Smoking may, as some good folk aver, be a vile and filthy habit, but it was the fact that I am a smoker which saved my life that night. On my way to the den I had fancied a pipe, and finding I had no matches, had been at the outlay of a penny in the purchase of a box. But for the fact that I happened to have these lucifers with me, and so was able to obtain a light, I should have blundered into the trap that was so cunningly set for me. But for the fact that, in the moment of striking the match, the light had fallen upon the kitchen door, and I had seen that a key stood in the lock on the outside, I might never have needed pipe or matches more.

To remount the stairs would have been madness, for the four men—two above and two below—would thus have me at such disadvantage between them, that my fight for life was likely to be short. To go forward, weaponless as I was, with two armed and sturdy ruffians waiting for me at the street door and possibly with two others prepared to act as reinforcements outside—would have been equally mad, especially as the leader and his confederate were already almost on my heels, and so could knock me on the head from behind. But the key on the outside of the kitchen door offered me the chance at least of a fight for my life. Whisking it out, quicker than any conjuror, I threw open the door, and shutting it with a bang as I entered the kitchen, set my left knee and the whole weight of my shoulders and body against the panels, while I slipped the key into its place, and, turning it, locked myself in, and my opponents out.

The next moment I heard the voice of the leader on the stairs outside:

"What's that? Who's gone into the kitchen? You cursed bunglers! Don't say you haven't killed your man. He mustn't leave the place alive. It's Robert Grant, the detective. I'd had word that he'd tracked us, and meant trying to get in here to-night. Parker and Smudgy, fast as you can to the yard. If you look slippy and put your back into it, you'll be in time to cut off his escape, should he try to get out behind. If he does, kill him on the spot. No mistake about it this time, mind, even if you have to shoot! Now go. Joggers, you and I'll see to things this side. First shut and lock the front door, and pocket the key. It'll be safer so. We've got to break in this door, and if he managed to rush us, he might slip past, and so get out. Have you got your knife and revolver handy? Be ready to use 'em the instant the door's down."

Clearly I had no time to spare. Striking another vesta I took one lightning peep around. By the light I saw that what, when I had peeped into the room before, I had taken to be an ordinary kitchen copper, was a strange-looking vat, with something like a stove under it.

Opening a cupboard which the darkness had caused me to overlook on my previous entrance, I saw that the top shelf was full of bottles, jars, and tins, all containing what I took to be chemicals. On the bottom shelf was something like a crucible, and beside it lay half a dozen metal things shaped like neckless bottles, and reminding me a little of artillery slugs. What did it all mean? Was I in a coiners' den—an illicit distillery—an infernal machine factory? Ha! I must be off! Already someone was making frantic but systematic efforts to prise open the door.

One more hurried glance around. Who knew but that I might light upon something in the nature of a clue to the mystery? No; that was all. Except for the things of which I have spoken, the place was absolutely empty.

Stop a moment. What was that lying curled up in a corner? A cat—a dog? No; it was a fur cap.

Bang! They were trying to break open the door. The next instant I was at the window. Screwed up, was it? No matter. Snatching up the fur cap and twisting it around my fist that it might serve as a sort of buffer or boxing-glove, and so protect my hand from broken glass, I knocked out enough of the framework, and of the glass, to allow me to scramble through, with no more serious hurt than a few scratches and some rents in my clothing. Within the next ten seconds I was across the yard, and, by the aid of an empty box, had scaled the wall, and was over on the waste land. Here I stopped for an instant to take my bearings, for at that moment the inconsiderate moon broke out from behind the clouds, and with such brightness that I could scarcely hope to escape being seen, and so would have been an easy target for a passable marksman. The piece of waste land was enclosed on my right and on my left by corrugated zinc fences. I could easily have climbed them, but the scuffling and scraping of my feet and body against the metal would have advertised my whereabouts to the enemy; and by this time I knew that the two men, Smudgy and Parker, whom their leader had sent to cut off my retreat, must be close at hand. Selecting the fence which cast the darker shadow, I made straight for it, and then turning off at right angles, I scuttled along half crouching, and keeping as close to cover as a mouse keeps to the wainscot when hieing him to his hole. I was now going—and purposely—in the direction of the river, where the fencing was of wood, not of metal, and so might be scaled less noiselessly. Moreover, two or three stunted trees threw ragged shadows across the moonlight in that quarter, and so might serve to screen me from my pursuers. Just as I reached these trees I heard voices on the other side, so I dropped like a dead thing in the shadow at the foot of the fence, and lay listening.

I was none too soon, for the next instant someone scrambled up on the other side of the fence, to spy out the land. For a moment I feared that I was discovered, though I dared not look up. I knew by the place from which the sound came that the speaker was exactly over my head.

"Can't see anything, Smudgy," the voice said. "But I can hear the Dumpling breaking in the door. We'll hop over and make sure that Grant doesn't get out by the window. You go one side of that iron fence and I'll go the other, and then, between us, we can't miss him if he comes out; but stay in the shadow till you get to the house.

"Keep your eyes skinned, for if we were to miss our man this time, the Dumpling would be like a madman. Steady does it. Right O! But stop a moment. What's that in the shadow there, under the trees, just where I jumped?"

CHAPTER V.

A PAIR OF HANDCUFFS.

The fellow had walked some way in the direction of the house after vaulting the fence, but now he turned and retraced his steps towards the spot where I was lying, with my legs drawn up to my body. As he stopped to bend over me, I let out with my left foot, as viciously as a kicking horse, taking him in the stomach, and with such force that he doubled up like a hinged draught-board, and lay quite still.

Then I leapt to my feet.

"Jones! Jim! Wilson!" I shouted, using, haphazard, the first names which came to my tongue. "Here they are! Over the fence as fast as you can, and we'll nab the two of 'em!"

As I spoke I kicked out a heel behind me, scraping it against the fence as if someone were endeavouring to clamber up on the other side.

"Fast as you can!" I yelled again, making noise enough for three, and rushing in the direction of the other man, shouting as I ran.

The dodge succeeded; for supposing, as I wished him to suppose, that he had walked into a police ambush, he made a bolt for the house, I after him, still yelling imaginary instructions to imaginary men.

No sooner was he gone than I whipped back to the other fellow, who I suppose had fainted from pain, for he lay quite still where he had fallen. But he was armed, as I knew, for I had heard the leader tell the two of them not to hesitate to shoot. I had run risks enough, and more than enough for my liking, on this eventful evening; so, partly to equip myself with a weapon, in case of the other man's discovering my ruse and returning, partly to disarm the gentleman on the ground, in the event of his recovering consciousness sufficiently to join in the pursuit of me, I slipped my hand into his pocket in search of fire-arms. The first thing on which I lighted was, strangely enough, a pair of handcuffs, and, under the impulse of the moment, I snapped them around the unconscious man's wrists. Then, having possessed myself of his weapon—an ugly revolver—I walked to the fence and looked over it, in preparation to vault. The river washed almost to the fence's foot, and, but for the fact that a boat was fastened to a stake driven into the mud, my retreat would have been entirely cut off. Evidently Parker and Smudgy must have taken a boat from somewhere to get round to the back of the place. That, then, was what the leader had meant when he spoke of the "yard," and had urged them to "put their backs into it."

Oh, well! the boat which had served their purpose would serve mine. But stop a minute. No one was coming from the house, where I could still hear the besiegers battering at the kitchen door. It was a daring idea, this of mine! But why shouldn't I carry it out? To take a prisoner, instead of myself being taken prisoner or being murdered, would be to turn the tables on my enemies with a vengeance. The man was unconscious; he was handcuffed; and even if he proved to be heavy, I knew myself to be fairly strong.

Kneeling on one knee, I raised his insensible body so that his head and chest and trunk lay inertly over my left shoulder, where I could best bear the weight. The next thing to do was to get upon my feet. It was not easy of accomplishment, for the man was heavily built, and I, though tall, am somewhat slight. But I managed it at last, and staggered to the fence, upon which I hoisted my burden, where he lay for all the world like a straw-stuffed Guy Fawkes, his silly head and his body and shoulders lolling helplessly towards the river, his hips and legs hanging down limply on the side of the fence that faced the house. Then I scrambled over myself, muttering, "You come along o' me to Westminster, my pretty. A man who can hang both sides of a fence, as you can, is wasted outside of Parliament."

I hauled him over, a bit at a time, until at last I was able to lower him gently to the ground. Then I dragged him—through the water I am sorry to say—to the boat, and with no small difficulty contrived to tumble him in. This was the most troublesome part of the business, for the boat behaved as coyly as a girl when a sweetheart tries to snatch a first kiss—dodging this way and that, ducking and dipping, till the pair of us were like to be thrown headlong into the water. But I achieved my purpose at last, and having lashed my captive's ankles together with the rope—the "painter" yachtsmen call it, do they not?—by which the boat had been fastened, I took up the oars and rowed out into mid-river.

By this time my captive was beginning to show signs of returning consciousness, his revival being accelerated, no doubt, by the wetting he had received in being dragged into the boat. Apparently he was still in pain from my kick, for he groaned feebly once or twice, and then moaned: "I feel sick."

"Yes," I said, "and you'll feel sicker before I've done with you."

It was brutal to speak thus to a man defenceless, and in pain; but I had been under a terrible strain that evening, and now that the danger was passed, the inevitable reaction had come, and none could have been more surprised than I was to find the reaction take the form of something like savagery. By nature I am by no means vindictive; but, remembering that this very man had gone round to the back of the opium den with the deliberate intention of murdering me, I took, I am ashamed to say, a cruel and catlike pleasure in having him thus at my mercy, and in seeing him a prey to the same terrors which I had been compelled to endure. Police magistrates and His Majesty's judges may to-day replace the rude justice of the primæval forest; but in spite of the humanising and refining influence of civilisation, the beast in us dies hard.

"Where am I?" he inquired, trying to raise his head.

"You're clearly a man of very little originality," I said, still exulting savagely in having him at my mercy, instead of being—as earlier in the evening I was like to be—at his. "'Where am I?' is what they all say—whether on the stage, or in a novel, or in real life—on recovering from a faint. But, if you particularly wish to know where you are, I don't mind telling you. You are in a boat on the river Thames, somewhere off Limehouse; but you'll be in even less comfortable quarters before long, if I'm not much mistaken."

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Well," I said, "anyone listening to our conversation might think that I was 'A' and you were 'Q' in Mangnall's book of Questions and Answers. I should think you'd know who I was without having to make so many inquiries, Mr. Parker. I'm the man you and your friend Smudgy were told off to murder not so very many minutes ago. Now you are my prisoner, and with your very kind permission, or without it, I'm going to hand you over to the police."

"For God's sake don't do that!" he cried, trying to rise. This his handcuffed wrists and bound ankles prevented him from accomplishing; finding which, to my surprise and dismay, he fell back blubbering like a baby.

"Give me a chance, Mr. Grant," he begged. "I've gone against the law I know, but I've been drove to it, sir, drove to it by being out of work so long."

"Look here," I said; "tell me what you and the man you call the Dumpling and the other rascals are after, and if I find you've told me the truth and kept nothing back, I'll let you go. It is your only chance; and considering the way you'd have treated me, I think it is a very generous offer.

"There's a mystery, and it strikes me a very wicked and criminal mystery, about all this—that opium den with its crucible, and chemicals, and queer instruments in the kitchen, the Dumpling, the Chinamen, yourself, and the other men. I've got to know all about it, and to know it now and here, this night, and in this boat. Make a clean breast of it; tell me everything, and I'll let you go. Refuse, and I take you straight, handcuffed and tied up as you are, to the police. Come, no beating about the bush. Which is it to be? 'Yes' or 'No'?"

"I can't help myself," he answered. "You say you've got to know about the Dumpling and the house, and the rest of us, and what we're after, and that I've got to choose between telling and being handed over to the police. You swear, you take your Davy, you'll let me go free if I tell?"

"I swear it," I said. "Tell me all, and I swear to loose you and put you ashore free and unfollowed—when you've done."

"Very well," he replied sullenly, doggedly. "I'll tell. But the Dumpling"—with an oath—"will find me out and kill me if he gets to know that I've peached."

"We'll hope he doesn't hear," I said, settling myself down to listen, but pulling gently at the oars meantime.

Then Parker began his story.

CHAPTER VI.

THE MILLIONAIRES' CLUB.

"It's this way," Parker began a trifle importantly—and something there was in his way of saying even these three words which made me suspect him to be a man fond of the sound of his own voice. Though entirely uneducated, he had, as I afterwards heard, a keen memory, and a ready knack of picking up scraps of information, both of which stood him in good stead in the speeches upon social subjects which he was apt to deliver in the parks on Sunday afternoons, and at other places where debaters foregather.

"It was this way, Mr. Grant. What with the strikes, and the work going out of the country, to Germany and America, and never coming back, in consequence of the strikes, things have been cruel hard in East London this winter, and when a big firm of ship-builders closed their yards, and went North, that meant starvation to thousands of us. Then the Dumpling turned up, and used to address meetings of the unemployed. 'Law!' he says to them as was agitating to have the law altered, 'while you are asking for law, your wives and children are starving. The law won't do nothing for you unless you force it; and the rate you're going on, you won't force it—not an inch in ten years; and where will you be then? Starved, and in your graves, you and your wives and children. You can send a score or two of your Labour leaders to Parliament, and much good that will do you. They can't make laws; there aren't enough of them in Parliament to do it. They get voted down, and then where are you? Look here, boys,' he says; 'it's Parliament as makes the laws, and Parliament, even this Parliament, a big part of it, is made up of landowners, and landlords, and company promoters, and capitalists, and big employers, and sweaters. They aren't going to make laws against themselves—'tain't likely. For one poor man in Parliament there's fifty rich, and you haven't got no chance there. But, boys,' he says, a-wagging his finger at us, 'for every rich man in Parliament there's hundreds and thousands out o' Parliament as is poor and starving. You're in a minority in Parliament, and minorities always get crushed. We have got it on the authority of a Cabinet Minister—and he ought to know. But it's them as is in a minority outside. If you have men's blood in your veins, you'll up and crush them. You're a thousand to one, you poor, what sweat and slave and starve to make money for the rich folk to spend. What I say to you is: Don't plead for your rights no more. You take 'em, as you can if you like, and let the rich people have a turn at the pleading. It's you who hold the whip—not them. If the down-trodden people of the country was only to rise up and assert their rights, the landlords and landowners and grabbers and sweaters couldn't hold out for one hour. Come out of it, boys! Come out of it, all of you who are men and not monkeys. Monkeys!' he says. 'Yes, you are monkeys. You are like monkeys chained to a piano-organ, and the piano-organ that's what they call Parliament. The poor man he has to do the dancing and get the whip, same as the monkey does, and the rich man gets the money and chooses the tune. But, boys,' he says, 'do you think if there was a million o' monkeys for every man as kept a monkey and an organ—do you think the monkeys would go on letting themselves be kept like slaves upon a chain? Not they! They'd be up and fight for their lives and liberty with nails and teeth.'"

All this time we had been drifting slowly down the river on the slack of the tide. The night was now very dark and inclined to be foggy, so I turned the boat's head round, and began to pull towards town.

"What was the scheme that was to be carried out to-night?" I questioned.

"What are we going back for, and where are you taking me?" asked Parker suspiciously, counter-questioning.

"I'm going back," I replied, "because it's getting very dark and promises to be foggy. Get on with your story, but do your best to cut it short."

"I don't want to make it any longer than I can help," was the reply; "but if I don't tell it my own way I can't tell it at all. Well, that's the way the Dumpling talked to us, and there was no denying that what he said was true. And he did more than talk at meetings. He got hold of Smudgy and me and some more of us, and said if we'd throw in our lot with him he'd see we were paid something each week out of a fund that had been started in America and Germany and other places, for the benefit of agitators and workers in the cause of liberty all over the world. And he kept his word, too. We got it regular each week, and by and by he put us on to little jobs—I needn't stop to tell you about them now—that put more money in our way. We kicked at some of them at first, but he's a nasty man to argue with, and pointed out that we were helping the cause by taking money from the rich to use it for them as was working in the cause of the poor, and after that we said——"

"You're rather long-winded, my friend," I interrupted; "and again I must point out to you that it's getting cold and foggier and late. Can't you cut the thing shorter yet, and come to the opium den and to-night's work?"

"That's just what I was going to," replied Parker in an injured tone. "Perhaps I am a bit long-winded. The Dumpling used to say I was, and he's one of them clever ones what ought to know. He said once——"

"Oh, never mind what he said!" I interrupted impatiently. "Get on quickly to the opium den and to-night's work. It's of that I wish to hear."

"One night," continued Parker, "the Dumpling asked Smudgy and me if we'd like to stand in with him in a little scheme he'd got to make a pot of money. And this very night we was to meet in that opium den—us as was in it—to arrange things. I didn't half like the job, that's the fact, especially when I found that detectives were on the track. But the Dumpling isn't the sort of man you find it easy to say 'No' to, when he turns that north eye of his on you. Makes me feel quite helpless, he does, and cold all down my back."

I nodded.

"Yes, I can believe he's not a pleasant customer to come the wrong side of; but that's no excuse for you and Smudgy trying to murder me."

"We didn't mean murdering you or anyone else," protested Parker. "The Dumpling he says to us, 'Boys,' he says, 'I've got everything arranged, and we'll carry this thing through to-night. But I don't play no losing games. Grant, the detective, is on our track, and if he comes between us and our business—him and his blue coats—he'll have to take the consequences. So you'd better be armed,' he says, and he gives Smudgy and me and the other chaps a revolver each, and a knife. 'Don't shoot unless you have to, or unless I tell you to,' he says. 'Them as plays the game we're going to play had best keep a silent tongue in their head, and there's no tongue so silent and so sure as a sharp knife. It does the work and don't holloa about it. But pistols is noisy servants. So don't use the shooting irons unless you're compelled to.'

"Smudgy and me we took the knives—I've got mine on me now—and the pistols, but we agreed we wouldn't use 'em. Nabbing a bit o' money's one thing, but getting nabbed for murder's quite another."

"What was the business you were to carry out to-night?" I interrupted once more. "Are you trying to talk out the time, under the idea that you'll be rescued, or something of that sort?"

"I'm coming to it now," replied Parker sulkily. "It's you as keeps putting me off with interruptions. There's a club what they call 'The Millionaires' Club.' There aren't many in it—seven, I think the Dumpling said; but they're all millionaires, and all of 'em was quite poor men once, poor as me and Smudgy. Now they've got millions, and live in mansions in Park Lane, and has ten-course dinners off gold and silver plates. But I say, Mr. Grant, can't I be untied now? I'm numb with cold and with lying here so long. I've very nearly finished my story, and, if you'll loose me, I'll promise to finish it faithful to the end."

"There's no reason why you shouldn't have your ankles free and sit up," I said, hauling in the sculls and laying them alongside as I stooped to unfasten the rope that was lashed about Parker's feet. "We'll talk about taking the handcuffs off when you've done. Go on—I'm listening. This knot here's rather tight, but I can hear what you say while I'm undoing it."

"Once a month," continued Parker, whilst I was tugging at the knot, "these millionaires meet secretly in the back parlour in a public-house out Shadwell way, and have a feed o' tripe and onions, or pigs' trotters or chitlings or faggots, or stewed eels or fried fish, or something of that sort, and drink four half out of pint pots, and smoke shag tobacco in clay pipes, and play shove-ha'penny and pitch-and-toss for coppers. It's coming off to-night, this Crœsus bean-feast and blow-out, as the Dumpling calls it; and he's planned to kidnap one of 'em on their way home, and make him pay a thumping big sum for ransom money. The place was to be—— Hi! Look out, there! There's a big ship coming out of the fog just behind you. My God! She's on us. And me tied up like this! Let me loose, for Christ's sake! It's murder. It's——"

Simultaneously with a sudden crash—under the impact of which the boat seemed to shiver like a live thing—the blurred fog-blinded lights on the river banks broke into zigzagging globes of yellow light that shot backwards and forwards, upward and downward and sideways before my eyes, as gnats dart and dance and dodge among themselves on a summer eve. Then these lights all ran together into a streak of yellow fire. The boat seemed to leap forward and to rise under us, as a horse which has staggered to its knees, when hit by a bullet, strives to struggle forward and to its feet under its rider; and the next instant the frail craft went to pieces and fell away from under us.

In that instant I saw the ghastly face of Parker staring up horror-stricken at what looked like the high and perpendicular side of a house which was about to fall upon us, and that, in the act of overtoppling, seemed momentarily to hang and hover and brood gloatingly above our head. Then there came the deadly and numbing chill of ice-cold and rushing water that sucked us down and under, as if to the falling house's very foundations.

CHAPTER VII.

I AM SNUBBED BY SCOTLAND YARD.

It was "murder," as Parker had said. Even as I went down I was conscious of the horror, of the inhumanity, of letting a poor devil, tied hand and foot like a dog in a sack, go to his doom with never a chance of making a fight for his life. For myself, being a fair swimmer, and accustomed to a cold dip in rough seas, winter and summer, I was in no such fear as entirely to lose my presence of mind. The danger lay, of course, in my being sucked under the ship's bottom and drowned before I could make my way to the surface; but as the steamer was going very slowly and had taken us side-on, rather than with the prow, I managed in a very few seconds to get clear of her wash, and up, with open eyes, on the top of the water. Apparently no one on board the steamer was aware that she had struck and sunk a rowing boat, for she went slowly but steadily on her way, as if nothing had happened. Had we not chanced to enter a fog bank a few minutes before the collision, and had I not been engaged in loosening Parker's bonds, the probability is that the accident would not have occurred. What most concerned me, however, was not the cause of the mishap, but the whereabouts of poor Parker. Again and again I crossed and re-crossed the subsiding wash of the vessel's wake; again and again I halloed and called the unhappy man by name; but all, alas, to no purpose. Except for the answering bark of a dog from a barge in-shore, the hooting of the steamer's fog-horn, and the washing of the water, there was no reply, and, being somewhat exhausted, I gave up the search and struck out for the nearest shore. It had been slack water for the last half-hour, and the tide was, fortunately for me, only just upon the turn; so, without being carried far out of my course, I was able to reach the river's bank in safety. Wet as I was, I could not walk the streets without attracting attention, but, luckily for me, the very first vehicle which came along was a doctor's carriage. I shouted to the driver to stop, and explaining my plight to his master by saying I had been run down in the fog while on the river, asked him to be so very good as to drive me to the police station. He not only consented, but plied me with a restorative of some sort which he had in his bag; and when I reached the station I was, except for a shivering fit, not very much the worse for my wetting. There, while I was having a rub down and changing into the clothes—a policeman's uniform—which was provided for me, I told my story. The superintendent was very civil. He said he was aware of the existence of the opium den in question, but otherwise knew of nothing criminal in connection with it, but would at once send a sufficient number of men to raid the place. He also rang up the river police on the telephone, suggesting that a boat should be sent out in search of Parker's body, and instructed a plain-clothes officer to accompany me in a cab to the address which I gave as my lodging. Whether this was done in order to verify the address, and because he suspected the truth of my story, I did not know, and did not care. It was a reasonable enough precaution to take, and, having nothing to conceal, I did not resent his taking it, and, indeed, was not sorry to have a companion upon my journey, for, now that the excitement which had buoyed me up was passing, I began to feel somewhat exhausted.

Next morning I took cab to Scotland Yard, where I sent in my name and business, and was at once received in audience by one of the heads. He greeted me courteously, heard my story out, interpolating a few shrewd and pointed questions now and then, and occasionally making a note.

When I had come to an end of my narrative he bowed gravely, and said:

"Thank you, Mr. Rissler. The superintendent at the station where you called has already communicated with us in regard to your statement. I'm not sure that what you have told us will be of any practical assistance, except in so far as it confirms what we already know. But we are obliged to you in any case. You have done rightly in coming to us. We will communicate with you should we want your further assistance. We have your address, I think? Thank you very much. Good morning."

"You know this man, the Dumpling, as they call him?" I inquired eagerly, ignoring my dismissal.

"Perfectly."

"What is there against him?"

"Nothing—absolutely nothing. He holds views which in some countries would get him into trouble, but in England one can talk anarchy or anything else as much as one likes, so long as one's actions keep within the law. And he keeps doubtful company. In fact, I may go so far as to say that we suspect him of knowing something beforehand of more than one outrage with which we have had to deal, though we have not yet been able to implicate him directly."

"And what's his name?" I asked.

Scotland Yard, as personified in the official before me, lifted its eyebrows and shrugged its shoulders.

"Really, Mr. Rissler, I don't think I must answer any more questions. As I have said, you have done quite right in coming to us, though you haven't told us anything we didn't know before. But the matter is in the hands of Detective Grant, and I think you may safely leave it there."

"Oh, yes," I said. "Grant's a good man. He's a friend of mine. We worked together, he and I, in more than one case in the past."

"Indeed!"

Scotland Yard did not seem particularly interested in these autobiographical details, either about myself or about Grant.

"Indeed," it repeated with an air of bland boredom, rising from its chair to indicate that the interview was at an end.

"I've done some detective work myself, as you perhaps know," I went on; "and having been pitchforked, as it were, into this particular case, I'm more than inclined to see if I can make anything of it; in which case, should I discover anything, I should, of course, acquaint you with my discoveries, so that we could co-operate together."

"You are very considerate," replied Scotland Yard, sarcastically; "but I fancy we are tolerably competent to do our work without outside assistance. I've heard of you, Mr. Rissler. You do a little investigation on your own account, don't you?—and then write stories about it after. Well, with the story-writing I have no fault to find. I haven't read any of your stories, but I'm told they are quite harmless. But, really, don't you think this is a case which is best let alone by amateurs? We can't stop you from interfering as they do in medicine, where quacks are pulled up pretty sharp by the law, but if you take my advice you'll let the detection of crime alone, except in novels, where I have no doubt you acquit yourself very creditably. But really I can't spare any more time for further discussion. Again we are obliged to you for having come to us with your story. If anything should transpire to make it necessary to communicate with you again, you shall hear from us. Good morning."

"Quacks!" I said to myself, angrily, as I stalked out with my head in the air. "I've been the means, as they know, of bringing more than one criminal to justice, and here I'm called a quack by a supercilious representative of officialdom."

Outside in Whitehall I called a cab.

"—— police station," I said. "You can wait and bring me back, so don't raise your eyebrows. If I don't come back, I'll pay your fare all the same."

"Right, sir," he said, evidently in good spirits at the prospect of a long and lucrative job, the good spirits in question being manifested at somebody else's expense.

"What! both of you awake!" he called out in surprised astonishment to a couple of carmen who blocked his way for a moment with their vans.

Then, chuckling at the fact that a somewhat limited vocabulary could not bear the strain which an apparently unlimited knowledge of his family tree placed upon it, and so necessitated the inclusion and description of himself and his entire ancestry in one simple and comprehensive colour-scheme, he whipped up his horse, and directed its head eastward.

CHAPTER VIII.

"WANTED" BY THE POLICE.

On the previous night the police superintendent at —— had treated me with a courtesy which was almost deferential; and had himself accompanied me to my cab to say:

"Good-night, sir, and I hope you'll be none the worse for your wetting."

Witnessing my rather ceremonious "send off," the very young and perhaps recently-enlisted member of the force, on duty in the outer office, had evidently been duly impressed with the fact that I was a person of some weight. On my presenting myself at the station next morning, he greeted me with a smile of obsequious respect, and without waiting to report my call to the superintendent, conducted me importantly, and with a great air of knowing when and to whom to accord honour, straight into the august presence of his chief. The somewhat officious air with which he announced "Mr. Rissler, sir," was speedily changed into a look of blank and crest-fallen surprise, for instead of receiving me as a favoured caller, the superintendent—who, as we entered, had his ear glued to the telephone—jumped up in a passion, and shouted:

"How dare you show this person, or any person, into my room without permission?"

Looking at me viciously, as at one who had been guilty of the crime of obtaining a respectful reception under false pretences, the unfortunate constable stammered out:

"Very sorry, sir; but thought that the gentlem—person—was a friend of yours." And, saluting with a proper air of chastened humility, he withdrew.

Scarcely had the door closed behind him before the telephone bell clashed its discordant jangling at the superintendent's very ear, jarring the nerves of both of us, and causing him almost to jump in his shoes.

Then I "tumbled" to the situation. If I was not very much mistaken, he had been in communication with Scotland Yard at the moment of my entrance, the subject of the conference being none other than my humble self; and, judging by the marked difference in my reception, and by the way in which, with one ear stooped to the telephone, he was glaring at me with both eyes, his last night's reception of myself and his communicativeness had not come in for his chief's commendation. That he had been receiving something of a jacketing his first few words told.

"Are you there? Oh, it's you, sir, again—is it? Yes, sir, I did hear what you said just now, and am very sorry. What do you say? No, sir, I didn't leave the telephone before you had done speaking. I shouldn't think of doing such a thing, but somebody came into my room and interrupted me. Will you excuse me a second, sir, while I turn them out? Then I think I can explain why I acted as I did."

Without taking his ear from the telephone, and without saying a word, he pointed me peremptorily to the door, seeing which, I of course instantly withdrew to the outer office, where I was surveyed with supercilious scorn by the youthful constable, who a few minutes before had so deferentially ushered me into the superintendent's room. Turning my back contemptuously upon him, I studied a board upon which were displayed the portraits of certain characters "wanted" by the police. The young constable, who apparently attributed his downfall from official favour to a malicious and deeply-laid plot on my part, sought, in vulgar parlance, "to get back a bit of his own" by affecting to find a resemblance between some of the "wanteds" and myself, examining first their faces, and then my features, with an interest which I could not but consider offensive.

Obviously the only card left for me to play was to appear unconscious of the comparison which he was instituting, and while I was doing this to the best of what I fear was a poor ability, the door opened, and the superintendent came out.

"You want to see me, Mr.—er—Rissler, isn't it?" he inquired rudely. "What is it? I've no time to spare this morning."

"I won't keep you long," I said. "But you were good enough to say last night that you would send some of your men to inspect the opium den, and I called in to hear what happened, and to ask whether Parker's body had been found."

"You called to hear what had happened, and to ask this, and to ask that!" he said insolently. "Since when have you been appointed to the head office in New Scotland Yard, that you come here to cross-examine me on my own business? Pretty fine pass the force is coming to, if we're to take every Tom, Dick, and Harry into our confidence. I've nothing to tell you, sir, except to advise you to confine your attention to your own business, and leave other people to attend to their own. Good morning."

Turning on his heel he walked into his room again, slamming the door behind him; so, affecting not to see the insolent grin on the face of my friend the youthful constable, who had been present during my snubbing, I put my hat on my head and stepped into the street.

"But I'll find out the result of the raiding of the den yet," I said to myself. "The superintendent here, and his men, were friendly enough to me last night, and I strongly suspect that the orders to tell me nothing have only just arrived from New Scotland Yard. If I can find the policeman within whose beat the den is, it is possible that he has not yet received instructions that I'm to be kept in the dark, and that half-a-crown may open his mouth. Anyhow, it can do no harm to have a try."

Nor was I wrong in my conjecture. The policeman—when I found him, which I did with little difficulty—was friendly and communicative.

"Oh, you're the gent, are you, sir, who laid the information about the opium den? I wasn't at the station when you called, but I came in directly after, and heard the superintendent talking about it. He'd be glad to see you, I think, sir, if you was to look in. Oh, yes; he sent five men round to the place at once. But, Lord, sir, the rascals had got wind of it, and when our men got there, the birds had flown. Cleared out—that's what they had, every man Jack of them. There was the broken window, just as you said, and there was the marks on the door, a-showin' as somebody had tried to break it in, or to batter it down, but them as had been there had all cleared out, and they'd taken the chemicals and tools and other things, what you saw there with 'em. The chief he's trying to track the rascals down, and to find where they've moved to, for they must have put them things somewhere. It stands to reason they can't walk about with them in the street. But though he clapped two of our best men on the job, they hadn't found anything when I came out on beat."

"And Parker's body?" I inquired. "Has it been found?"

"Not as I've heard on, sir. But holloa, what's this?"

The constable and I had been strolling on together while talking, and on turning the corner of a small and evil-smelling street we saw a knot of people gathered outside a sweet shop.

"Now, then! What's all this? Stand aside there, will you?" he commanded, shouldering the crowd aside.

At the door a wretched hag, her lank grey hair falling in dishevelled wisps upon her shoulders, and the pores of her face so choked with dirt that the grime lay in lines along the wrinkles, was clawing at the air with one skinny hand and arm, alternately sobbing and screaming hysterically.

"Come, come, my good woman!" said the constable sharply. "Stop that noise, and tell me what it's all about."

Shaking her head, as if to convey that she was powerless to speak, the wretched creature clutched wildly at the door lintel, and then fell in a swoon almost at his feet.

"Who is the woman? And what's the trouble?" inquired the constable of the bystanders. "Do any of you know her?"

"Macintyre's her name," volunteered a respectable looking woman in the crowd. "She keeps the sweet shop inside, and lets her rooms as lodgings. I never heard anything against her. But I don't know what's the matter. She'd only just come out into the street before you came."

"She lives here, does she?" inquired the constable. "Stand aside there, and I'll have a look inside and see if anything's wrong."

Then a small voice, that sounded quite near to the pavement, shrilled from the spot where the crowd pressed thickest.

It came from a wee, wizened girl-child, who looked as if she might be ten and talked with the precision and self-possession of twenty—so pitifully sharpened do the wits of the children of the streets become in the struggle for existence.

"It's my Granny—that's who it is. She's got a lodger in the back room, Black Sam. Somebody gave him two shillings yesterday, and he came home drunk last night, quite early, and went to bed. I know he was drunk, for two gentlemen came to see him about ten, but Granny told them he was in bed, and drunk, in the back room, and they couldn't see him till this morning. I heard a funny noise in his room in the night. It woke me up. It sounded like someone trying to scream, and not being able to; and I thought I heard people moving about. So I woke Granny up and told her so, but she was cross with me for waking her, and said it was only his drunken snoring I'd heard. But just now, as Black Sam didn't get up, Granny and I went into his room. The window was wide open, and Sam was lying on the floor all over blood. And please, sir, there's a big hole in his throat, and he's quite cold, and I think he's dead."

"Black Sam!" Surely I had heard that name before? Why, yes, and no longer ago than on the preceding evening. When the leader of the gang in the opium den had asked me who it was that directed me there, I had replied, "A negro match-seller, whom I saw outside Poplar station." His comment had been "Ah! a negro match-seller—and outside Poplar station. I think I know the fellow. We must look into this!"

Then his confederates had whispered together, the only words that I had overheard being the dead man's name, "Black Sam." Two of the gang had then left the house, as if on some errand. That was, I remembered—for the clock struck soon after—just before ten. It was at ten that two men had called to see the negro. They had been told that he had come home drunk, and was lying in the back room asleep. Was it they who had entered that room by the window in the dead of the night and murdered him?

CHAPTER IX.

"DEAD MAN'S POINT."

As the murder of Black Sam plays no further part in this story, I do not propose to describe in detail the ghastly scene which presented itself when, in company with the police officer, I entered the death chamber.

Sensational enough, and more than enough, this narrative of the hunting down of a master-criminal must necessarily be, without the gratuitous description of scenes—no matter how impressive—which have no direct bearing upon my story. Of the murder of Black Sam it was necessary to tell as much as I have told, if the reader is to follow, step by step, my first meeting, and my final struggle with, the man around whom the narrative centres. When to what I have already related, I add that, whatever the motive for the crime, the subsequent investigation established the fact that the motive was at least not robbery, we may dismiss the murder of Black Sam from memory, and pass on to my efforts to get upon the trail of the man who was the instigator of the crime—the man whose acquaintance I had so eventfully, if casually, made on the occasion of my visit to the opium den.

My first step must, of course, be to get into communication with Grant. Until I had seen him, and learnt his views, I did not feel free seriously to enter upon the case at all. That he already had it in hand, I had been told by New Scotland Yard, and that he was making progress was clear from the fact that, disguised as a Chinaman, he had contrived to enter the meeting-place of the gang, possibly even to overhear some of their plans. It is not likely that, without very strong actual or presumptive evidence of their guilt, he would have bidden me make my way to the nearest police station, and ask, in his name, that a body of men be sent to make prisoners of the entire gang. Grant was a private detective, not a New Scotland Yard man; but he was perhaps the only private detective whom New Scotland Yard can be said to have recognised. He had been of such frequent assistance to the chiefs of the Criminal Investigation Department, and his relations with them were so friendly, that his standing had come to be in a sense semi-official, and no reasonable request by him was likely to be refused.

If, on communicating with him, I found that he had, as seemed probable, the case more or less complete, I should, of course, recognise that his was the prior right, and that any interference on my part, except by his invitation or his permission, would be an impertinence. If, however, as I hoped, he had still links to fill in, before completing the chain, my intention was to ask him to allow me to work in connection with him. It has been said by a great thinker that "the things that are for you, gravitate towards you," and judging by the way in which the Fates had involved me—as by some law of gravitation—into the matter of the opium den mystery, the working out of that mystery to its unravelment seemed to be my destiny.

In the meantime, where was Grant? I had left him in the den, disguised as a Chinaman, his identity apparently unsuspected even by the Dumpling.

It is, of course, within the bounds of possibility that the Dumpling had all the time known perfectly well that my story of having come to the den merely in search of "copy" was likely to be true, and that the supposed Chinaman upstairs, smoking opium, was in reality Detective Grant. I say, it is within the bounds of possibility that it is so, but in my own mind I was entirely convinced that the identity of Grant with the Chinaman was quite unsuspected. If that were so, the fact that I had made good my escape from the den would cause—and evidently had caused—something like a panic among the members of the gang. It was no doubt because they believed me to be Grant, and knew me to be uninjured and at large, that, within an hour or two of my escape, they had cleared out of the den, taking all their effects with them.

In the meantime—to repeat the question I have already put—where was Grant? Had he, after I had gone that evening, said or done anything to arouse suspicion, and been murdered by the Dumpling's orders? Or had he been allowed to depart, unsuspected and unharmed? And was his present mysterious disappearance due to the fact that he had followed up the gang after the flight, and was still engaged in watching their movements and in completing the chain of evidence against them? For that he had—either of his own, or of somebody else's choosing—vanished, and left no trace behind, was absolutely certain. I had gone straight from the scene of the negro's murder to the nearest post office, and had wired to Grant's chambers in Adelphi Terrace, asking for an appointment, and that a reply be sent immediately to the Savage Club, where I intended to lunch. Arrived at the club I found Grant's man-servant awaiting me. He said that his master had gone out the previous morning, and had neither returned nor sent a message. There was, of course, nothing unusual in this, for a detective's goings and comings are necessarily uncertain; but, remembering the circumstances under which I had last seen my friend, I could not help feeling uneasy.

In a restless mood I strolled out of the club and walked City-wards, along the Embankment. From the headquarters of an evening newspaper, in the neighbourhood of Tudor Street, the newsboys were rushing, shouting as they ran, and making of the place a very Babel with their bellowings.

"'Ere y'are, sir! Terrible river tragedy! Three bodies found in the Thames this morning!"

Purchasing a paper from the nearest boy, I scanned it eagerly, anxiously. Beyond a paragraph recording the bare fact that the bodies of three men, supposed to be sailors, had been found at Dead Man's Point, Canvey Island, the spot where the corpses of those drowned in the Thames are sometimes washed ashore, there was little to satisfy my curiosity. I had not walked a score of yards before a fresh bevy of newsboys burst from another newspaper distributing centre.

"Spesh'l!" they yelled. "Great river mystery! Three persons drowned in the Thames! Mysterious circumstances! Suspected murder! 'Ere y'are, Sir! Spesh'l! Latest particulars!"

Again I purchased a paper, to find, in the stop-press portion of the print, the following paragraph:

"THE GREAT RIVER MYSTERY.

"The bodies have been removed to 'The Lobster Smack Inn,' Hole Haven, Canvey Island, to await identification."

In my present mood, action of some sort was imperative, and as a cab was passing, I hailed it, and calling out "Fenchurch Street Station—fast as you can," jumped in.

At Fenchurch I took the first train to Benfleet, ferrying over the creek which at high tide separates Canvey from the mainland, and making my way across the island to the "Lobster Smack" at Hole Haven, where I asked to be allowed to see the bodies.

They were lying in an outhouse, side by side, each figure decently covered by a cloth. The first to be exposed I recognised without surprise, and at a glance, as that of the hapless Parker. He was dressed just as he had been when I last saw him, and with the handcuffs still on his wrists.

The second body was, to the best of my belief, that of his late associate, Smudgy. I could not swear to the features, for Smudgy had been stationed at the top of the staircase while I was in the opium den, and I had kept too close an eye upon the Dumpling, and the man who had remained with him in the room, to pay much attention to what was going on outside. Unless I was very much mistaken, however, the shabby greeny-fawn dust coat and the frayed shepherds' plaid trousers were the same which I had seen upon one of the two men who had remained on guard at the head of the stairs, and had afterwards been despatched, in company with Parker, to cut off my retreat at the back of the house. When I had last seen him, he had been in full flight across the moon-lit space of waste land, and in a direction away from the river. Whether he was dead or alive when he got into the water, or how he came to be there at all, I had no means of knowing, and could only conjecture that, finding he had been duped, and fearing the Dumpling's anger on hearing of my escape, Smudgy had returned to the river in search of myself and Parker, and had been accidentally drowned. The third body was next uncovered. Apparently the corpse, in its passage down the river, had been caught by the screw of a passing steamer, and so cut and crushed as to be unrecognisable. The bones of all the limbs were twisted and broken, the body beaten almost into a pulp, and the whole of the face sliced off, as if by a stroke of the steamer's swiftly revolving screw.

Then, for the first and, I hope, last time in my life, I fainted—fainted from sheer horror, for around the otherwise naked body was a leather belt from which a ragged inch of what had once been trousering still clung. Looking more closely, I saw that it was of blue silk, with tiny zigzagged threads of silver interwoven. Not many hours ago I had seen a man who, to my positive knowledge, always wore a leather belt (he had at one time been a sailor) around his waist. He had then been clad in Chinese trousering of the identical pattern—blue silk with a tiny zigzagged thread of interwoven silver. That man was my unhappy friend, Robert Grant, and, looking again at the body, I saw that some sort of yellow dye had recently been used to stain the face and hands and neck.

CHAPTER X.

I TURN BURGLAR.

As I had now decided to devote myself to finding the man known as the Dumpling, and to the clearing up of the mystery of my friend's death and of the opium den, the first question to be asked (it was the question I put to myself as I walked away from the inn) was, "Did the Dumpling really believe me to be Grant?" If that were so, it was possible that Grant had to the last successfully maintained his disguise, and had met his death accidentally while shadowing the fugitives, who had probably made their escape by way of the water. Or it was possible that, without suspecting the supposed Chinaman to be Grant, something may have happened after my departure to arouse the Dumpling's suspicions in regard to Grant's good faith, in which case short work would no doubt be made of the intruder.

What was more likely, for instance, than that, hearing the uproar downstairs, after I had locked myself in the kitchen, and fearing that I was being murdered, Grant had rushed down to my assistance, and so betrayed himself? In which case, the Dumpling would have made no bones about knocking him on the head, or otherwise despatching him and throwing the body into the river. But, apart from the question whether my friend had met his death by accident or by intention, the facts seemed to justify me in assuming that the Dumpling had really believed me to be Grant, the detective. The reader will remember that, after I had locked myself in the kitchen, the Dumpling had called out, "Don't say you haven't killed your man! He mustn't leave the place alive. It's Robert Grant, the detective. I had word that he'd tracked us, and meant trying to get in here to-night."