CHAPTER I.
THE OPIUM DEN.
I didnot 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 whisperedwords, 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 acul-de-sac. At the darkest and farthest corner he had stopped in front of what appeared to bean 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 andenthusiastically 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 thedark, 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 toshake 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 burningin 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 sameman, 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 werelooking 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, perhapsto-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.