sorts. Young fool. Scrapes. Debt. Out to Orient. Same old story. More
debt. Trust the firm to encourage that! Debt and debt and debt. Tied up
safe. Transfer. Finish! Never go Home."--He rose with a laugh and an
impatient gesture.--"Come on. Might as well take in the club as to sit
here talking rot."

Outside the gate of the compound, coolies crouching round a lantern
sprang upright and whipped a pair of sedan-chairs into position.
Heywood, his feet elevated comfortably over the poles, swung in the
lead; Rudolph followed, bobbing in the springy rhythm of the long
bamboos. The lanterns danced before them down an open road, past a few
blank walls and dark buildings, and soon halted before a whitened front,
where light gleamed from the upper story.

"Mind the stairs," called Heywood. "Narrow and beastly dark."

As they stumbled up the steep flight, Rudolph heard the click of
billiard balls. A pair of hanging lamps lighted the room into which he
rose,--a low, gloomy loft, devoid of comfort. At the nearer table, a
weazened little man bent eagerly over a pictorial paper; at the farther,
chalking their cues, stood two players, one a sturdy Englishman with a
gray moustache, the other a lithe, graceful person, whose blue coat,
smart as an officer's, and swarthy but handsome face made him at a
glance the most striking figure in the room. A little Chinese imp in
white, who acted as marker, turned on the new-comers a face of
preternatural cunning.

"Mr. Wutzler," said Heywood. The weazened reader rose in a nervous
flutter, underwent his introduction to Rudolph with as much bashful
agony as a school-girl, mumbled a few words in German, and instantly