a groove.

Suddenly, among the hovels, they groped along a checkered surface of
brick-work. The flare of Heywood's match revealed a heavy wooden door,
which he hammered with his fist. After a time, a disgruntled voice
within snarled something in the vernacular. Heywood laughed.

"Ai-yah! Who's afraid? Wutzler, you old pirate, open up!"

A bar clattered down, the door swung back, and there, raising a
glow-worm lantern of oiled paper, stood such a timorous little figure as
might have ventured out from a masquerade of gnomes. The wrinkled face
was Wutzler's, but his weazened body was lost in the glossy black folds
of a native jacket, and below the patched trousers, his bare ankles and
coolie-sandals of straw moved uneasily, as though trying to hide behind
each other.

"Kom in," said this hybrid, with a nervous cackle. "I thought you are
thiefs. Kom in."

Following through a toy courtyard, among shadow hints of pigmy shrubs
and rockery, they found themselves cramped in a bare, clean cell,
lighted by a European lamp, but smelling of soy and Asiatics. Stiff
black-wood chairs lined the walls. A distorted landscape on rice-paper,
narrow scarlet panels inscribed with black cursive characters, pith
flowers from Amoy, made blots of brightness.

"It iss not moch, gentlemen," sighed Wutzler, cringing. "But I am ver'
glad."