The assistant glared at him with angry eyes.

"Fool, and thrice fool," he muttered under his breath, but Leh Shin did
not heed him, and did not even appear to hear what he said. For a long
time the old Chinaman seemed wrapped in his thought, and at last he got
up, and leaving the shop, went towards the principal Joss House that
faced the river.

Coryndon had chosen the empty shop in the Colonnade for two reasons. It
was near Leh Shin, and near the strange assistant, who interested him
nearly as much as Leh Shin himself, and also it had the additional
advantage of being the last house in the block. A narrow alley full of
refuse of every description lay between it and the next block, and the
rickety house had doors that opened to the front, and to the side, and
by way of a dark lane directly from the back, making ingress or egress a
matter of wide choice.

The shop front was shuttered, and left to the rats and cockroaches, and
up a flight of decrepit and shaky stairs, Shiraz had made what shift he
could to provide comfort for his master in the least dilapidated room in
the house. The walls were thin, and the plaster of the low ceiling was
smoke-grimed and dirty. The "bed of lesser value" was stored away in the
garret that lay beyond, and the prayer-mat was placed alongside the
toil-worn wooden _charpoy_, that was at least fairly clean and had all
four legs intact; and under this bed, the box that held a strange
assortment of clothing was put safely away. At the bottom of another
box, one of those bought by Coryndon himself from Leh Sin's assistant,
Shiraz had laid a suit of tussore silk, a few shirts and collars, and
anything that his master might require if he wished to revisit those