We stood in a bare and very dirty room, which could only claim kinship
with a civilized shaving-saloon by virtue of the grimy towel thrown
across the back of the solitary chair. A Yiddish theatrical bill of
some kind, illustrated, adorned one of the walls, and another bill, in
what may have been Chinese, completed the decorations. From behind a
curtain heavily brocaded with filth a little Chinaman appeared, dressed
in a loose smock, black trousers and thick-soled slippers, and,
advancing, shook his head vigorously.

"No shavee--no shavee," he chattered, simian fashion, squinting from
one to the other of us with his twinkling eyes. "Too late! Shuttee
shop!"

"Don't you come none of it wi' me!" roared Smith, in a voice of amazing
gruffness, and shook an artificially dirtied fist under the Chinaman's
nose. "Get inside and gimme an' my mate a couple o' pipes. Smokee
pipe, you yellow scum--savvy?"

My friend bent forward and glared into the other's eyes with a
vindictiveness that amazed me, unfamiliar as I was with this form of
gentle persuasion.

"Kop 'old o' that," he said, and thrust a coin into the Chinaman's
yellow paw. "Keep me waitin' an' I'll pull the dam' shop down,
Charlie. You can lay to it."

"No hab got pipee--" began the other.

Smith raised his fist, and Yan capitulated.

"Allee lightee," he said. "Full up--no loom. You come see."

He dived behind the dirty curtain, Smith and I following, and ran up a
dark stair. The next moment I found myself in an atmosphere which was
literally poisonous. It was all but unbreathable, being loaded with
opium fumes. Never before had I experienced anything like it. Every
breath was an effort. A tin oil-lamp on a box in the middle of the
floor dimly illuminated the horrible place, about the walls of which
ten or twelve bunks were ranged and all of them occupied. Most of the
occupants were lying motionless, but one or two were squatting in their
bunks noisily sucking at the little metal pipes. These had not yet
attained to the opium-smoker's Nirvana.

"No loom--samee tella you," said Shen-Yan, complacently testing Smith's
shilling with his yellow, decayed teeth.

Smith walked to a corner and dropped cross-legged, on the floor,
pulling me down with him.

"Two pipe quick," he said. "Plenty room. Two piecee pipe--or plenty
heap trouble."

A dreary voice from one of the bunks came:

"Give 'im a pipe, Charlie, curse yer! an' stop 'is palaver."

Y