sty bowler, his dirty white shirt innocent of tie,
had acquired a new face, a bright red, oily, eager one, and a high,
squeaky voice. Ennis wore a rough blue seaman's jacket and a vizored cap
pulled down over his head. His unshaven-looking face and subtly altered
features made him seem a half-intoxicated seaman off his ship, as he
stumbled unsteadily along. Campbell clung to him in true land-shark
fashion, plucking his arm and talking wheedlingly to him.

They came into a more populous section of the evil old waterfront
street, and passed fried-fish shops giving off the strong smell of hot
fat, and the dirty, lighted windows of a half-dozen waterfront saloons,
loud with sordid argument or merriment.

Campbell led past them until they reached one built upon an abandoned,
moldering pier, a ramshackle frame structure extending some distance
back out on the pier. Its window was curtained, but dull red light
glowed through the glass window of the door.

A few shabby men were lounging in front of the place but Campbell paid
them no attention, tugging Ennis inside by the arm.

"Carm on in!" he wheedled shrilly. "The night ain't 'alf over yet--we'll
'ave just one more."

"Don't want any more," muttered Ennis drunkenly, swaying on his feet
inside. "Get away, you damned old shark."

Yet he suffered himself to be led by Campbell to a table, where he
slumped heavily into a chair. His stare swung vacantly.

The cafe of Chandra Dass was a red-lit, smoke-filled cave with cheap
black curtains on the walls and windows, and other curtains cutting off
the back part of the building from view. The dim room was jammed with
tables crowded with patrons whose babel of tongues made an unceasing
din, to which a three-string guitar somewhere added a wailing undertone.
The waiters were dark-skinned and tiger-footed Malays, while the patrons
seemed drawn from every nation east and west.

Ennis' glazed eyes saw dandified Chinese from Limehouse and Pennyfields,
dark little Levantins from Soho, rough-looking Cockneys in shabby caps,
a few crazily laughing blacks. From sly white faces, taut brown ones and
impassive yellow ones came a dozen different languages. The air was
thick with queer food-smells and the acrid smoke.

Campbell had selected a table near the back curtain, and now stridently
ordered one of the Malay waiters to bring gin. He leaned forward with an
oily smile to the drunken-looking Ennis, and spoke to him in a wheedling
underto