"Come, Tling-a-Ling," crooned Sin Sin Wa, "you go to bed, my little
black friend, and one day you, too, shall see the paddy-fields of
Ho-Nan."

Opening the useful cupboard, he stooped, and in hopped the raven. Sin
Sin Wa closed the cupboard, and stepped out into the passage.

"I will bring you a coat and a cap and scarf," he said. "Your
magnificent apparel would be out of place among the low pigs who wait
in my other disgusting cellar to rob me. Forgive my improper absence for
one moment, most honorable sir."

CHAPTER XIX. THE TRAFFIC

Sir Lucien came out into the alley wearing a greasy cloth cap pulled
down over his eyes and an old overall, the collar turned up about a red
woollen muffler which enveloped the lower part of his face. The odor of
the outfit was disgusting, but this man's double life had brought him so
frequently in contact with all forms of uncleanness, including that of
the Far East, compared with which the dirt of the West is hygienic, that
he suffered it without complaint.

A Chinese "boy" of indeterminable age, wearing a slop-shop suit and
a cap, was waiting outside the door, and when Sin Sin Wa appeared,
carefully locking up, he muttered something rapidly in his own sibilant
language.

Sin Sin Wa made no reply. To his indoor attire he had added a pea-jacket
and a bowler hat; and the oddly assorted trio set off westward,
following the bank of the Thames in the direction of Limehouse Basin.
The narrow, ill-lighted streets were quite deserted, but from the river
and the riverside arose that ceaseless jangle of industry which belongs
to the great port of London. On the Surrey shore whistles shrieked, and
endless moving chains sent up their monstrous clangor into the night.
Human voices sometimes rose above the din of machinery.

In silence the three pursued their way, crossing inlets and circling
around basins dimly divined, turning to the right into a lane flanked
by high, eyeless walls, and again to the left, finally to emerge nearly
opposite a dilapidated gateway giving access to a small wharf, on the
rickety gates bills were posted announcing, "This Wharf to Let." The
annexed building appeared to be a mere shell. To the right again they
turned, and once more to the left, halting before a two-story brick
house which had apparently been converted into a barber's shop. In
one of the grimy windows were some loose packets of cigarettes, a
soapmaker's advertisement, and a card:

SAM TUK