e burrow
and begins to clear the warren.

"The _chandoo_-shops shut up at six, so you'll have to see
opium-smoking before dark some day. No, you won't, though." The
detective makes for a half-opened door of a hut whence floats the
fragrance of the Black Smoke. Those of the inhabitants who are able
promptly clear out--they have no love for the Police--and there remain
only four men lying down and one standing up. This latter has a pet
mongoose coiled round his neck. He speaks English fluently. Yes, he has
no fear. It was a private smoking party and--"No business to-night--show
how you smoke opium." "Aha! You want to see. Very good, I show. Hiya!
you"--he kicks a man on the floor--"show how opium-smoke." The kickee
grunts lazily and turns on his elbow. The mongoose, always keeping to
the man's neck, erects every hair of its body like an angry cat, and
chatters in its owner's ear. The lamp for the opium-pipe is the only one
in the room, and lights a scene as wild as anything in the witches'
revel; the mongoose acting as the familiar spirit. A voice from the
ground says, in tones of infinite weariness: "You take _afim_, so"--a
long, long pause, and another kick from the man possessed of the
devil--the mongoose. "You take _afim_?" He takes a pellet of the black,
treacly stuff on the end of a knitting-needle. "And light _afim_." He
plunges the pellet into the night-light, where it swells and fumes
greasily. "And then you put it in your pipe." The smoking pellet is
jammed into the tiny bowl of the thick, bamboo-stemmed pipe, and all
speech ceases, except the unearthly chitter of the mongoose. The man on
the ground is sucking at his pipe, and when the smoking pellet has
ceased to smoke will be half-way to _Nibban_. "Now you go," says the man
with the mongoose. "I am going smoke." The hut floor closes upon a
red-lit view of huddled legs and bodies, and the man with the mongoose
sinking, sinking on to his knees, his head bowed forward, and the little
hairy devil chattering on the nape of his neck.

After this the fetid night air seems almost cool, for the hut is as hot
as a furnace. "Now for Colootollah. Come through the huts. There is no
decoration about _this_ vice."

The huts now gave place to houses very tall and spacious and very dark.
But for the narrowness of the streets we might have stumbled upon
Chowringhi in the dark. An hour and a half has passed, and up to this
time we have not crossed our trail once. "You might k