“Music!” he gasped—“that music? That is enough to drive any man crazy! It is the most frightful thing I ever heard. Music! You are joking, Merriwell!”
“Not a bit of it,” declared Frank. “Aren’t we on our way to witness a play in a Chinese theatre?”
“Well, I supposed so, but it strikes me now that this is one of your jokes. You have put up a job on me. You are trying to horse me.”
“Nothing of the sort, my dear boy.”
Jack still continued suspicious.
“Who ever heard of such a way of getting into a theatre?” he exclaimed. “We entered a narrow door in an old building, came through a long, dark passage, climbed stairs, descended stairs, turned, twisted, climbed more stairs, turned again, and now here we are with another flight of stairs before us. A fine way of getting into a theatre!”
“That is the way the Chinese do the trick. Eh, John?”
The Chinaman who had been acting as their guide, and who stood on the first stair, waiting for them to follow him downward, nodded his head, saying:
“Allee samee legler way.”
“It may be the regular way,” admitted Jack; “but I doubt if I could find my way out of here alone. This would be a fine place to run an enemy into if one wished to murder him secretly. There would be little danger that the police would ever find out anything about it.”