CHAPTER III.
THE LUCIFER THAT SAVED MY LIFE.
Surprised, not to say startled, I certainly was, and all the more so for the reason that I recognised the voice of the speaker. It was that of my long time friend and at one time colleague, Robert Grant, the detective.
When I turned round—not suddenly or abruptly, for I feared to attract the attention, possibly the suspicion, of the four men still whispering on the landing—the two Chinamen were still sucking nonchalantly at their flute-shaped opium pipes, and still eyeing me, as I have already said, as pigs, lying on a muck-heap in the sunshine, eye a terrier who has entered their domain.
Stretching my arms, I affected to yawn, as if tired of waiting the result of the conference outside. Then, hands deep in my trousers pockets, I slouched leisurely across the room and bent over the Chinamen's mattress, as if to examine the picture of the Crucifixion which was plastered on the wall above.
The nearer of the two Chinamen made a great pretence of puffing noisily at his pipe, as if trying hard to prevent it from going out, but between each puff came a volley of whispered words in soft staccato:
"Make pretence to be friendly with them—disarm suspicion—but get away—if they'll let you—go to police station—say it's me—arrest the lot. Look out—they're coming—go away!"
The "they" were the leader and the other man.
They now returned to the room, still whispering, and the two who had been on guard at the head of the stairs, after noisily calling out "Good-night," made their way down, and so into the street, for we could distinctly hear them unlocking the door, which this time—as I did not hear it banged to—they had apparently left open.
"I don't think much of your Art Exhibition," I said, turning to the leader of the gang and jerking my thumb over my shoulder in the direction of the hideous representation of the Crucifixion, at which I had made pretence to be looking. "It reminds me of what I once said to a famous art critic and æsthete about a picture that hung in some cheap bachelor lodgings of mine.