"'I have a picture in my room,' I said to him, 'that will give your æsthetic senses a cold chill, not to say a shock. It's "Daniel in the Lions' Den," done in chromo—four colours—and loud enough to win a whistling match.'
"'How terrible!' said my friend. 'But I can imagine something even more terrible.'
"'What is it?' I inquired.
"'A poor lion in a den of Daniels,' was the reply."
I told this story, as the reader will have surmised, in pursuance of Grant's advice to "make pretence to be friendly," and apparently it had the desired effect, for the leader of the gang seemed amused.
"I think I can place the man who said it," he said. "I used to meet him often in Paris. No; we're not great on Art here, and that picture over the couch is a terror. I've made it all right for you with my friends. Would you like to smoke a pipe of opium, now you're here? You can if you like."
"That's very kind of you, but I don't think I'll stop to-night," I replied. "Fact is, you gave me a fright between you, for really I thought you meant knocking me on the head."
He laughed.
"All right; come some other night, if you like. I'm sorry if we frightened you, but of course we have to protect ourselves, and really I thought at first that you had come here to interfere with our customers and with our business. But it is all right now, and if you want to be off, we won't detain you. Good-night."
"Good-night," I answered pleasantly, glad to get away, and making for the door. With my hand on the handle I turned and looked back. My late host, the man whom I have called the leader, was standing—a sort of pocket caricature of Napoleon—his hands behind his back, and his short legs straddled widely apart. His great head, resting almost on his shoulders, was thrust forward, vulture-wise, the eyes glittering venomously out of the dead-white face. On the mattress behind him, the two men whom I had supposed to be Chinamen, but one of whom I now knew to be Detective Grant, pulled away at their pipes as nonchalantly as ever, the ghastly figure of the Crucified One stretching bare arms over them on the wall.