“Tell ‘em to help me out of this.” Jimmie Dale essayed vainly to rise, and fell back on the bunk. “D’ye hear, Foo Sen—tell’em! Goin’ home!”
“Alee same bletter stay sleep him off,” advised Foo Sen.
Jimmie Dale succeeded in sitting upright on the edge of the bunk—and snarled at the other.
“You mind your own business, Foo Sen!” he flung out gutturally. “Goin’ home! Tell ‘em to help me out—sleep where I like! Makes me sick here—rotten smell—rotten punk sticks!”
“You allee same fool,” commented Foo Sen imperturbably, as he clapped his hands. “Mabbe you no get home; mabbe you get run in police cell sleep him off, instead. That your business, you likee that—all right!”
Foo Sen smiled placidly, and was gone.
An instant later, Jimmie Dale, his arms twined around the necks of two Chinamen, and leaning heavily upon them, and stumbling as he walked, was being conducted through a maze of dark and narrow passages that gradually trended upward to a higher level—and presently a door closed behind him, and he was in the open air.
It was dark about him, not even the glimmer of a window light showed from anywhere—but in Foo Sen’s there were eyes that saw through the darkness, and his progress, alone now, was both unsteady and slow. He was in a very narrow alleyway between two houses—one of the several hidden entrances to Foo Sen’s. The alley opened in one direction on a lane, in the other direction on the street. Jimmie Dale chose the direction of the lane, reached the lane, and, still stumbling and lurching, made his way along for a distance of possibly fifty yards; then, well clear of the neighbourhood of Foo Sen’s, he began to quicken his pace—and twenty minutes later, frowning in disappointment, he was standing in front of Reddy Curley’s liquor store, only to find that the place was already closed for the night.