“No savvy! No savvy!”
“Dope, then?” Ned went on. “Tell me if this man has been doping himself into unconsciousness. Dope, eh?”
Ned lifted his voice, half hoping that the man on the couch would show some signs of life, but there was no movement of the eyelids.
“No savvy!” grunted the Jap.
Ned took the servant by his shoulders, pushed him gently out of the room, and closed and locked the door, the key being in the lock on the inside.
“No savvy! No savvy!”
The words came through the thin panel of the door in quick succession for a minute and then silence. Again Ned advanced to the side of the couch and looked down upon the semi-unconscious man.
It was clear to the boy that the fellow sensed what was taking place, but was too well satisfied with the drugged condition in which he lay to disturb his poise of mind by taking note of anything whatever. The figure of the fellow was dressed in expensive clothes of latest cut, but they were soiled, and even torn in places.
The disreputable condition of the garments reminded Ned of a suit in which he had once been hauled through a briar patch and pulled into a pond at the hands, or horns, rather, of a village cow, assisted by a rope. His clothes, it is true, had not been expensive ones at the time of the occurrence, but the looks of the clothes the drugged man wore reminded him of the damage his cheaper ones had sustained.
The face of the man on the couch was deadly pale, with the drawn look about the skin which comes of much familiarity with the drug made of the poppy. It was still an attractive face, even in its degradation, and the forehead was that of a capable man.