You may pass up and down the street all day and not see a soul enter this shop. If you peer in you will see something in Chinese characters over the door that leads to the inner portion of the premises. If you were to enter you would be in the presence of a Joss and the strange worship of the wooden image. Here in the heart of living London are the mysteries of the East to be found—here you may see phases of life as they might have been depicted in some side street of Pekin by Guy Boothby.
To this house opium smokers with strange histories have come again and again. It was here that an English opium smoker, who had been searched for in vain by his friends for many months, was found at last, lost to knowledge of himself, lost to everything except the mad craving for the drug that had degraded him from a high estate to lie cheek by jowl with the strange men of the East, who bring their mysteries with them for awhile to the world's port, and then vanish to be seen no more.
The Londoner may think when he sees high up upon a tapering flagstaff a red lamp glowing in the darkness of the night that it is intended, by the small body of men and women who have imbibed the occultism of the East, to light the wandering Mahatmas home.
Though the general knowledge of the rites of the Theosophists is vague, there is no concealment about the temples of the worshippers. But there are strange rites practised in the heart of busy London, and there is no sign or token given of the meeting-place of those who indulge in them.
In a gloomy synagogue in a by-street of Alien Land the patriarchal Jew may be seen writing out the sacred amulets and scrolls by the light of a guttering candle—a picture for a Rembrandt; but no one but her dupes sees the "witch" or the "wise woman," who still carries on her trade in the twentieth century, making the charms and the love philtres that she knows where to sell.
The West End palmists and fortune-tellers flourished for a time and had their day, and went down before the arm of the law; but a far more dangerous trade than theirs, which did but minister to a foolish, fashionable craze, is still carried on daily and nightly in secret in unsuspected places.
It is nine o'clock at night and the darkness has descended over London. At the top of a street near Victoria Station, once inhabited by the well-to-do, but now fallen into the seediness of floor-letting, a cab stops and a lady closely veiled alights.
She makes her way to one of the houses, looking furtively behind her now and then. She rings the bell and is admitted.
If we follow her we shall see her descend the stairs to the basement. She is shown into a room dimly lighted and fantastically draped, and filled with strange objects.
A dark, sallow-faced woman, clad in a curious Eastern robe, receives her, and the door is closed and locked.