"This w'y, then." Honest George hoisted himself ponderously out of his arm-chair and lumbered heavily across the room, shouldering the crowd aside with a high-handed contempt for the pack of them. Jerking open a small door in the side wall, he beckoned Amber on with a backward nod of his heavy head. "Be a bit lively, carn't you?" he growled; and Amber, in despite of qualms of distrust, followed the fellow into a small and noisome hallway lighted by a single gas-jet. On the one hand a flight of rickety steps ran up into repellent obscurity; on the other a low door stood open to the night.
The crimp lowered his voice. "Your friend's this w'y." He waved his fat red hand toward the door. "Them fools back there 'll think you're tryin' for a berth with Abercrombie, the ship-master. I 'opes you'll not tyke offense at the w'y I 'ad to rag you back there, sir."
"No," said Amber, and Honest George led the way out into a small, flagged well between towering black walls and left him at the threshold of a second doorway. "Two flights up, the door at the top," he said; "knock twice and then twice." And without waiting for an answer he lurched heavily back to his own establishment.
Amber watched his broad back fill the dimly-lighted doorway opposite and disappear, of two minds whether or not to turn tail and run. Suspicious enough in the beginning, the affair had now an exceeding evil smell—as repulsive figuratively as was the actual effluvium of the premises. He hung hesitant in doubt, with a heart oppressed by those grim and silent walls of blackness that loomed above him. With feet slipping on slimy flags he might be pardoned for harbouring suspicions of some fouler treachery. The yawning mouth of the narrow doorway, with the blackness of Erebus within, was deterring at its best; in such a hole a man might be snared and slain and his screams, though they rang to high Heaven, would fall meaningless on mundane ears. Honest George's with its flare of lights and its crowd had been questionable enough….
With a shrug, at length, he took his courage in his hands—and his life, too, for all he knew to the contrary—and moved on into the blackness, groping his way cautiously down a short corridor, his fingers on either side brushing walls of rotten plaster. He had absolutely nothing to guide him beyond the crimp's terse instructions. Underfoot the flooring seemed to sag ominously; it creaked hideously. Abruptly he stumbled against an obstruction, halted, and lighted a match.
The insignificant flame showed him a flight of stairs, leading up to darkness. With a drumming heart he began to ascend, counting twenty-one steps ere his feet failed to find another. Then groping again, one hand encountered a baluster-rail; with this for guide he turned and followed it until it began to slant upwards. This time he counted sixteen steps before his eyes, rising above the level of the upper floor, discovered to him a thin line of light, bright along the threshold of a door. He began to breathe more freely, yet apprehension kept him strung up to a high tension of nerves.
He knuckled the door loudly—one double knock followed by another.
From within a voice called cheerfully, in English: "Come in."
He fumbled for the knob, found and turned it, and entered a small, low-ceiled chamber, very cosy with lamplight, and simply furnished with a single chair, a charpoy, a water-jug, a large mirror, and beneath the latter a dressing-table littered with a collection of toilet gear, cosmetics and bottles, which would have done credit to an actress.
There was but a single person in the room and he occupied the chair before the dressing-table. As Amber came in, he rose; a middle-aged babu in a suit of pink satin, very dirty. In one hand something caught the light, glittering.