“Gentlemen, I merely wanted to show you what to expect if you were to advance another step. I wouldn’t kill you—not yet. One of you, yes. But it would cause comment, the disappearance of two fools. However, I might slice bits off your ears. Further, this is my house. Are you not intruding? Gentlemen, you may go.”
And, you know, we did. What the deuce else was there to do? If Tarlyon with his infernal chuckling hadn’t roused the man out of his lair we might have taken him by surprise and learnt something of the whereabouts of that counterfeiting business. But as it was, “go” was us while the going was good. And the way Tarlyon swore when we were outside made me glad it was a Saturday afternoon and the warehouses were closed, else he might have corrupted the poor workmen.
“What do we do now?” he asked at last. “Lump it?”
“Well, at any rate, we know his address now.”
“Address be blowed! That’s not an address, Charles, but an exit. I’ll bet our smart friend doesn’t press his trousers in that hole—and, by Heaven, there you are!”
He made me jump. I hadn’t, didn’t, see anything. I thought it was another knife.
“Never mind,” snapped George. “Too late now. Come on, man, come on!”
He made me walk on. After reaching daylight from that passage between the warehouses we had turned to the left, walked on a hundred yards or so by the front of the warehouses, then to the left again. This, running parallel to the passage, was a row of quite respectable-looking houses all stuck together, as quite respectable-looking houses should do in these times. There are streets and streets of them down there, and I’m told white women sometimes marry Chinamen just for the pleasure of living in them. But, as someone has said, white women will do anything. We had come to the end of a block when Tarlyon set up that howl and then shut me up.
“What the deuce!” I said again.
George said, walking on: “Jewboy has made one mistake. Naughty Jewboy. Now have a look at that house we passed. Don’t stare as though you were an American tailor looking at the Prince of Wales. Casually. The corner one.”