“Waiter! bring a light. My cigar is out,” said the Jew, affecting not to observe Stumps’s tone or manner. “It is strange,” he went on, “how, sometimes, you find a bad cigar—a very bad cigar—in the midst of good ones. Yours is going well, I think.”
“Well enough,” answered Stumps, taking another pull at the brandy and water.
The seedy man now launched out into a pleasant light discourse about Bombay and its ways, which highly interested his poor victim. He made no further allusion to the bag, Stumps’s behaviour having betrayed all he required to know, namely, that its contents were valuable.
Soon the brandy began to take effect on Stumps, and, as he was unaccustomed to such potent drink besides being unused to self-restraint, he would speedily have made himself a fit subject for the care of the police, which would not have suited his new friend at all. When, therefore, Stumps put out his hand to grasp his tumbler for another draught, his anxious friend inadvertently knocked it over, and then begged his pardon profusely. Before Stumps could decide whether to call for another glass at the risk of having to pay for it himself, the Jew pointed to a tall, sallow-faced man who sat in a corner smoking and reading a newspaper.
“Do you see him!” he asked, in a low mysterious whisper.
“Yes; who is he? what about him?” asked the youth in a similar whisper.
“He’s an opium-smoker.”
“Is he?” said Stumps with a vacant stare. “What’s that?”
Upon this text the seedy man delivered a discourse on the pleasures of opium-smoking, which quite roused the interest and curiosity of his hearer.
“But is it so very nice to smoke opium?” he asked, after listening for some time.