We paused immediately outside the house for which we had been bound, and as I had the key I opened the door and the three of us stepped into a little dark room. Harley closed the door and we stumbled upstairs to a low first-floor apartment facing the street. There was nothing in its appointments, as revealed in the light of an oil lamp burning on the solitary table, to distinguish it from a thousand other such apartments which may be leased for a few shillings a week in the neighbourhood. That adjoining might have told a different story, for it more closely resembled an actor's dressing-room than a seaman's lodging; but the door of this sanctum was kept scrupulously locked.
“Sit down, old son,” said my friend heartily, pushing forward an old arm-chair. “Fetch out the grog, Jim; there's about enough for three.”
I walked to a cupboard, as the fireman sank limply down in the chair, and took out a bottle and three glasses. When the man, who, as I could now see quite plainly, was suffering from the after effects of opium, had eagerly gulped the stiff drink which I handed to him, he looked around with dim, glazed eyes, and:
“You've saved my life, mates,” he declared. “I've 'ad a 'orrible nightmare, I 'ave—a nightmare. See?”
He fixed his eyes on me for a moment, then raised himself from his seat, peering narrowly at me across the table.
“I seed you before, mate. Gaw, blimey! if you ain't the bloke wot I giv'd the pigtail to! And wot laid out that blasted Chink as was scraggin' me! Shake, mate!”
I shook hands with him, Harley eyeing me closely the while, in a manner which told me that his quick brain had already supplied the link connecting our doped acquaintance with my strange experience during his absence. At the same time it occurred to me that my fireman friend did not know that Ah Fu was dead, or he would never have broached the subject so openly.
“That's so,” I said, and wondered if he required further information.
“It's all right, mate. I don't want to 'ear no more about blinking pigtails—not all my life I don't,” and he sat back heavily in his chair and stared at Harley.
“Where have you been?” inquired Harley, as if no interruption had occurred, and then began to reload his pipe: “at Malay Jack's or at Number Fourteen?”