With a short laugh I passed him and entered the bathroom, and he shut the door after me. Evidently no mental effort or personal initiative was required here. I could have imagined how this must have appealed to a certain type of super-rich young man. I was only surprised that the young Chinese boy had not offered to give me my bath.
When I returned to the other room he was still waiting. I had put on my clothes again, a fact which did not seem to please him.
“Excuse me, sar, you not need that clothes. The entire costume is here, sar.”
I was faced with a dilemma. If I took off all my clothes, they might cart them off somewhere. And I would have a fine chance of escaping from the place dressed as a Roman Senator. The first cop who saw me would run me in. On the other hand, if I refused to wear the costume, I would give the impression that I was not entering into the spirit of the thing—was not a very serious reveler.
But the first risk was the greater, I decided. “Look here,” I said, “have I got to wear that thing? Because if so, I’ll stay away from the banquet. I dare say I can get a sandwich somewhere else, eh?”
“Oh, no, sar. You can wear that clothes if you desire. It is more customary to wear the costume, sar, it is all!”
“Well, then, I’ll go as I am, I think. Lead on, Macduff.”
With a bow he led the way into the hall again. We passed silently down the length of it. At the end the Chinese boy waited until I had come up with him. Then he turned to the wall and pressed a button or something, for the big doors facing us rolled silently open, and I stood looking in upon a strange scene indeed.
The room into which I looked was a huge one, at least fifty feet square and with a high-arched ceiling. Around all four sides of it huge pillars rose to the roof. Their sides were set with innumerable sconces, and in these flared hundreds of great torches, furnishing the only light in the room. Curiously enough, however, there was little smoke, and what there was must have been drawn through the ceiling in some way, for even the upper air was not very smoky.
But I was more interested in the scene immediately before me. In the flickering glare of the torches, which left the corners of the room in dense shadow, I saw that a huge low table ran around three sides of the room, and that between this table and the pillars a series of divans, covered with many cushions, were occupied by couples, numbering perhaps twenty-five, or about fifty people in all. But in addition there were many divans vacant, or occupied by girls only.