Evidently the cab driver had been paid in advance, for he swung out from the curb as soon as his fares had dismounted, and was soon out of sight. The Chinese boy glanced at his companion, then set off silently up a street whose central portion was paved with cobblestones.
He seemed to know just where he was going. He paused only once, to cast a fleeting glance over his shoulder. Then he resumed his journey.
He had seen that the man in the ulster was following; and now, after traversing half a block of squalid, deserted street, the youngster turned abruptly into a pestilential-looking alley. This alley lay close to the top of a hill, and for a moment the man and the boy, who appeared to be his guide, could look down over the roofs to where the gay lights of Chinatown twinkled alluringly.
Presently the diminutive Oriental paused just outside a doorway. The man who had been following him came up, with a curious suggestion of eagerness and suspicion. Looking over the shoulder of the figure before him, he was able to make out the entrance to a narrow flight of unlighted stairs, which plunged steeply into the earth beneath a dilapidated building.
“Do we have to go down there, boy?” the man demanded.
“All a-same down here, master,” the youngster replied. “You come close—I show you!”
He began to descend as he spoke; and the man, after a moment of hesitation, plunged through the doorway after him. His manner was that of one who is taking a horribly unpleasant remedy, hoping to cure a still more horrible disease.
The diminutive Chinaman reached the bottom of the stairs and waited for his companion. When he felt the man’s heavy hand on his shoulder, he turned to his right, advancing cautiously through an almost impenetrable darkness.
There was a smell of dry rot in this basement, and around their feet rats scampered and squeaked. The man’s hand shook, and his breath came with a hissing sound through his clenched teeth.