“Mr. Hackh is a welcome addition.”  He spoke with deliberate courtesy.  Something in his voice, the tired look in his frank blue eyes and serious face, at once engaged respect.  “For our sakes,” he continued, “we’re glad to see you here.  I am sure Doctor Chantel will agree with me.”

“Ah, indeed,” said the man in military blue, with a courtier’s bow.  Both air and accent were French.  “Most welcome.”

“Let’s all have a drink,” cried Heywood.  Despite his many glasses at dinner, he spoke with the alacrity of a new idea.  “O Boy, whiskey Ho-lan suey, fai di!”

Away bounded the boy marker like a tennis-ball.

“Hello, Wutzler’s off already!”—­The little old reader had quietly disappeared, leaving them a vacant table.—­“Isn’t he weird?” laughed Heywood, as they sat down.  “Comes and goes like a ghost.”

“It is his Chinese wife,” declared Chantel, preening his moustache.  “He is always ashame to meet the new persons.”

“Poor old chap,” said Heywood.  “I know—­feels himself an outcast and all that.  Humph!  With us!  Quite unnecessary.”—­The Chinese page, quick, solemn, and noiseless, glided round the table with his tray.—­“Ah, you young devil!  You’re another weird one, you atom.  See those bead eyes watching us, eh?  A Gilpin Homer, you are, and some fine day we’ll see you go off in a flash of fire.  If you don’t poison us all first.—­Well, here’s fortune!”

“Your health, Mr. Hackh,” amended the other Englishman.

As they set down their glasses, a strange cry sounded from below,—­a stifled call, inarticulate, but in such a key of distress that all four faced about, and listened intently.

“Kom down,” called a hesitating voice, “kom down and look-see.”

They sprang to the stairs, and clattered downward.  Dim radiance flooded the landing, from the street door.  Outside, a smoky lantern on the ground revealed the lower levels.

In the wide sector of light stood Wutzler, shrinking and apologetic, like a man caught in a fault, his wrinkled face eloquent of fear, his gesture eloquent of excuse.  Round him, as round a conjurer, scores of little shadowy things moved in a huddling dance, fitfully hopping like sparrows over spilt grain.  Where the light fell brightest these became plainer, their eyes shone in jeweled points of color.

“By Jove, Gilly, they are rats!” said Heywood, in a voice curiously forced and matter-of-fact.  “Flounce killed several this afternoon, so my—­”

No one heeded him; all stared.  The rats, like beings of incantation, stole about with an absence of fear, a disregard of man’s presence, that was odious and alarming.

“Earthquake?” The elder Englishman spoke as though afraid of disturbing some one.

The French doctor shook his head.

“No,” he answered in the same tone.  “Look.”

The rats, in all their weaving confusion, displayed one common impulse.  They sprang upward continually, with short, agonized leaps, like drowning creatures struggling to keep afloat above some invisible flood.  The action, repeated multitudinously into the obscure background, exaggerated in the foreground by magnified shadows tossing and falling on the white walls, suggested the influence of some evil stratum, some vapor subtle and diabolic, crawling poisonously along the ground.