At the first words, Heywood doubled his pace.

“Come along.  Here’s a lark—­or a tragedy.”

Jostling through a malodorous crowd that blockaded the quarrel, they gained the threshold of a lighted shop.  Against a rank of orderly shelves, a fat merchant stood at bay, silent, quick-eyed, apprehensive.  Before him, like an actor in a mad scene, a sobbing ruffian, naked to the waist, convulsed with passion, brandished wild fists and ranted with incredible sounds.  When breath failed, he staggered, gasping, and swept his audience with the glazed, unmeaning stare of drink or lunacy.  The merchant spoke up, timid and deprecating.  As though the words were vitriol, the other started, whirled face to face, and was seized with a new raving.

Something protruded at his waistband, like a rudimentary, Darwinian stump.  To this, all at once, his hand flung back.  With a wrench and a glitter, he flourished a blade above his head.  Heywood sprang to intervene, in the same instant that the disturber of trade swept his arm down in frenzy.  Against his own body, hilt and fist thumped home, with the sound as of a football lightly punted.  He turned, with a freezing look of surprise, plucked at the haft, made one step calmly and tentatively toward the door, stumbled, and lay retching and coughing.

The fat shop-keeper wailed like a man beside himself.  He gabbled, imploring Heywood.  The young man nodded.  “Yes, yes,” he repeated irritably, staring down at the body, but listening to the stream of words.

Murmurs had risen, among the goblin faces blinking in the doorway.  Behind them, a sudden voice called out two words which were caught up and echoed harshly in the street.  Heywood whipped about.

“Never called me that before,” he said quickly.  “Come outside.”

He flung back a hurried sentence to the merchant, caught Rudolph’s arm, and plunged into the crowd.  The yellow men gave passage mechanically, but with lowering faces.  Once free in the muddy path, he halted quickly, and looked about.

“Might have known,” he grumbled.  “Never called me ‘Foreign Dog’ before, or ‘Jesus man,’ He set ’em on.”

Rudolph followed his look.  In the dim light, at the outskirts of the rabble, a man was turning away, with an air of contempt or unconcern.  The long, pale, oval face, the hard eyes gleaming with thought, had vanished at a glance.  A tall, slight figure, stooping in his long robe, he glided into the darkness.  For all his haste, the gait was not the gait of a coolie.

“That,” said Heywood, turning into their former path, “that was Fang, the Sword-Pen, so-called.  Very clever chap.  Of the two most dangerous men in the district, he’s one.”  They had swung along briskly for several minutes, before he added:  “The other most dangerous man—­you’ve met him already.  If I’m not mistaken, he’s no less a person than the Reverend James Earle.”

“What!” exclaimed Rudolph, in dull bewilderment.