“Yes,” grunted his friend.  “The padre.  We must find him to-night, and report.”

He strode forward, with no more comment.  At his side, Rudolph moved as a soldier, carried onward by pressure and automatic rhythm, moves in the apathy of a forced march.  The day had been so real, so wholesome, full of careless talk and of sunlight.  And now this senseless picture blotted all else, and remained,—­each outline sharper in memory, the smoky lamp brighter, the blow of the hilt louder, the smell of peanut oil more pungent.  The episode, to him, was a disconnected, unnecessary fragment, one bloody strand in the whole terrifying snarl.  But his companion stalked on in silence, like a man who saw a pattern in the web of things, and was not pleased.

CHAPTER V

IN TOWN

Night, in that maze of alleys, was but a more sinister day.  The same slant-eyed men, in broken files, went scuffing over filthy stone, like wanderers lost in a tunnel.  The same inexplicable noises endured, the same smells.  Under lamps, the shaven foreheads still bent toward microscopic labor.  The curtained window of a fantan shop still glowed in orange translucency, and from behind it came the murmur and the endless chinking of cash, where Fortune, a bedraggled, trade-fallen goddess, split hairs with coolies for poverty or zero.  Nothing was altered in these teeming galleries, except that turbid daylight had imperceptibly given place to this other dimness, in which lanterns swung like tethered fire-balloons.  Life went on, mysteriously, without change or sleep.

While the two white men shouldered their way along, a strange chorus broke out, as though from among the crowded carcasses in a butcher’s stall.  Shrill voices rose in unearthly discord, but the rhythm was not of Asia.

“There goes the hymn!” scoffed Heywood.  He halted where, between the butcher’s and a book-shop, the song poured loud through an open doorway.  Nodding at a placard, he added:  “Here we are:  ‘Jesus Religion Chapel.’  Hear ’em yanging!  ‘There is a gate that stands ajar.’  That being the case, in you go!”

Entering a long, narrow room, lighted from sconces at either side, they sat down together, like schoolmates, on a low form near the door.  From a dais across at the further end, the vigorous white head of Dr. Earle dominated the company,—­a strange company, of lounging Chinamen who sucked at enormous bamboo pipes, or squinted aimlessly at the vertical inscriptions on the walls, or wriggling about, stared at the late-comers, nudged their neighbors, and pointed, with guttural exclamations.  The song had ended, and the padre was lifting up his giant’s voice.  To Rudolph, the words had been mere sound and fury, but for a compelling honesty that needed no translation.  This man was not preaching to heathen, but talking to men.  His eyes had the look of one who speaks earnestly of matters close at hand, direct, and simple.  Along the forms, another and another man forgot to plait his queue, or squirm, or suck laboriously at his pipe.  They listened, stupid or intent.  When some waif from the outer labyrinth scuffed in, affable, impudent, hailing his friends across the room, he made but a ripple of unrest, and sank gaping among the others like a fish in a pool.