“There, there!” Heywood patted his shoulder.  “I didn’t mean—­Here, have a drink.”

The man drained the tumbler at a gulp; stood without a word, sniffing miserably; then of a sudden, as though the draught had worked, looked up bold and shrewd.

“Do you?” he whispered.  “Do you dare go to the place I show you, and hide?  You would learn.”

Heywood started visibly, paused, then laughed.

“Excellent,” he said. “Tu quoque is good argument.  Can you smuggle me?—­Then come on.”  He stepped lightly across the landing, and called out, “You chaps make yourselves at home, will you?  Business, you know.  What a bore!  I’ll not be back till late.”  And as he followed the slinking form downstairs, he grumbled, “If at all, perhaps.”

The moon still lurked behind the ocean, making an aqueous pallor above the crouching roofs.  The two men hurried along a “goat” path, skirted the town wall, and stole through a dark gate into a darker maze of lonely streets.  Drawing nearer to a faint clash of cymbals in some joss-house, they halted before a blind wall.

“In the first room,” whispered the guide, “a circle is drawn on the floor.  Put your right foot there, and say, ’We are all in-the-circle men,’ If they ask, remember:  you go to pluck the White Lotus.  These men hate it, they are Triad brothers, they will let you pass.  You come from the East, where the Fusang cocks spit orient pearls; you studied in the Red Flower Pavilion; your eyes are bloodshot because”—­He lectured earnestly, repeating desperate nonsense, over and over.  “No:  not so.  Say it exactly, after me.”

They held a hurried catechism in the dark.

“There,” sighed Wutzler, at last, “that is as much as we can hope.  Do not forget.  They will pass you through hidden ways.—­But you are very rash.  It is not too late to go home.”

Receiving no answer, he sighed more heavily, and gave a complicated knock.  Bars clattered within, and a strip of dim light widened.  “Who comes?” said a harsh but guarded voice, with a strong Hakka brogue.

“A brother,” answered the outcast, “to pluck the White Lotus.  Aid, brothers.—­Go in, I can help no further.  If you are caught, slide down, and run westward to the gate which is called the Meeting of the Dragons.”

Heywood nodded, and slipped in.  Beside a leaf-point flame of peanut-oil, a broad, squat giant sat stiff and still against the opposite wall, and stared with cruel, unblinking eyes.  If the stranger were the first white man to enter, this motionless grim janitor gave no sign.  On the earthen floor lay a small circle of white lime.  Heywood placed his right foot inside it.

“We are all in-the-circle men.”

“Pass,” said the guard.

Out from shadow glided a tall native with a halberd, who opened a door in the far corner.

In the second room, dim as the first, burned the same smoky orange light on the same table.  But here a twisted cripple, his nose long and pendulous with elephantiasis, presided over three cups of tea set in a row.  Heywood lifted the central cup, and drank.