Above, faint and muffled, sounded a murmur of voices.

CHAPTER XI

WHITE LOTUS

He was swarming up, quiet as a thief, when his fingers clawed the bare plaster.  The ladder hung from the square end of a protruding beam, above which there were no more rungs.  He hung in doubt.

Then, to his great relief, something blacker than the starlight gathered into form over his head,—­a slanting bulk, which gradually took on a familiar meaning.  He chuckled, reached for it, and fingering the rough edge to avoid loose tiles, hauled himself up to a foothold on the beam, and so, flinging out his arms and hooking one knee, scrambled over and lay on a ribbed and mossy surface, under the friendly stars.  The outcast and his strange brethren had played fair:  this was the long roof, and close ahead rose the wall of some higher building, an upright blackness from which escaped two bits of light,—­a right angle of hairbreadth lines, and below this a brighter patch, small and ragged.  Here, louder, but confused with a gentle scuffing of feet, sounded the voices of the rival lodge.

Toward these he crawled, stopping at every creak of the tiles.  Once a broken roll snapped off, and slid rattling down the roof.  He sat up, every muscle ready for the sudden leap and shove that would send him sliding after it into the lower darkness.  It fell but a short distance, into something soft.  Gradually he relaxed, but lay very still.  Nothing followed; no one had heard.

He tried again, crawled forward his own length, and brought up snug and safe in the angle where roof met wall.  The voices and shuffling feet were dangerously close.  He sat up, caught a shaft of light full in his face, and peered in through the ragged chink.  Two legs in bright, wrinkled hose, and a pair of black shoes with thick white soles, blocked the view.  For a long time they shifted, uneasy and tantalizing.  He could hear only a hubbub of talk,—­random phrases without meaning.  The legs moved away, and left a clear space.

But at the same instant, a grating noise startled him, directly overhead, out of doors.  The thin right angle of light spread instantly into a brilliant square.  With a bang, a wooden shutter slid open.  Heywood lay back swiftly, just as a long, fat bamboo pipe, two sleeves, and the head of a man in a red silk cap were thrust out into the night air.

“Ai-yah!" sighed the man, and puffed at his bamboo.  “It is hot.”

Heywood tried to blot himself against the wall.  The lounger, propped on elbows, finished his smoke, spat upon the tiles, and remained, a pensive silhouette.

“Ai-yah!" he sighed again; then knocking out the bamboo, drew in his head.  Not until the shutter slammed, did Heywood shake the burning sparks from his wrist.