We stood there in that squalid darkness for about a hundred years (it was really ten minutes), and then the voice of our guide seemed to float to us, as if from an immeasurable distance.

“Boys,” he said.  “How air ye makin’ it?”

Ajax answered him quite coolly—­

“What do you want?  Our money of course.  What else?”

The fellow did not reply at once.  These opium fiends have no bowels of compassion.  He was doubtless chuckling to himself at his own guile.  When he did speak, the malice behind his words lent them point.

“Your money?  The five you gave me’ll keep me a week, and after that I’ll come for more.”

With that the voice died away, and Ajax muttered:  “It looks to me as if this were a case of putting up the shutters.”

We had forgotten all about The Babe, which is not surprising under the circumstances.

“Putting up the shutters?  Pulling them down, you mean! there must be a window of sorts in this room.”

But after careful search we came to the conclusion that we were directly under the road-bed, and that the only opening of any kind was the door through which we had passed.  I thought of that door and the face of the man behind it.  For what purpose save robbery and murder was such a room designed?  I could not confront the certainty of violence with a jest, as Ajax did, but I was of his opinion otherwise expressed:  we had been trapped like rats in a blind drain, and would be knocked on the head—­presently.

The uncertainty began to gnaw at our vitals.  We did not speak, for darkness is the twin of silence, but our thoughts ran riot.  I remember that I almost screamed when Ajax laid his hand on my shoulder, and yet I knew that he was standing by my side.

“I shall try the heathen Chinee,” he whispered.  So we felt our way to the door and tapped three times, very softly, on the centre panel.  To the Oriental mind those taps spell bribery, but the door remained shut.

“What have you been thinking about?” said Ajax, after another silence.

“My God—­don’t ask me.”

“Brace up!” said my brother.  I confess that he has steadier nerves than mine, but then, you see, he has not my imagination.  I put my hand into his, and the grip he gave me was reassuring.  I reflected that men built upon the lines of Ajax are not easily knocked on the head.

“It’s a tight place,” he continued.  “But we’ve been in tight places before, although none that smells as close as this infernal hole.  Now listen:  I’m prepared to lay odds that The Babe is not an opium fiend at all, and has never been near this den.  He wrote that letter at the saloon, didn’t he?  And ten to one he borrowed the paper from the bar-tender.  That’s why it smelled of opium.  The handwriting was very shaky.  Why? because The Babe was only half alive after a prolonged spree.  That accounted for the tone of the letter.  The Babe was thinking of the parsonage, and his mother’s knee, and all that.  You follow me—­eh?  Now then, I think it barely possible that instead of our rescuing The Babe, he will rescue us.  We got in late last night, but our names were chronicled in the morning papers, for I saw them there.  If The Babe sees a paper he will go to our hotel, and——­”