The adjoining room was a well-appointed opium resort.  Here the roar of the bazaar and pulsing of tom-toms were blurred and almost inaudible.  A reek of bhang and betel hung in the air; there were rows of neat bunks, lacquered pillows, and small trays containing the opium pipe, lamp and other necessaries.  Everything was apparently carried out decently and in order; the clients were of a respectable, well-to-do class—­some who had merely dropped in for a pipe of chandu, or a jolt of opium; and Shafto noticed quite a number of Europeans and, among them, at present asleep, a man whom he knew and frequently met on the Strand.  He had sometimes wondered at his dried-up, withered skin and lank, dead-looking black hair. Now he understood.

The police officer was not disposed to linger on these premises.  A cocaine den was his goal, and after a short talk with an affable old Chinaman, who spoke perfect English, he took leave and once more they were threading the odorous gloom of the slums.  They soon came to a halt and, leaving the two constables outside, after the usual delay and mystery, were admitted and entered a most evil-smelling den.  This was lighted by two or three smoky oil-lamps, the rank smell of which, with the sickly reek of squalid humanity, struck them like a blow in the face.  Between forty and fifty victims appeared to be present, all belonging to the poorer classes, and nothing could be more repulsive than their appearance.  Excessive emaciation and festering sores were their most marked characteristics.  Some were lying on their mats in semi-stupor, several who had just received an injection were patiently awaiting their dreadful sleep—­one of the chief attributes of cocaine is its almost immediate effect.  Here was a group squatting round a man armed with a syringe—­fatal germ-carrier—­busily engaged in mixing the cocaine and morphia.  When the concoction had been prepared, one of the customers turned up his sleeve to discover—­if he could—­a spot in which to insert the needle; but there was not a place, even the size of a pin’s head, so he rolled up his lungyi and searched for a site on his thigh; then the needle was produced, its contents were pumped in, and the man made room for the next victim.  This performance held Shafto with a sort of hideous fascination; the crowd appeared to be entirely insensible to his presence and only alive to the enjoyment awaiting them.

At the far end of the room was an iron-bound enclosure, behind which sat a wily and inscrutable Chinaman who, having received a formal notice that this visit was “safe and unofficial,” obligingly exhibited his scales and small packets of drugs—­wares to bring rich delights to the narcotised—­which he disposed of in infinitesimal quantities, at from four to six annas a dose.

Sprawling about on filthy rush mats were numerous Chinese, Burmese and Indians; also a few women of the lowest class, each and all sunken in the various stages of an ecstatic slumber.