It was Lavis who made friends with the captain of a river tug-boat with whom they made midnight voyages to Gravesend all among the shipping.

They had their less reputable enterprises too. Lavis had a way of discovering things. Perhaps one has to be a late-comer to London to do this; the born Londoners so quickly become villagers, living within their own small area, eating and drinking in the same places, and seeing the same people, just as at Little Pedlington; but the inquiring strangers really investigate. Rudd had investigated too, but he had not Lavis's imperturbable readiness to go anywhere or everywhere alone. Rudd was enterprising and curious, but without Lavis he would never, for example, have found Sing Loo. He would have wanted to, but when the time came he would have weakened. With Lavis to join him and share the novelty, the rest was natural.

With all his varied experience in the West, Lavis of course had smoked opium; and this was one of the things which, for some vague reason, Rudd wished to do.

"You frontiersmen have all the luck," he said.

"There's nothing in it," Lavis assured him. Unless, he added, one persevered and fell to the habit, and then of course one was a silly idiot.

"I want to try," said Rudd. "I want to try everything."

"Very well," said Lavis. "Have your own way." And late one summer night-indeed in the small

hours, after the "Gambrinus" had closed, and under a sky that had never been really dark-they walked through the deserted City right away to Aldgate and farther.

After proceeding a little way along the Commercial Road, they turned to the right down a narrow street with Chinese signs in it, and at a door on the left Lavis knocked three times. Footsteps were heard on the stairs, and the door was unlocked and opened by a Chinese youth with a bicycle lamp, who, after scrutinizing them closely, led the way up a narrow staircase and through a passage to an empty room. "Wait here," he said, and disappeared.

The house was close and dirty: filled with the East End smell, into which crept something strange and aromatic. Voices were heard in a neighbouring room. "Don't lean against the wall," said Lavis. "Why not?" Rudd asked.

"You must guess," said Lavis. "Later, when you're a doctor in a poor district, you'll know."

The boy now returned, led them a little farther, and flung open a door. The change from darkness to light was very sudden, and for a moment Rudd was dazed. Then he saw an old Chinaman with a very yellow face seated on a sofa, holding something over a small flame. By his side was a woman gaudily dressed. On a bed, to the right, sat another and younger woman, a girl in fact. On the left was a screen. The room was heavy with the aromatic scent and thick with smoke.

The old Chinaman wished them good evening in a cordial whisper. The two women giggled, and the one on the bed made room for Rudd, who, however, remained standing.

"You want smoke?" the Chinaman asked Lavis, again whispering, and Lavis said that he wanted nothing of the kind, but his friend wished to try.

"Why don't you?" the older woman asked Lavis. "It's splendid. I've got a pipe of my own at home. It makes you forget everything."

"I don't want to forget everything; I want to remember it," said Lavis. "That's the difference.” The woman looked at him searchingly for a moment and then laughed.

"That's all right for you," she said. "Hurry up, uncle. There's precious little I want to remember." Lavis sat on the arm of the sofa and watched the old Chinaman.

"These ladies first," said Sing Loo, and he began again to move a little black ball of something that sizzled backwards and forwards and round and round over the flame.

"Now," he whispered, holding out the pipe, and the older woman leaned back among the cushions and began to smoke, with her eyes closed. There was no doubt about her pleasure in it. The suction made a little sighing sound.

"Beautiful," she said, and relapsed into ecstasy, while the girl, who was evidently new to it, watched her, fascinated.

Rudd meanwhile sat down on the bed, but leapt up again as a voice from the sheets called out, "Get off my leg, confound you!"

"I'm awfully sorry," Rudd said. "I thought it was empty."

"Yes, but why on earth," said the voice, "can't you let me get to sleep?-coming here at this time of night to smoke that filthy stuff!"

The girl leaned over and said something to him, and they both laughed.

"That's my son," said the old Chinaman to Rudd. "It's all right."

"He speaks perfect English,” said Rudd.

"Of course he does," said the girl. "He's at Oxford. Aren't you, Charley?"

"Oh, go to blazes!" said Charley, "and let me sleep."

"Now, Amy," said the woman, "it's your turn," and Amy left the bed to watch the preparation of her pipe, and Rudd took her place nearer the head of the bed.

"Are you really at Oxford?" he asked its occupant. "Of course I am. I wish I was there now. I can't get any sleep at all in this place with all the row that goes on every night and the smell of that cursed opium."

Rudd noticed that his features were undoubtedly Chinese.

"My brother's wiser; he doesn't even try," Charley added.

"Where is your brother?" Rudd asked.

"Behind that screen-reading," said Charley, and Rudd crossed over, and looking round the screen, found a yellow-skinned youth poring over a Chinese book. Lavis joined him.

"Well, of all the places!" Rudd said. "Is that fellow really at Oxford?"

"Certainly," said Lavis.

"And all living in this room?" Rudd asked.

"The Chinese haven't many personal needs," said Lavis. "That's all right."

The other woman was now whispering to Charley, and Amy, leaning back, was being taught by the old Chinaman how to smoke properly.

"Take it quietly," he whispered, and prodded the smouldering ball. The other woman came over to help.

"Just breathe it in," she said. "Shut your eyes and enjoy it."

"I don't see anything in it," said Amy.

"No, but you will," said the other.

"If you take my advice, you'll never touch it again,' said Charley from the bed. "It's beastly stuff. The very smell of it makes me sick."

The old Chinaman laughed softly, and began to smoke his own pipe again, surveying the room and the two women with placid eyes. Amy was not more than twenty; the other woman, whom she called Belle, was ten or more years older, and battered. Belle was evidently an old hand here. She beckoned