The visitants to Yoshiwara had met September in a variety of emotions—from the block-headed dozing away of the well-contented bushman to the dance-ecstatic of the Ukrainer. But to come upon his features in an expression of absolute bewilderment was reserved for Slim, when, on the morning after his having lost sight of his young master, he set throbbing the massive gong which demanded entrance to Yoshiwara. It was most unusual that the generally very obliging door of Yoshiwara was not opened before the fourth gong-signal; and that this was performed by September himself and with this expression of countenance deepened the impression of an only tolerably overcome catastrophe. Slim bowed. September looked at him. A mask of brass seemed to fall over his face. But a chance glance at the driver of the taxi, in which Slim had come tore it off again. “Would to God your tin-kettle had gone up in the air before you could have brought that lunatic here yesterday evening,” he said. “He drove away my guests before they even thought of paying. The girls are huddling down in the corners like lumps of wet floor-cloth—that is, those who are not in hysterics. Unless I call in the police I might just as well close the house; for it doesn’t look as though that chap will have recovered his five senses by this evening.” “Of whom are you speaking, September?” asked Slim. September looked at him. At this moment the tiniest hamlet in North Siberia would have flatly refused to have been proclaimed the birth-place of so idiotic looking an individual. “If it is the man for whom I have come here to look,” continued Slim, “then I shall rid you of him in a more agreeable and swifter manner than the police.” “And for what man are you looking, sir?” Slim hesitated. He cleared his throat slightly. “You know the white silk which is woven for comparatively few in Metropolis....” In the long line of ancestors, the manifold sediment of whom had been crystalised into September, a fur-trader from Tarnopolis must also have been represented and he now smiled out from the corners of his great-grandson’s wily eyes. “Come in, sir!” the proprietor of Yoshiwara invited Slim, with true Singalese gentleness. Slim entered. September closed the door behind him. In the moment when the matutinal roar of the great Metropolis no longer bellowed up from the streets, another roar from inside the building became perceptible—the roar of a human voice, hotter than the voice of a beast of prey, mad-drunk with triumph. “Who is that?” asked Slim, involuntarily dropping his own voice. “He—!” answered September, and how he could stow the smooth and pointed vengefulness of whole Corsica into the monosyllable remained his own secret. Slim’s glance became uncertain, but he said nothing. He followed September over soft and glossy straw mats, along walls of oiled paper, narrowly framed in bamboo.