He began to talk very busily, but without any great success in saying anything; and to lubricate his difficulty in articulation he drank and drank. “How’s that?” Doherty asked him, with each successive glass, and “Shine” assured him--as well as he could--that it was “A’ right a’ right.” “How’s _that_?” Doherty asked at last, exultingly; and his voice came to “Shine” as a thin rustle of hoarse sound. The wall seemed to be bellying like a curtain in a draught. “I’m fu’,” he said, and laughed tipsily. The room had begun to swim around him, and he drank again, to steady it. It revolved faster and faster. He shut his eyes and tried to sit tight, but could not keep his balance. The motion dizzied him. He rested his head on the table, feeling very tired and very sleepy; and he decided that he would remain there until the world around him returned to a state of rest. When he woke again, in a semi-stupor--it seemed only a few minutes later--he felt someone kicking the soles of his bare feet. He was lying on the floor of a room, stripped to his undershirt and trousers. He could not see Doherty anywhere. A stranger was saying, “Look-a-here, ‘Shine.’ That partner o’ yours, Doherty, was in to see me this mornin’. He said yuh wanted a job ballyhooin’. He said yuh’d do me a barefoot dance fer the price of a pair o’ boots. Is that right?” He grinned a grin of malice that showed the gold in all his huge teeth; and “Shine” recognized “Goldy” Simpson. XX Goldy Simpson!--proprietor of the “Alhambra of Mystic marvels and Persian Beauty Show” that had a large and gaudy entrance on one of the Island’s “avenues” and an inconspicuous exit on a neighboring walk. Its promises of entertainment were as lavish as the paint on its front canvas, and its fulfilment of them as shabby as the bleached pine of its back door. Its whole staff, in fact, was employed in drawing the public past its ticket office. Once inside the booth, you found nothing but three scrawny “Persian Beauties” posed on a curtained stage; the eloquent Simpson rose to make more promises of what was to be seen, for another payment, still further in, where the police could not interfere; and the “boosters” led those who paid, down a dark passage, to the exit--and laughed at them in the street. It was to this cave of robbers that “Shine” was led--led by the promise that if he assisted the “show” for the afternoon, he would be paid off at night with 25 cents for car fare, a pair of old shoes, a cap and a coat in which to return to town. He had to accept the offer; there was nothing else to be done; and he was in no condition to think of anything else even if there had been anything.