"I guess we go down here," Hamilton said. The policeman answered not a word, he simply pushed past the boy and went down first; Hamilton followed, and the reporter came next. At the bottom of the stair the policeman rapped on a door with his nightstick, a good loud rap. It was opened, and he strode in, followed by the two boys. A few questions from Hamilton verified one or two items of information, but details about the rest of the house were not forthcoming. In answer to questions the Chinaman simply pointed to the ground. "Next floor down, I reckon," the reporter said. "But we're in the cellar now," objected Hamilton The reporter laughed. "We build above ground, the Chinese below," he said. "Lots of these houses have five stories underground, and nearly all have either two or three. A Chinaman doesn't care about fresh air at all, and he won't waste money in fuel when he can keep warm in an underground burrow. Come on, I guess we'll go down some more." The policeman still leading the way, three of them went down a rickety stair, not much better than a ladder, and found themselves in a sort of storehouse. "They don't keep things to eat here!" exclaimed Hamilton, scarcely able to breathe the foul air and the exhalations from decaying food-stuffs. "Sure," the reporter answered. "Cheerful, isn't it?" Hamilton gave a little shiver of repugnance, but taking out his schedule, asked the underground store-keeper all the personal questions on it. Then, realizing that he would be able to know about his customers, the lad quickly made enough inquiries to assure him that there was no fault to find with the work, and started for the upper air. Just as they passed out of the stairway, the policeman, who was the last, still being on the steps, Hamilton heard a shot, and a bullet came whizzing by his head. It was answered by a fusillade of shots. The boy's first instinct was to duck back under the cover of the staircase from which he had just come out, but the policeman, as he left it, roughly gave him a push, as much as to say, "Keep out of there," and started on a dead run for the group where the firing was going on. "That's the Hip Sings," the reporter said, pulling Hamilton into the shadow of a doorway, "the Ong Leongs have been waiting for them, ever since that affair in the theater." "What was that?" asked Hamilton, although more interested in the immediate excitement than the story. "Time of the Chinese New Year," the reporter answered in short, crisp sentences. "There was a gala performance in the theater with suppers and banquets before and after. Everybody brought fire-crackers to the theater, and at a certain time all the fire-crackers were set off. When the noise stopped eighteen men were found shot dead, all members of the Ong Leong Tong. The Hip Sing men were blamed for it, but none ever caught." "What's up now?" cried Hamilton, in alarm.