“The _chandoo_-shops shut up at six, so you’ll have to see opium-smoking before dark some day. No, you won’t, though.” The detective nose sniffs, and the detective body makes for a half-opened door of a hut whence floats the fragrance of the black smoke. Those of the inhabitants who are able to stand promptly clear out--they have no love for the Police--and there remain only four men lying down and one standing up. This latter has a pet mongoose coiled round his neck. He speaks English fluently. Yes, he has no fear. It was a private smoking party and--“No business to-night--show how you smoke opium.” “Aha! You want to see. Very good, I show. Hiya! you”--he kicks a man on the floor--“show how opium-smoking.” The kickee grunts lazily and turns on his elbow. The mongoose, always keeping to the man’s neck, erects every hair of its body like an angry cat, and chatters in its owner’s ear. The lamp for the opium-pipe is the only one in the room, and lights a scene as wild as anything in the witches’ revel; the mongoose acting as the familiar spirit. A voice from the ground says, in tones of infinite weariness: “You take _afim_, so”--a long, long pause, and another kick from the man possessed of the devil--the mongoose. “You take _afim_?” He takes a pellet of the black, treacly stuff on the end of a knitting-needle. “And light _afim_.” He plunges the pellet into the night-light, where it swells and fumes greasily. “And then you put it in your pipe.” The smoking pellet is jammed into the tiny bowl of the thick, bamboo-stemmed pipe, and all speech ceases, except the unearthly noise of the mongoose. The man on the ground is sucking at his pipe, and when the smoking pellet has ceased to smoke will be half way to _Nibhan_. “Now you go,” says the man with the mongoose. “I am going smoke.” The hut door closes upon a red-lit view of huddled legs and bodies, and the man with the mongoose sinking, sinking on to his knees, his head bowed forward, and the little hairy devil chattering on the nape of his neck. After this the fetid night air seems almost cool, for the hut is as hot as a furnace. “See the _pukka chandu_ shops in full blast to-morrow. Now for Colootollah. Come through the huts. There is no decoration about _this_ vice.”