A tiny, pitch-black closet opens out of the long room, and into this the Police plunge. “Hullo! What’s here?” Down flashes the lantern, and a white hand with black nails comes out of the gloom. Somebody is asleep or drunk in the cot. The ring of lantern light travels slowly up and down the body. “A sailor from the ships. He’s got his _dungarees_ on. He’ll be robbed before the morning most likely.” The man is sleeping like a little child, both arms thrown over his head, and he is not unhandsome. He is shoeless, and there are huge holes in his stockings. He is a pure-blooded white, and carries the flush of innocent sleep on his cheeks. The light is turned off, and the Police depart; while the woman in the loose-box shivers, and moans that she is “seek: vary, _vary_ seek.” It is not surprising. CHAPTER VII. DEEPER AND DEEPER STILL. I built myself a lordly pleasure-house, Wherein at ease for aye to dwell; I said: “O Soul, make merry and carouse, Dear Soul--for all is well.” --_The Palace of Art._ “And where next? I don’t like Colootollah.” The Police and their charge are standing in the interminable waste of houses under the starlight. “To the lowest sink of all,” say the Police after the manner of Virgil when he took the Italian with the indigestion to look at the frozen sinners. “And where’s that?” “Somewhere about here; but you wouldn’t know if you were told.” They lead and they lead and they lead, and they cease not from leading till they come to the last circle of the Inferno--a long, long, winding, quiet road. “There you are; you can see for yourself.” But there is nothing to be seen. On one side are houses--gaunt and dark, naked and devoid of furniture; on the other, low, mean stalls, lighted, and with shamelessly open doors, wherein women stand and lounge, and mutter and whisper one to another. There is a hush here, or at least the busy silence of an officer of counting-house in working hours. One look down the street is sufficient. Lead on, gentlemen of the Calcutta Police. Let us escape from the lines of open doors, the flaring lamps within, the glimpses of the tawdry toilet-tables adorned with little plaster dogs, glass balls from Christmas-trees, and--for religion must not be despised though women be fallen--pictures of the saints and statuettes of the Virgin. The street is a long one, and other streets, full of the same pitiful wares, branch off from it. “Why are they so quiet? Why don’t they make a row and sing and shout, and so on?” “Why should they, poor devils?” say the Police, and fall to telling tales of horror, of women decoyed into _palkis_ and shot into this trap. Then other tales that shatter one’s belief in all things and folk of good repute. “How can you Police have faith in humanity?”