"For God's sake don't do that!" he cried, trying to rise. This his handcuffed wrists and bound ankles prevented him from accomplishing; finding which, to my surprise and dismay, he fell back blubbering like a baby. "Give me a chance, Mr. Grant," he begged. "I've gone against the law I know, but I've been drove to it, sir, drove to it by being out of work so long." "Look here," I said; "tell me what you and the man you call the Dumpling and the other rascals are after, and if I find you've told me the truth and kept nothing back, I'll let you go. It is your only chance; and considering the way you'd have treated me, I think it is a very generous offer. "There's a mystery, and it strikes me a very wicked and criminal mystery, about all this--that opium den with its crucible, and chemicals, and queer instruments in the kitchen, the Dumpling, the Chinamen, yourself, and the other men. I've got to know all about it, and to know it now and here, this night, and in this boat. Make a clean breast of it; tell me everything, and I'll let you go. Refuse, and I take you straight, handcuffed and tied up as you are, to the police. Come, no beating about the bush. Which is it to be? 'Yes' or 'No'?" "I can't help myself," he answered. "You say you've got to know about the Dumpling and the house, and the rest of us, and what we're after, and that I've got to choose between telling and being handed over to the police. You swear, you take your Davy, you'll let me go free if I tell?" "I swear it," I said. "Tell me all, and I swear to loose you and put you ashore free and unfollowed--when you've done." "Very well," he replied sullenly, doggedly. "I'll tell. But the Dumpling"--with an oath--"will find me out and kill me if he gets to know that I've peached." "We'll hope he doesn't hear," I said, settling myself down to listen, but pulling gently at the oars meantime. Then Parker began his story. CHAPTER VI. THE MILLIONAIRES' CLUB. "It's this way," Parker began a trifle importantly--and something there was in his way of saying even these three words which made me suspect him to be a man fond of the sound of his own voice. Though entirely uneducated, he had, as I afterwards heard, a keen memory, and a ready knack of picking up scraps of information, both of which stood him in good stead in the speeches upon social subjects which he was apt to deliver in the parks on Sunday afternoons, and at other places where debaters foregather.