As he spoke he turned into a narrow street that led through an endless maze of curves and angles and, followed by two stalwart Sikh police, they made their way into the heart of the China bazaar and plunged into the worst slum quarter of this crowded, cosmopolitan city—a city, at least, in wealth, extent, population and importance. They passed flaring joss-houses, gambling dens and brazenly naked haunts of vice, and after picking their steps through a particularly noisome gully—odorous of _napie_ and rotten vegetables—they arrived at an innocent little door in a high blank wall. After some whispered parley with an old Chinaman, the pair were admitted and ushered into a large, low saloon, where scores of gamblers were engrossed in the hypnotic pleasures of “Fan Tan,” or the “36 animal lottery,” so popular and so simple! The adjoining room was a well-appointed opium resort. Here the roar of the bazaar and pulsing of tom-toms were blurred and almost inaudible. A reek of _bhang_ and _betel_ hung in the air; there were rows of neat bunks, lacquered pillows, and small trays containing the opium pipe, lamp and other necessaries. Everything was apparently carried out decently and in order; the clients were of a respectable, well-to-do class—some who had merely dropped in for a pipe of _chandu_, or a jolt of opium; and Shafto noticed quite a number of Europeans and, among them, at present asleep, a man whom he knew and frequently met on the Strand. He had sometimes wondered at his dried-up, withered skin and lank, dead-looking black hair. _Now_ he understood.