It was late. Rain, that had started in fluttering, flickering rags, had driven both dwellers and sightseers to shelter. Black, silent, the night looked down. Across the road, from his flat, the lights sprang out warm and snug and friendly. But he remembered that there was some urgent business matter he had to talk over with Ching Shan, the retired merchant who was his silent partner, and that at this hour he would be most likely to find him sipping a cup of hot wine in the back room of Nag Hong Fah’s restaurant, which, for yellow men exclusively, was known euphoniously as the Honorable Pavilion of Tranquil Longevity. So he turned toward Mott Street. But he kept to the middle of the street, and he stepped slowly, warily, heels well down, arms carefully balanced, head jerked slightly forward, his whole body poised for instant shift or flight, all his senses primed to give quick warning of anything unusual or minatory. For again, now that he was alone, fear of Yang Shen-hsiu had rushed upon him full-armed; and here--with the sodden, pitchy blanket of night painting the shadows with deeper shadows, and the rain-whipped streets deserted by everybody--was the very place where murder might happen, had happened in the past, in Tong war and private feud--the corner saloons with their lurking side entrances, where a man might slip in and out like a rabbit through the tunnels of its warren; the inky, prurient, slimy halls and areaways; the sudden, mysterious alleys cutting edgewise into mazes of buildings; the steep cellars that yawned like saturnine, toothless maws; the squat, moldy, turgid tenements, with the reckless invitations of their fire escapes. Ng Ch’u shivered. Should he turn back, make a run for his home? And--what then? To-morrow was another day. To-morrow the sun would shine golden and clear. True. But to-morrow the Manchu would still be the Manchu; and Ng Ch’u was sure of two things: that Yang Shen-hsiu would plot his speedy death, and that, even supposing he broke the unwritten law of Pell Street, it would be quite useless to go to the police of the red-haired devils and ask them for protection. For could he, the merchant, accuse the other, the great Chinese dignitary sent to America on a diplomatic mission? And of what? What could he say?