It was a hot, moist, stifling evening of May. A dun haze lay heavy over the river, where native junks and sampans and steam tugs were churning the oily water into an evil-smelling froth the colour of coffee. Seldom had the city of Shanghai so revolted me, and as I strolled along the crowded Bund I reflected that I would give a king's ransom--if I had it--to get out into open country or open sea and away from this strident, feverish, dollar-grubbing prison on Whangpu River. My footsteps led me to the side of Soochow Creek, across the bridge and northward and eastward, beyond banks and wharves and godowns, into a locality I remembered from having visited before, though I don't suppose I could have mapped it with any pretension to accuracy. Nor did I pay great heed to my direction, for I was weary, washed out with boredom and the sickening, stewy heat, and walked slowly and aimlessly. In time I found myself penetrating deeper and deeper into a dense warren of native dives, cranky houses bulging out over the grimy, narrow, snaking, flagged lanes and leaning one upon another this way or that, like a row of soused revellers arm in arm. I must have wandered some way through this maze, for it was now twilight, a twilight still further deepened by the beetling houses and shop signs in Chinese character which often hung so thick as to blot out entirely the twisting riband of sky overhead. Then I came to that blind alley which, though I little dreamed it then, was to prove the threshold of the biggest and queerest adventure of my life. Though hazy on a point of geography, I knew something of this neighbourhood, with its opium-dens and gambling hells, and I hesitated some minutes before advancing. That narrow cut seemed to leave the wholesome world all behind it. There might be interesting matters ahead, I felt, but there would very possibly be more danger than interest, particularly for a man in European clothes. Almost unthinkingly I ran my hand over the hip of my pongees. It seemed a downright fatality. I wasn't in the habit of carrying firearms in a city the size of Shanghai--unless I had some definite objective which I knew to be risky. To-night I had nothing, yet some vague impulse or other had caused me to slip a revolver into my pocket before coming out from the hotel. That shooting-iron was at least as good an argument as I could have on my side if I happened to get into an overheated discussion, and it decided me to go forward.