back out.»
«I am?»
«Yes. Arrange some transport for our visit to this den. We’ll reconvene in the lobby of the Santa Lucia at ten.»
«Righto, chief.» Charlie got up and struggled into his boots, holding the door frame for support.
«Oh, and Charlie?»
«Yes?»
«Do mind out for yourself. I fear you are becoming indispensable.»
The boy smiled and I felt a curious twinge as he closed the door after him. I thought at first it must be some undigested fancy from the Cafe Gambrinus but I finally recognized it as an almost alien emotion.
I took my leave of Stint and returned to the hotel. Quibble, Verdigris, Bella, Reynolds, Charlie — my head was spinning. After a long bath I soon felt more like myself. I felt myself so much, in fact, that I ended up having one off the wrist, imagining the wondrous Bella wrapped in my fevered embrace.
We dined together that evening and Miss Pok looked more glorious than ever, I thought, glowing like a moonbeam in the gilded shadows of the restaurant. I apologized again for the unseemly hastiness of my departure from the funicular.
«There’s really no need,» she said lightly. «You did warn me you might have to… pop off a little hastily now and then.»
«Did that Italian chap see you back all right?»
«Oh yes. He was quite charming.»
She smiled and raised her glass. «To you, Lucifer.»
I responded, clinking my crystal against hers. «No, to us.»
«You have not though, been entirely frank with me,» she said after sipping her wine.
«No?»
«No. Unless you felt a pressing need to sketch the crowd, it did look very much like you were
«Ah,» I said. «Umm…»
She held up her hand. «Don’t say anything. I know you would tell me if you were able. There are matters of great import on hand, are there not?»
I nodded slowly.
«And this business with Mr Miracle is somehow part of it.»
«Indeed.»
She nodded. «Then one day, perhaps, you will tell me about it.»
I liked the sound of that. It promised a
We said goodnight at her hotel room door and, for the first time, I was allowed a kiss on her smooth cheek.
Ah, me!
Anticipating a night’s work, I returned to my own room and changed into a Norfolk jacket, nautical sweater and light but sensible tweed trousers. On the stroke of ten, I slipped down to the lobby and found Charlie waiting for me.
I looked about for a four-wheeler but Charlie pulled at my sleeve. «No carriages. They’ll hear us coming a mile off.»
To my amazement, he pulled aside a quantity of canvas that lay in a bundle in the street. Beneath it, at an angle to the wall, was a tandem bicycle.
«Is that the best you could do?» I cried.
«Needs must,» he grinned. «I nicked it.»
I have never been a, shall we say,
At length, we turned into some kind of rookery, a shambolic collection of semi-ruined villas adjacent to a vast olive grove. The rotten plasterwork of the structures was visible even in the star-light; the eaves of the buildings practically merged into one another like a line of guardsmen toppling on the parade ground.
I hopped off the bicycle and held it steady so that Charlie too could dismount. Then we began to push it quietly along the road. Before us was a large and disreputable-looking building with a blackened, twisted olive tree dominating its facade.
«That looks like it,» whispered Charlie.
I nodded — even in this town of curiosities, what else could it be? — and indicated that we should lay down the bicycle on the parched earth.
I felt glad of my reloaded revolver as we advanced into that filthy hole.
Torches burned in sconces on the fronts of some of the dwellings and it was possible to see figures huddled in the shadowed gloom. That they meant us ill was obvious and I raised the gun and cocked it in as blatant a fashion as I could.
«Stay close by me, Charlie,» I hissed.
The shadows fell back a little but we hurried briskly along past walls of blotched green plaster.
Charlie hammered repeatedly on the door of the big house.
I slipped into a shadowed niche, watching as the figures that surrounded us grew bolder. I distinctly saw a great bear of a man with a kerchief knotted around his head grinning at me in the flickering torch-light. In his hand he carried a thick cudgel and he was slapping it repeatedly into his palm.
«Let’s cut along, eh, Charlie?» I said quietly.
Suddenly, the door creaked open and an indisputably Chinese face loomed out of the darkness.
«What you want?» squawked the newcomer, his scantily bearded face appearing as a strip of red flesh in the torch-light.
I surged forward through the door and pushed him backwards. Charlie bounded inside, darted past him and slammed the door shut behind us.
«What you do? What you do? You cannot come in here!» barked the little man. He was round as a pudding and clad in a filthy muslin robe.
I levelled the revolver at him. «I think this will do as my passport,» I hissed in his face.
«No need for this!» cried the Chinaman in a hoarse whisper. «Why you come like this? We all friends here. You want pipe?»
«No. Yes. Let’s get inside,» I urged.
We followed the Chinaman through a warren of rubbish-strewn corridors, emerging eventually into a large chamber that might once have been a sitting room. The walls were festooned with cobwebs and damp-blossoms. What was visible of the floor showed naked and broken floor-boards leading to some noisome cellar beneath.
The prevailing impression, however, was of a terrible fug, a poisonous atmosphere rich in the unmistakable scent of the poppy. Opium smoke hung in wreaths over the heads of the multitude that crammed the room, their slack jaws and rolling eyes speaking of days and weeks lost to the pipe. Like so many sacks, the addicts lay strewn over the floor, gurgling happily as they sucked, the shining black beads of opium glowing like fireflies.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m no prude and like a pipe as much as the next man. But all things in moderation, as Genghis Khan used to say.
Our Chinese host was threading his way through the heaps of human detritus, lantern in hand. «My name Mr Lee. You fine gentlemen. I have office. We talk there.»
The «office» was at least clean. Two chairs and a table comprised the only furniture. I sat in one and Charlie sat down heavily on the other. Lee set the lantern on the table and giggled most unpleasantly.
«I have extra fine poppy for you, English. Very cheap»
«No thank you. I have very expensive tastes. I want some of the purple poppy.»
