I got up and lingered by the table a minute on my feet. Then I started to drift over that way. You couldn’t walk straight in that littered place, anyway; you had to zigzag and detour, so that made it easy to look aimless.
I got over beside the door and glanced casually around. No one seemed to be paying any attention. I pulled it narrowly open and went in and pulled it right after me.
The noise choked off, and I could hear myself think for the first time since I’d come into the place. There was a forlorn, gloomy passageway leading ahead, with a single oil lantern to light it and a ladderlike stair structure rising steeply at right angles to it and disappearing up through a sort of transom or trap.
The cashier was standing there in the gloom, motionless, as though he were waiting for me.
He said, “You wish something?”
I didn’t answer.
He said, “You have come in the wrong door. The way out is over on that side.”
A shot of noise and fuzzy light came in, and Quon closed the door after him and was standing there.
He moved close to the cashier and seemed to get some ashes on his sleeve. He brushed it off with grave concern, the way he had the table out there before. Twice one way, twice the other.
“My hand is not very steady,” he apologized.
“Perhaps you would like to rest,” the cashier suggested. But I was the one he was worried about. He kept watching me.
I took the cue and negligently fanned my hand across the guy’s sleeve, the same way Quon had. It occurred to me even at the moment that it was a silly sort of mumbo-jumbo, but if that was the routine, that was the routine.
“Perhaps a short nap, a little siesta—” the cashier purred.
“Could stand,” I said.
The cashier rubbed his hands together suggestively.
I slipped him one of the bills Midnight had returned to me, then a second one for Quon.
He didn’t seem to take them, but they went, were gone. Like doing card tricks. “See upstairs; maybe they will be able to do something for you.” He went over to the foot of the stair ladder, called up something in Chinese. A guttural answer came back through the trap opening.
Quon nudged me to go ahead. “Suba,” he said. I started to climb up.
I could smell it the minute my head came clear of the floor. It was terrible. But I hadn’t expected roses. I tried to breathe as sparingly as possible.
There was something peculiar about the stair flight. It wasn’t built in. When I got to the top I saw there was a grappling hook attachment to k; it could be drawn up bodily from above, on the order of a fireman’s extension ladder, cutting off the second floor from below. Then there were two winged flaps that could be folded together over the gap in the ceiling, obliterating it. A handy piece of carpentry in case of a raid.
There was a figure standing up there, waiting, as I slowly came up through the floor. Villainous-looking, but then I didn’t expect kewpies around this setup. He was holding a lantern out stiff-armed to get a good look at us as we came through. The rest of the place up there was just oblique shadows slanting off from that small core of light in all directions. I stepped clear, and after a moment the ghostly figure of Quon joined me.
We were in a sort of passage, the mate to the one below. One end of it led into a sort of cavernous chasm, with a faint red glow peering from it offside.
He beckoned us after him with curt contempt and went toward there. The lantern, doling out background to us as he went along and then obliterating it again, showed me a fairly broad opening without any door, a slanted chair alongside it where he kept watch. Then on the inside, when we’d followed him through, there was a small charcoal brazier squatting on the floor. That was where the red glow had been coming from. Ranged around it on three sides were bunks in two tiers.
The reek of the gum was overpowering in here. But there wasn’t a sound. Not a whisper. You couldn’t tell if there was anyone in those bunks or not. Or whether they were out cold, or watching us stealthily, or what. I think that added to the horror, that eerie silence. A grunt or. a sigh would have been something, at least.
I was groggy with fright. I knew — or at least I hoped — that I was going to get over it in a little while; you can get used to anything, but it sure was on full right then. I could feel sweat pumping out all over my forehead, and it came out cold and oozy.
He splashed watery lantern light up at a couple of the bunks, decided against them — maybe because there was somebody already in them, although I couldn’t see and didn’t try to — then shifted to another direction and splashed it up at a couple more. Then he gave us the go-ahead with his thumb and a grunt. He might have been a cutthroat himself, but he hadn’t much use for anyone who frequented this place; that stood out all over him.
I bent down and crawled in, with my insides trying to stay behind. It was like — I don’t know how to say it — getting into a coffin. No, worse — a coffin’s clean, at least; you’re the first one that’s used it.
Quon put his knee to the wooden sideboard, and I gave him a vicious push back. “Get out of here!” I grated. He came back and did it again. Then I saw that he was trying to climb up to the one above, and I let him alone.
When his form had writhed from view and I could see out again, the attendant was bending toward me, holding a pipe extended. I took it with both hands and held it broadside, as though it were some sort of reed instrument, and he turned and slippered over to the brazier by the door and started to fan it up a little.
I was surprised at how heavy the thing was. I reached down inside the seaman’s jumper Midnight had provided me with and got hold of my undershirt and wrenched off a piece of it. I shoved that into my mouth, wadded it up good, and then I let the pipe rest against it. And I still felt like everything was coming up behind it.
He came back holding a pinch of live coal with a pair of hand tongs, and dropped that into the pipe. The pill he placed on a little, flat, buttonlike saucer out near the end of the pipe. It was supposed to sit there and cook.
Then he let me alone, before I keeled over out of sheer repulsion, and turned his attention to the top bunk.
Then he knocked off and went back to his post outside the door. He took the lantern out with him, and that reversed the tone scheme, made it gloomy in here and dimly lit out there. It was like being awake in the middle of a nightmare.
I put the devilish thing down fast the minute he’d gone. I was scared stiff a little of it might get me, anyway, even from that short insulated contact. I hauled the wadding out and spit about sixty-two times, muffling it with the piece of torn shirt.
Then I just stayed there, propped on my elbow, and sweated some more, and finally I started to cool off and the goose-pimples to smooth out on my skin. My teeth wanted to chatter too — I don’t know why, this long after — but I curbed them and they got over it.
It felt like it was about half an hour now, and even if my sense of time was fast, I figured I’d better get started and see what I could do.
I sat up first and took off my shoes. They were Western shoes, or whatever you want to call them — hard-soled shoes — and I wanted to get up on him quietly. I left them behind on the bunk, swung my feet to the floor, and started to pay out my stocking soles in the direction of the den opening.
He wasn’t quite back behind the screening wall. The way he had his chair, I could see a thin slice of him sticking out beyond it: a strip of his head and one shoulder and arm.
I’d come in there with just my bare hands, but I couldn’t risk any noisy wrestling matches. I not only wasn’t sure I’d come out ahead, but the whole thing had to be swift and soundless, or it was no good to me. I reached down by the brazier and picked up the hand tongs he’d used before. They weren’t very large, but they were iron and plenty heavy enough for what I wanted them for. I brought them along with me, poised up high, the last few creeps.