"I surely could," said I.
"Then, if you can spare me an hour, get your hat."
And so it happens, lady of the Carlton, that I have just been to
Limehouse. You do not know where Limehouse is and I trust you never
will. It is picturesque; it is revolting; it is colorful and wicked. The
weird odors of it still fill my nostrils; the sinister portrait of it is
still before my eyes. It is the Chinatown of London--Limehouse. Down
in the dregs of the town--with West India Dock Road for its spinal
column--it lies, redolent of ways that are dark and tricks that are
vain. Not only the heathen Chinee so peculiar shuffles through its
dim-lit alleys, but the scum of the earth, of many colors and of many
climes. The Arab and the Hindu, the Malayan and the Jap, black men from
the Congo and fair men from Scandinavia--these you may meet there--the
outpourings of all the ships that sail the Seven Seas. There many
drunken beasts, with their pay in their pockets, seek each his favorite
sin; and for those who love most the opium, there is, at all too regular
intervals, the Sign of the Open Lamp.
We went there, Colonel Hughes and I. Up and down the narrow Causeway,
yellow at intervals with the light from gloomy shops, dark mostly
because of tightly closed shutters through which only thin jets found
their way, we walked until we came and stood at last in shadow outside
the black doorway of Harry San Li's so-called restaurant. We waited ten,
fifteen minutes; then a man came down the Causeway and paused before
that door. There was something familiar in his jaunty walk. Then the
faint glow of the lamp that was the indication of Harry San's real
business lit his pale face, and I knew that I had seen him last in
the cool evening at Interlaken, where Limehouse could not have lived a
moment, with the Jungfrau frowning down upon it.
"Enwright?" whispered Hughes.
"Not a doubt of it!" said I.
"Good!" he replied with fervor.
And now another man shuffled down the street and stood suddenly straight
and waiting before the colonel.
"Stay with him," said Hughes softly. "Don't let him get out of your
sight."
"Very good, sir," said the man; and, saluting, he passed on up the
stairs and whistled softly at that black depressing door.
The clock above the Millwall Docks was striking eleven as the colonel
and I caught a bus that should carry us back to a brighter, happier
London. Hughes spoke but seldom on that ride; and, repeating his advice
that I humor Inspector Bray on the morrow, he left me in the Strand.