"You mind your own business, Foo Sen!" he flung out gutturally. "Goin'
home! Tell 'em to help me out--sleep where I like! Makes me sick
here--rotten smell--rotten punk sticks!"
"You allee same fool," commented Foo Sen imperturbably, as he clapped
his hands. "Mabbe you no get home; mabbe you get run in police cell
sleep him off, instead. That your business, you likee that--all right!"
Foo Sen smiled placidly, and was gone.
An instant later, Jimmie Dale, his arms twined around the necks of two
Chinamen, and leaning heavily upon them, and stumbling as he walked,
was being conducted through a maze of dark and narrow passages that
gradually trended upward to a higher level--and presently a door closed
behind him, and he was in the open air.
It was dark about him, not even the glimmer of a window light showed
from anywhere--but in Foo Sen's there were eyes that saw through the
darkness, and his progress, alone now, was both unsteady and slow. He
was in a very narrow alleyway between two houses--one of the several
hidden entrances to Foo Sen's. The alley opened in one direction on a
lane, in the other direction on the street. Jimmie Dale chose the
direction of the lane, reached the lane, and, still stumbling and
lurching, made his way along for a distance of possibly fifty yards;
then, well clear of the neighbourhood of Foo Sen's, he began to quicken
his pace--and twenty minutes later, frowning in disappointment, he was
standing in front of Reddy Curley's liquor store, only to find that the
place was already closed for the night.
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