riend of Mr.
Christie's is welcome here."

Whereupon Mr. Christie's "friend" passed through the door, into the
long, narrow "Opera House." It was a dirty, cheerless hole, in spite of
the brilliance of many oil lamps, shining among the flimsy decorations.
At the end of the tunnel-shaped room was a rude stage, festooned with
gaudy, squalid hangings, beneath which a painted siren was singing a
song which Simon did not listen to. The floor of the auditorium was
filled with chairs and tables in disorderly array, the occupants of
which seemed to be paying more attention to their liquor and their cards
than to the cracked voice of the songstress. There was a rattling of
glasses, the occasional clink of money, frequent shrill laughs and
deeper-chested oaths and guffaws; the fumes of beer and whisky mingled
with the heavy canopy of smoke which gave to the flaring lights a lurid
aspect, only too well befitting the place and the occasion.

"Wal, I swan!" exclaimed a familiar voice close at Simon's elbow: and,
turning, he beheld the doughty Enoch, seated at a table close to the
door, imbibing beer at the hands of a gaudy young woman in a red silk
gown.

Simon looked at the elderly transgressor in speechless astonishment.

"Yas, here I be," said Enoch, jauntily, "consortin' with the hosts of
Belial. Take a cheer, Simon, take a cheer."

"I guess not," said Simon, slowly; "I don't have no special hankerin'
after Belial, myself. Do you happen to know a man named Conrad
Christie?"

"Him's the gentleman," the red-silk Hebe volunteered. "Him in the yeller
beard and the red necktie, rakin' in the chips."

Amberley took a critical survey of his adversary. He was a man of forty,
or thereabouts, singularly like Simon himself in build and coloring,
with enough of the ruffian in his aspect to give the professor an
envious sense of inferiority. He was playing cards with a fierce-looking
fellow in a black beard, who seemed to be getting the worst of it.

Simon was conscious afterwards of having turned his back on Enoch rather
abruptly; of having interrupted, by his departure, an outpouring of
confidence in regard to "Mis' Baker's tantrums." At the time, however,
he had but one thought and that was to strike while the iron was hot. He
felt that the iron was becoming very hot indeed, as he stepped up to the
yellow-haired gambler, who was again engaged in the satisfactory
ceremony of "rakin' 'em in."

"Mr. Christie," Simon said, and hot a