his smiles, his bows, and his peculiar English
begin to pall, he reveals himself in his true light as a constant
annoyance and a possible danger. Hell knows no fury like the untipped
"_boy san_" He refuses to answer the bell. He suddenly understands no
English at all. He bangs all the doors. He spends his spare moments
in devising all kinds of petty annoyances, damp and dirty sheets,
accidental damage to property, surreptitious draughts. And to vex one
_boy san_ is to antagonize the whole caste; it is a boycott. At last
the tip is given. Sudden sunshine, obsequious manners, attention of
all kinds--for ever dwindling periods, until at last the _boy san_
attains his end, a fat retaining fee, extorted at regular intervals.

But even more exasperating, since no largesse can cure it, is his
national bent towards espionage. What does he do with his spare time,
of which he has so much? He spends it in watching and listening to the
hotel guests. He has heard legends of large sums paid for silence or
for speech. There may be money in it, therefore, and there is always
amusement. So the only housework which the _boy san_ does really
willingly, is to dust the door, polish the handle, wipe the
threshold;--anything in fact which brings him into the propinquity of
the keyhole. What he observes or overhears, he exchanges with another
_boy san_; and the hall porter or the head waiter generally serves as
Chief Intelligence Bureau, and is always in touch with the Police.

The arrival of guests so remarkable as the Barringtons became,
therefore, at once a focus for the curiosity the ambition of the _boy
sans_. And a rickshaw-man had told the lodgekeeper, whose wife told
the wife of one of the cooks, who told the head waiter, that there was
some connection between these visitors and the rich Fujinami. All the
_boy sans_ knew what the Fujinami meant; so here was a cornucopia of
unwholesome secrets. It was the most likely game which had arrived at
the Imperial Hotel for years, ever since the American millionaire's
wife who ran away with a San Francisco Chinaman.

But to Geoffrey, when he broke up the gathering, the _boy sans_ were
just a lot of queer little Japs.

Asako was lying on her sofa, reading. Titine was brushing her hair.
Asako, when she read, which was not often, preferred literature of
the sentimental school, books like _The Rosary_, with stained glass in
them, and tragedy overcome by nobleness of character.

"I've been lonel