STAIRS! The same old bunk
dished out night after night at so much a head--and the nervous little
schoolma'am of uncertain age, who fidgeted now beside him, would go
back somewhere down in Maine and shiver while she related her "wider
experiences" in tremulous whispers into the shocked ears of envious
other maiden ladies of equally uncertain age. The same old bunk--and a
profitable one for Chang Foo for more reasons than one. It was dust in
the eyes of the police. The police smiled knowingly at mention of Chang
Foo. Who should know, if they didn't, that it was all harmless fake, all
bunk! And so it was--UPSTAIRS!

They were passing out of the shop now, bowed out through a side door by
the obsequious and oily Chang Foo. And now they massed again in a sort
of little hallway--and Chang Foo, closing the door upon Jimmie Dale, who
was the last in the line, shuffled back behind the counter in his shop
to resume his guard duty over customers of quite another ilk. With the
door closed, it was dark, pitch dark. And this, too, like everything
else connected with Chang Foo's establishment, for more reasons than
one--for effect--and for security. Nervous little twitters began to
emanate from the women--the guide's voice rose reassuringly:

"Keep close together, ladies and gentlemen. We are going upstairs now
to--"

Jimmie Dale hugged back against the wall, sidled along it, and like a
shadow slipped down to the end of the hall. The scuffling of two dozen
pairs of feet mounting the creaky staircase drowned the slight sound as
he cautiously opened a door; the darkness lay black, impenetrable, along
the hall. And then, as cautiously as he had opened it, he closed the
door behind him, and stood for an instant listening at the head of a
ladder-like stairway, his automatic in his hand now. It was familiar
ground to Larry the Bat. The steps led down to a cellar; and diagonally
across from the foot of the steps was an opening, ingeniously hidden by
a heterogeneous collection of odds and ends, boxes, cases, and rubbish
from the pseudo tea shop above; a low opening in the wall to a passage
that led on through the cellars of perhaps half a dozen adjoining
houses, each of which latter was leased, in one name or another--by
Chang Foo.

Jimmie Dale crept down the steps, and in another moment had gained the
farther side of the cellar; then, skirting around the ruck of cases, he
stooped suddenly and passed in through the opening in the wall. And