rt flight of
steps. The Chinese motioned him to descend, but the lawyer hesitated
with a sudden sense of trepidation. Beneath the pavement in this
cul-de-sac of Chinatown, he would be hidden from the world, from friends
or rescue, as securely as though he were at the bottom of the bay.

But he squared his shoulders and went down. A door opened noiselessly
and closed, leaving him in total darkness. A lantern glimmered and he
followed it along a narrow passage that had many unexpected turns. An
odor, pungent, acrid, semi-aromatic troubled his nostrils. It increased
until the lantern-bearing Chinese ushered him into a large square room,
lined with bunks, three-deep, like the forecastle of a ship. In each lay
two Chinese, face to face. They drew at intervals deep inhalations from
a thick bamboo pipe, relaxing, thereupon into a sort of stupored dream.
The place reeked with the fumes that had assailed Benito in the passage.
Intuitively he knew that it was opium.

A voice in English, faint and dreamy, reached him. "This way ... Mr.
Windham.... Please."

A white almost-skeleton hand stretched toward him from a lower bunk. A
bearded face, cadaverously sunken, in which gleamed bright fevered eyes,
was now discernible.

"McTurpin!" he spoke incredulously.

"What's left of me," the tone was hollow, grim. "Please sit down here,
close to me.... I've something to tell you.... Something that will--"

He sank back weakly, but his eyes implored. Benito took a seat beside
the bunk. For a moment he thought the man was dead. He lay so limp,
so silent!

Then McTurpin whispered. "Bend closer. I will tell you how to serve your
country.... There's a schooner called the 'J.M. Chapman.' Do you know
where it lies?"

"No," Benito answered, "but that's easily discovered. If you've anything
to say--go on."

McTurpin's bony fingers clutched Benito's sleeve. "Listen," he said.
"Bend nearer."

His voice droned on, at times imperceptible, again hoarse with
excitement. Benito sat moveless, absorbed.

Above the iron-trap doors Po Lun waited patiently.

* * * * *

In an unlighted alley back of the American Exchange Hotel two figures
waited, as if by appointment on the night of March 14. One was Ashbury
Harpending, a young Southerner, and one of the Committee of Thirty
which, several years before, had hatched an unsuccessful plot to capture
California for the hosts of slavery. The other was an English boy named