The wet pavements were
crowded with nondescript humanity, the night was filled with the
unmusical voices of Hebrew hucksters, and the air laden with the smoky
odor of their lamps. Tramcars and motorbuses were packed unwholesomely
with these children of shadowland drawn together from the seven seas
by the magnet of London.
She glanced at Pyne, but he was seemingly lost in abstraction, and
Kilfane appeared to be asleep. Mollie Gretna was staring eagerly out
on the opposite side of the car at a group of three dago sailors, whom
Mareno had nearly run down, but she turned at that moment and caught
Rita's glance.
"Don't you simply love it!" she cried. "Some of those men were really
handsome, dear. If they would only wash I am sure I could adore them!"
"Even such charms as yours can be bought at too high a price,"
drawled Sir Lucien. "They would gladly do murder for you, but never
wash."
Crossing Limehouse Canal, the car swung to the right into West India
Dock Road. The uproar of the commercial thoroughfare was left far
behind. Dark, narrow streets and sinister-looking alleys lay right and
left of them, and into one of the narrowest and least inviting of all
Mareno turned the car.
In the dimly-lighted doorway of a corner house the figure of a
Chinaman showed as a motionless silhouette.
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