"Bigg," says he, "your man's in a drug-den—and what's more, he's in a private drug-den. It's a wonder his people haven't had any note for money before this—that is, if Grey hasn't a banking account of his own in Paris."
"I don't follow you there," says I. "What do you mean by a private drug-den?"
"Why, a place where they dose 'em and bleed 'em at the same time. Such shops are cheap this way. They trap a man with cash, aud make it pleasant for him so long as his money lasts, then they knock him on the head or leave him to skip the golden gutter. You couldn't have named a worse job. I doubt that you'll ever set eyes on Grey again, if you live to be a hundred."
This was a facer! I'd thought all along that the American was laid by the heels in some opium-shop, but that we should have any difficulty in getting him out was a fact that never entered my head.
"Then you don't take the thing on, Jim?" said I.
"Oh, I'm not saying that!" cried he; "but it's worth more than a hundred. I'm like to have my head cracked before I'm out of it."
"I'll make it two hundred and fifty," said I, "and not a penny more."
"You're on," says he. " And now for a word about the chap's duds. What was he wearing when last you saw him?"
I gave him a full account of Michel Grey and his clothes, and he went away. Twenty-four hours after I got a line from him:
"Come up to the Rue de la Loire. I have found your man."
You may imagine that I didn't lose much time in doing as he asked me. While I couldn't really believe that the thing was to end in the simple way his letter made out, none the less the fact that we stood a good chance now of putting our hands on the ten thousand dollars came home to me.
"Bigg," said I, "you'll be set up for a twelve-month, and Sir Nicolas 'll be off to New York to marry a Yankee—that is, if he doesn't close on that pretty bit of goods up at the Hôtel de Lille. Was there ever such a town?"
I found Jim sitting on a dirty bed in a dirty little house near the boulevard end of the street he had named. He didn't look at all hopeful, as I expected he would, and the cigar that he held in his hand had gone out.
Well," says he, "you got my letter?"
"Why should I be here if I hadn't?" says I.
"Ah, true!" he went on; "and I may as well tell you at once—I believe your man's at the Maison d'Or, up in Montmartre."
"How did you find that out?" I asked.
"I traced him by his stick," said he; "an orange-wood cane, with a globe of silver and a little map of the world on the top of it. Is that it?"
"The same," cried I.
"And he wore a hat of black felt, large beyond usual?"
"He did that."
"Then he's at the Maison d'Or; and how we're to get him out, God knows."
"Why, what's the difficulty?"
"I don't like the house," says he, shifting his eyes curiously.
"But what's the matter with it?"
"Oh, there's nothing the matter with it—except that a good many who go in never come out again. I've no fancy for that myself."
"Jim," says I, "you haven't got the heart of a rabbit. What nonsense you're talking! Take me up to the shop, and let me have a look at it."
"I was going to suggest that," says he. "It 'll be dark in an hour, and no one to tread on our heels. I know the woman who keeps the cabaret at the back of the place. It was from the top of a shed in her garden that I looked down into the lower rooms."
"Why not knock at the door at once and have done with it?" says I.
"It would be worth more than your life or mine to do that," cried he. "All the neighborhood knows it. There's not a man that would venture in."
"Then what makes you think that this Grey is there?"
"He was two days at an opium-den in the Rue d'Oran, which is not a stone's- throw off, and was last seen at the cabaret I speak of. He was then with the man who runs the Maison d'Or. Folks knew him from my description of his hat and stick. I guessed at once that I should hear of him in a drug-shop. That's what took me to the Rue d'Oran."
"You're friends with the woman who runs this beer-shop, did you say?"
"The best possible, though I wouldn't walk with her in the Bois—not for choice, leastwise."
"Then let's get up there at once. If Grey is in the shop, the closer the eye we keep on it the better."
He assented to this, and we went off together in a closed cab. It was then almost full dusk, and threatening for a wet night. In fact, we hadn't got to the top of the Rue du Faubourg when the rain began to pelt down in earnest, the people scuttling into the cafés, and the water flooding the gutters. When at last our rickety old cab began to lumber up the slopes of Montmartre, the lamps in the streets were dancing before a stiff west wind, and the sky above us was black as ink. Where we'd got to, I couldn't for the life of me tell; but by and by Jim stopped the driver before a third-rate drinking-den, and we stepped out in a dirty street, where the mud was almost up to our ankles.
"This is the place," said he; while it rained so fast that the water began to run off his hat. "Jam your tile over your eyes, and follow me. You will want a twenty-franc piece to shut the old woman's mouth. After that, it's easy."
He led the way into a bit of a bar, where four or five shabby customers were drinking beer and talking to women who matched them down to the ankles. But we weren't there more than a moment, for after a word in French lingo to the chap who served the drink, we passed on to a small parlor which overlooked a bit of a yard. Here a squat little woman, who didn't appear to have washed her face for a fortnight, was in talk with a girl who had a guitar in her hand—a poor, bespangled, squalid-looking wretch, who made her living, I don't doubt, by capering about before the scum in the bar. They left off when we came in, and then Jim fell to parleying with the woman, and a fine noise they made of it.
"She thinks you're a nark," said he to me in the middle of it. "Give us the twenty-franc piece, and see if that will cool her."
I handed him over the money, and they got to work again. This time the woman took it different; and when I'd whispered to him to promise her twenty francs more when we were through, she left off talking of a sudden, and led us down some dark stairs to a stinking kitchen where I wouldn't have housed a dog. Two minutes after we were out in the back yard, and she had left us.
"Now," said Jim, "we're the better for wanting her, though she's a wonderful woman when you take her right. The fact is, she's just as crazy as the others about that house yonder, and is half afeared of having any thing to do with us. But she's lent me the steps, and that's all I care a crack about."
It was raining cats and dogs now, and bitter cold, but we were both excited by what we'd come to do, and didn't feel it more than the touch of a feather. For my part, I'd thought little of the danger up to that time, but when I stood out in that dark yard and looked up to the black shape of a windowless and prison-like house, I must say that I got a shiver through me.
"Jim," said I, "two's not many for a job like this. Did you bring your pistol?"
"I did so," he whispered. "You don't find me going far without it in Paris. Will you go first, or shall I?"
"You go," said I, "since you know the way. I'm on your heels—though what you're to see through that wall I'd like to learn."
"There's windows on the lower story," cried he; "but keep your mouth shut, and tread light."
Saying this, he went up the steps, and I followed him. I have made it plain, I think, that the cabaret or beer-shop, or