to charge extra for his own personality. Mr. Isaacs was the type of individual whom one often meets and yet who never seems in the proper place. One could never imagine him as a child. He looked as though he had been born old. Even in Singapore he was a man of mystery. No one knew from whence he had come. He apparently had no relatives. He received no mail. It was rumored that he was enormously wealthy but then such rumors spring up about all old men who are eccentric.
That night Dick suffered from insomnia.
He retired early and yet he
could not sleep. The little room was like
an oven. It was stifling, suffocating. He
rose and threw open the hall door, which
permitted a dozen weird odors to creep in.
Nevertheless the breeze that occasionally
blew through was cool, or so it seemed
compared to the stagnant torpid heat
when the door was closed. From the
Chinese houses across a narrow court
came the echo of laughter or the occasional
guttural speech of some Celestial
merrymaker. Over all floated the wild,
unearthly din of Chinese music, the singsong
notes of the same unrhythmic tune
crashed out over and over again.
Dick tossed upon his bed. He would have gotten up if there had been any conceivable place co go. Singapore was a dry of horrors, grand by day, sinister by night.
He closed his eyes, striving to shut out his thoughts. For a few moments he lay still. If only he could doze even for a few moments! Then suddenly he was wide awake, every muscle taut, but he did not move. Some one was moving cautiously across the floor of his room. He could hear the stealthy patter of bare feet. He hesitated only long enough to locate where the intruder walked; then with an oath he sprang from the bed and crashed to the floor on top of the wizened, wrinkled figure of Mr. Isaacs.
"Let me go," he whined, "let me up! You're killing me. Oh, my poor old bones! They will all be broken,"
Dick stumbled to his feet, dragging Mr. Isaacs after him. He shook him until his teeth rattled.
"What are you doing in my room?" he demanded.
"I meant no offense," quavered Mr. Isaacs. "I only came in to see if you were sleeping soundly."
"And were disappointed to find I wasn't."
"Certainly."
"Well, don't worry about my welfare any longer. Better watch yourself. If I catch you skulking around my room again I'll fix you so you won't sleep for a week. Furthermore, you won't find any money here. I took the precaution to deposit it today with a local bank. Of course I would not have done so had I known I was to have such a solicitous host."
2
The incident would have driven a less hardy wanderer from the unsavory lodging-house, but not so Dick. He viewed it as a prelude to adventure. What form the adventure would take he could not tell. One could not, however, dwell long at such a house without some sort of excitement. Until it broke, he would remain.
Every day found Singapore a constantly changing mass of color. Almost from dawn till sunset he tramped around the city, even journeying into the most wild and dismal of the filthy alleys.
Sometimes in the evenings he went into the bar in the house of Mr. Isaacs, and a more forbidding room could not be imagined. It was lit by a single oil lamp
