From now on, it's pure heads and tails. We're all under fire
together." Glancing out of window at the murky sky, he added
thoughtfully, "One excellent side to living without hope, maskee
fashion: one isn't specially afraid. I'll take you to your office, and
you can make a start. Nothing else to do, is there?"
Dripping bearers and shrouded chairs received them on the lower floor,
carried them out into a chill rain that drummed overhead and splashed
along the compound path in silver points. The sunken flags in the road
formed a narrow aqueduct that wavered down a lane of mire. A few
grotesque wretches, thatched about with bamboo matting, like bottles, or
like rosebushes in winter, trotted past shouldering twin baskets. The
smell of joss-sticks, fish, and sour betel, the subtle sweetness of
opium, grew constantly stronger, blended with exhalations of ancient
refuse, and (as the chairs jogged past the club, past filthy groups
huddling about the well in a marketplace, and onward into the black yawn
of the city gate) assailed the throat like a bad and lasting taste. Now,
in the dusky street, pent narrowly by wet stone walls, night seemed to
fall, while fresh waves of pungent odor overwhelmed and steeped the
senses.
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