I don't mind telling any one this much, but I
defy him to find the Gate, however well he may think he knows the
City. You might even go through the very gully it stands in a
hundred times, and be none the wiser. We used to call the gully,
"the Gully of the Black Smoke," but its native name is altogether
different of course. A loaded donkey couldn't pass between the
walls; and, at one point, just before you reach the Gate, a bulged
house-front makes people go along all sideways.
It isn't really a gate though. It's a house. Old Fung-Tching had
it first five years ago. He was a boot-maker in Calcutta. They say
that he murdered his wife there when he was drunk. That was why he
dropped bazar-rum and took to the Black Smoke instead. Later on, he
came up north and opened the Gate as a house where you could get
your smoke in peace and quiet. Mind you, it was a pukka,
respectable opium-house, and not one of those stifling, sweltering
chandoo-khanas, that you can find all over the City. No; the old
man knew his business thoroughly, and he was most clean for a
Chinaman.
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