METROPOLIS The visitants to Yoshiwara had met September in a variety of emotions-from the block-headed dozing away of the well-contented bushman to the dance-ecstatic of the Ukrainer.
But to come upon his features in an expression of absolute bewilderment was reserved {pr Slim, when, on the morning after his having lost sight of his young master, he set throbbing the massive gong which demanded entrance to Yoshiwarn.
It was most unusual that the generally very obliging door of Yoshiwara was not opened before the fourth gong-signal; and that this was performed by September himself and with this expression of countenance deepened the impression of an only tolerably overcome catastrophe. Slim bowed. September looked at him. A mask of brass seemed to fall over his face. But a chance glance at the driver of the taxi, in which Slim ,had come tore it off again. Would to God your tin-kettle had gone up in tbe air before you could have brought that lunatic here yesterday evening," he said. «He drove away my guests before they even tbought 'of paying. Tbe girls are buddling down in the comers like lumps of wet Hoor-cloth-that is, those who are not in hysterics. Unless I call in the police I might just as well close the bouse; for it doesn't look as thougb that cbap will have recovered his Bve senses by thiS'" evening." "Of whom are you speaking, September?" asked Slim. September looked at him. At this moment the tiniest hamlet in North Siberia would bave flatly refused to bave been proclaimed the birth-place of so idiotic looking an individual. "If it is the man for whom I have come here to look," continued Slim, "then I shall rid you of him in a more agreeable and swifter manner than the police." "And for what man are you looking, sir?" Slim hesitated. He cleared his throat slightly. "You know the white silk which is woven for comparatively few in Metropolis...." In the long line of ancestors, the mainfold sediment of whom had heen crystalised into September, a fur-trader
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