to Old Court House Street where he asked the stolid English policeman the way to the Colootallah.
“Place there called Hyder Ahmet's Gully, isn't it?”
“Yes, sir. But I wouldn't go there if I were you, sir.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” replied the policeman, who had twenty years' Calcutta service to his record, “it is the rottenest, stinkingest, most unregenerate patch of crime in our whole East Indian Empire. Because a white man ain't safe there—leastways this time of night, sir. Oh, well”—as Hector insisted—“it's your own funeral. You go down through the Burra Bazaar—”
“I know where that is—”
“Past the Jora Bagan and the Machua … and he gave the directions as precisely as if it had been London.
“Thank you.”
And a pleasant tinkle of silver, and Hector was off toward the Burra Bazaar at a good round clip, and bidding farewell to the white man's Calcutta, to Government House and green tea and respectability.
On he walked, past the Jora Bagan and the Machua, and plunged into a network of narrow streets where the poor, unwashed, and diseased of all India's motley races seemed to live together in friendship and evil odors. Not many lights stole through the shuttered balconies of the packed, greasy houses. Overhead, between the two facades, he saw a strip of paleness which evidently was doing duty for a bit of moonlit sky.
