Then, without so much as a good night, he plunged off down the passage toward that comfortable room of his, with bath. And I went below to my stuffy cabin, where the port has been screwed fast for a week.
His name is Crocker, Archibald Crocker, Jr., son of the well-known and, truth to tell, rather infamous millionaire and manipulator of stocks. Our worlds lie wide apart, his and mine. I realized that much when he looked at my card. The name of Anthony Ives Eckhart conveyed nothing to him—the name that is known and respected by Boag and the great von Stumbostel of Berlin, by de Musseau, Ramel, and Fourmont at Taris, by Sir Frederick Rhodes of Cambridge; the name that spells anathema to that snarling charlatan, von Westfall, of Bonn.
Crocker has offered to guide me through the Yoshiwara district at Yokohama to-morrow evening. He says that the music will interest me.
I think I shall go with him. He says that every traveled white man in the world has been to “Number Nine”—that it is a legitimate, even necessary part of a man's experience. Certainly I do not wish to appear unmanly.
My room proved intolerable, and I was still too excited to rest; so I came back to the deserted smoking-room to write up my journal.
It is very late. The steward is hovering anxiously about, yawning now and then. I may as well let the poor fellow get to his berth. God knows, he sees little enough of it.
But first I will have him fetch me a mug of their wonderful English stout. I find that this is even better than ale for inducing sleep. At least, in my own case.
Yokohama, Grand Hotel, March 20th.
IT was past three o'clock to-day when the ship came to anchor and the steam tender brought us ashore. It interested me to see the rickshaws with their bare-legged coolies. By the time we had ridden along the Bund to the hotel and secured our rooms it was four o'clock. We went down to the “lounge,” Crocker and I, and had tea brought in. Or I did. He drank a whisky and Tan San. Then pretty soon he drank another.
I
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