“Put on your best clothes, keep clean and neat, and spend your evenings around the Diamond Palace in Montgomery Street. Go through the whole block on both sides of the street. Look into every hallway, basement, empty store, and saloon. Try to locate some place that we can go through and out into an alley or another street. The getaway’s the thing, and if you can find one in the block we’ll chance the Diamond Palace some evening, maybe Christmas Eve.”

He left next morning after giving me strict orders to keep away from the wine dumps and attend to business. I worked faithfully and soon found half a dozen places that would serve. My time was now my own, and once more I began exploring the byways of the city.

The hypos I spent the night with in the city prison had aroused my curiosity about Chinatown. I put in many nights prowling through the alleys watching these mysterious people gambling, smoking opium, and trafficking in their women slaves. There were rumors of strange, mysterious underground passages below the streets and under the buildings, but I never saw them and I have since come to doubt whether they ever existed.