Upon entering beneath this alluring sign, Amberley found himself in a full-blown "sample room," the presence of whose glittering pyramids of bottles was still further emphasized by the following legend, "Patronize the bar and walk in!" which was inscribed above an inner portal.
The new-comer stepped up to the bar-tender.
"Do you know whether a miner named Conrad Christie is in there?" he asked.
"I guess likely enough," was the reply. "Mr. Christie is one of our regular patrons. Won't you take a drink, Mister?"
"No? Ain't that ruther a pity? But pass right in, Sir. Any friend of Mr. Christie's is welcome here."
Whereupon Mr. Christie's "friend" passed through the door, into the long, narrow "Opera House." It was a dirty, cheerless hole, in spite of the brilliance of many oil lamps, shining among the flimsy decorations. At the end of the tunnel-shaped room was a rude stage, festooned with gaudy, squalid hangings, beneath which a painted siren was singing a song which Simon did not listen to. The floor of the auditorium was filled with chairs and tables in disorderly array, the occupants of which seemed to be paying more attention to their liquor and their cards than to the cracked voice of the songstress. There was a rattling of glasses, the occasional clink of money, frequent shrill laughs and deeper-chested oaths and guffaws; the fumes of beer and whisky mingled with the heavy canopy of smoke which gave to the flaring lights a lurid aspect, only too well befitting the place and the occasion.
"Wal, I swan!" exclaimed a familiar voice close at Simon's elbow: and, turning, he beheld the doughty Enoch, seated at a table close to the door, imbibing beer at the hands of a gaudy young woman in a red silk gown.
Simon looked at the elderly transgressor in speechless astonishment.
"Yas, here I be," said Enoch, jauntily, "consortin' with the hosts of Belial. Take a cheer, Simon, take a cheer."
"I guess not," said Simon, slowly; "I don't have no special hankerin' after Belial, myself. Do you happen to know a man named Conrad Christie?"
"Him's the gentleman," the red-silk Hebe volunteered. "Him in the yeller beard and the red necktie, rakin' in the chips."
Amberley took a critical survey of his adversary. He was a man of forty, or thereabouts, singularly like Simon himself in build and coloring, with enough of the ruffian in his aspect to give the professor an envious sense of inferiority. He was playing cards with a fierce-looking fellow in a black beard, who seemed to be getting the worst of it.