Three days later, having first given Kang Xi notice that he was going to look for remnants of Oboi's faction, Trinket made his way to Sweet Water Lane in the East City. Twenty yards or so from the entrance to the lane there was a wonton stall whose stallholder, when he saw Trinket coming, picked up one of the long chopsticks he used for fishing out boiling wontons from his cauldron and beat a rhythm with it on the side of the bamboo cylinder he kept his money in: three taps, pause, two taps, pause, three taps. A few yards farther on a radish-seller who carried his wares suspended from the ends of a carrying-pole drummed the same rhythm on his carrying-pole with a knife. Realizing that this must be one of the Triads' secret signals, like the ones he had seen them using a few days previously, he followed a toffee-apple seller into the lane. Some way down it the man halted momentarily by a house with a black-lacquered door outside which squatted three men whitewashing a wall. One of them, when he saw Trinket, picked up the lime-knife and banged the same rhythm with it on the wall. At once the house-door opened.

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