The place had originally been one shop, but Kit See, with the frugality of his race, had partitioned it roughly, and with Oriental astuteness let the half for nearly as much as he paid for the whole.
Kit See was a stout, cream Confucian with an oleaginous smile, and the gentle, propitiatory man of an inferior people, cunning enough to realise that if you cannot dominate it is wisest to be docile.

He had a good stock, a good business, a half-caste wife, and a noiseless, placid, slit-eyed baby about the size of a Bologna sausage.
The Missing Link discovered this much through a crack in the partition, and amused himself with his eyes glued to the slit when there were no professional demands on his time and talents.
Most things that Mahdi did irritated Ammonia, whose jealousy and hatred were intensified by Nickie's habit, when in a playful humour, of teasing the gorilla by ostentatiously devouring delicacies Ammonia particularly affected in Ammonia's sight, almost within his reach.
Nickie's interest in that hole in the wall was a course of consuming anxiety to Ammonia.

While Mahdi had his eye to the wall, the gorilla would cling to the bars of his cage, pushing his blunt nose through, and gibber and spit and protest in a high-pitched, querulous growl.
"Blime, yiv got the noble Ammonia goin' this trip, Nickie," said the Living Skeleton.
"Yes," replied Nickie, still with his eye to the crack, "that beast will have to learn decency and good conduct, Matty, my man.

I aspire to teach him moral restraint." "He'll do you a bad turn one o' them days, mark me." "I believe not," said the Missing Link.

"I've got something here that will always reduce him to reason." Nickie touched his breast.