[
 {
  "chunk": 239,
  "story": 29,
  "summary": "After a proverb, the narrator sets down the words of a dying friend describing a hidden opium house in a narrow city lane that no outsider could find.",
  "predicament": "A dying man describes a hidden refuge that nobody could find unless they already belonged there."
 },
 {
  "chunk": 240,
  "story": 29,
  "summary": "The house was opened by a one-eyed proprietor rumoured to have killed his wife; it was clean and respectable, and he never seemed touched by the drug but was very keen on money.",
  "predicament": "A shrewd host runs a quiet, respectable place for a ruinous habit, and takes a good share of everyone's money."
 },
 {
  "chunk": 241,
  "story": 29,
  "summary": "The upper room held the proprietor's idol and his own coffin, to which every newcomer was introduced; the speaker took his mat at the coffin's foot.",
  "predicament": "A regular settles into his own corner of a closed circle where every newcomer is shown the same grim reminder."
 },
 {
  "chunk": 242,
  "story": 29,
  "summary": "The speaker, who once earned three hundred a month on a timber contract, now lives on sixty rupees a month left by an aunt, and the habit has grown on him.",
  "predicament": "A man who once earned a good living now lives on a small inheritance, while a habit slowly takes over everything."
 },
 {
  "chunk": 243,
  "story": 29,
  "summary": "He can no longer work; the proprietor drew his money, gave him half to live on and kept the rest, and he did not care.",
  "predicament": "Unable to work any longer, a man lets the one who supplies his habit collect his income and keep half of it."
 },
 {
  "chunk": 244,
  "story": 29,
  "summary": "Of the ten first regulars, most are dead, sacked or murdered; he once had a wife, and people said his habit killed her.",
  "predicament": "A man recites how his old companions died one by one, and admits that people blamed him for his wife's death."
 },
 {
  "chunk": 245,
  "story": 29,
  "summary": "He began trying the drug at home in the city; his wife seems to have died then; he found his way to the house and never left.",
  "predicament": "A man cannot quite remember how a private experiment became the habit that cost him his wife and his work."
 },
 {
  "chunk": 246,
  "story": 29,
  "summary": "He regulates his smoking by the dragons on the pillows, and uses the silver pipe the dead proprietor gave him, for the old man's sake.",
  "predicament": "A man keeps using a gift from the one who profited from him, out of loyalty, because that one always treated him well."
 },
 {
  "chunk": 247,
  "story": 29,
  "summary": "The proprietor's nephew now runs the house shabbily with the old man's woman, adulterates the drug, lets the room decay and scrimps on the idol's incense.",
  "predicament": "When a careful host dies, his successor cuts corners everywhere, and the old regulars can only grumble among themselves."
 },
 {
  "chunk": 248,
  "story": 29,
  "summary": "He cannot leave: the nephew now draws his money and might kill him, and he fears dying anywhere else; the nephew gives no credit and brags of the house.",
  "predicament": "A man cannot leave a place that exploits him, because the one who holds his income might harm him and habit holds him fast."
 },
 {
  "chunk": 249,
  "story": 29,
  "summary": "He hopes to die in the house like a woman who died there comfortably, on a clean mat with good stuff, and asks only that the nephew stop adulterating it.",
  "predicament": "Resigned to dying where his habit has kept him, a man asks only for a little comfort and honesty at the end."
 }
]