Dope

PART FIRST

KAZMAH THE DREAM-READER

CHAPTER I.

A MESSAGE FOR IRVIN

Monte Irvin, alderman of the city and prospective Lord Mayor of London,

paced restlessly from end to end of the well-appointed library of his

house in Prince’s Gate. Between his teeth he gripped the stump of a

burnt-out cigar. A tiny spaniel lay beside the fire, his beady black

eyes following the nervous movements of the master of the house.

At the age of forty-five Monte Irvin was not ill-looking, and, indeed,

was sometimes spoken of as handsome. His figure was full without being

corpulent; his well-groomed black hair and moustache and fresh if

rather coarse complexion, together with the dignity of his upright

carriage, lent him something of a military air. This he assiduously

cultivated as befitting an ex-Territorial officer, although as he had

seen no active service he modestly refrained from using any title of

rank.

Some quality in his brilliant smile, an oriental expressiveness of the

dark eyes beneath their drooping lids, hinted a Semitic strain; but it

was otherwise not marked in his appearance, which was free from

vulgarity, whilst essentially that of a successful man of affairs.

In fact, Monte Irvin had made a success of every affair in life with

the lamentable exception of his marriage. Of late his forehead had

grown lined, and those business friends who had known him for a man of

abstemious habits had observed in the City chophouse at which he

lunched almost daily that whereas formerly he had been a noted

trencherman, he now ate little but drank much.

Suddenly the spaniel leapt up with that feverish, spider-like activity

of the toy species and began to bark.

Monte Irvin paused in his restless patrol and listened.

“Lie down!” he said. “Be quiet.”

The spaniel ran to the door, sniffing eagerly. A muffled sound of

voices became audible, and Irvin, following a moment of hesitation,

crossed and opened the door. The dog ran out, yapping in his irritating

staccato fashion, and an expression of hope faded from Irvin’s face as

he saw a tall fair girl standing in the hallway talking to Hinkes, the

butler. She wore soiled Burberry, high-legged tan boots, and a peaked

cap of distinctly military appearance. Irvin would have retired again,

but the girl glanced up and saw him where he stood by the library door.

He summoned up a smile and advanced.

“Good evening, Miss Halley,” he said, striving to speak genially—for of

all of his wife’s friends he liked Margaret Halley the best. “Were you

expecting to find Rita at home?”

The girl’s expression was vaguely troubled. She had the clear

complexion and bright eyes of perfect health, but to-night her eyes

seemed over-bright, whilst her face was slightly pale.

“Yes,” she replied; “that is, I hoped she might be at home.”

“I am afraid I cannot tell you when she is likely to return. But please

come in, and I will make inquiries.”

“Oh, no, I would rather you did not trouble and I won’t stay, thank you

nevertheless. I expect she will ring me up when she comes in.”

“Is there any message I can give her?”

“Well”—she hesitated for an instant—“you might tell her, if you would,

that I only returned home at eight o’clock, so that I could not come

around any earlier.” She glanced rapidly at Irvin, biting her lip. “I

wish I could have seen her,” she added in a low voice.

“She wishes to see you particularly?”

“Yes. She left a note this afternoon.” Again she glanced at him in a

troubled way. “Well, I suppose it cannot be helped,” she added and

smilingly extended her hand. “Good night, Mr. Irvin. Don’t bother to

come to the door.”

But Irvin passed Hinkes and walked out under the porch with Margaret

Halley. Humid yellow mist floated past the street lamps, and seemed to

have gathered in a moving reef around the little runabout car which was

standing outside the house, its motor chattering tremulously.

“Phew! a beastly night!” he said. “Foggy and wet.”

“It’s a brute isn’t it?” said the girl laughingly, and turned on the

steps so that the light shining out of the hallway gleamed on her white

teeth and upraised eyes. She was pulling on big, ugly, furred gloves,

and Monte Irvin mentally contrasted her fresh, athletic type of beauty

with the delicate, exotic charm of his wife.

She opened the door of the little car, got in and drove off, waving one

hugely gloved hand to Irvin as he stood in the porch looking after her.

When the red tail-light had vanished in the mist he returned to the

house and re-entered the library. If only all his wife’s friends were

like Margaret Halley, he mused, he might have been spared the

insupportable misgivings which were goading him to madness. His mind

filled with poisonous suspicions, he resumed his pacing of the library,

awaiting and dreading that which should confirm his blackest theories.

He was unaware of the fact that throughout the interview he had held

the stump of cigar between his teeth. He held it there yet, pacing,

pacing up and down the long room.

Then came the expected summons. The telephone bell rang. Monte Irvin

clenched his hands and inhaled deeply. His color changed in a manner

that would have aroused a physician’s interest. Regaining his

self-possession by a visible effort, he crossed to a small side-table

upon which the instrument rested. Rolling the cigar stump into the left

corner of his mouth, he took up the receiver.

“Hallo!” he said.

“Someone named Brisley, sir, wishes—”

“Put him through to me here.”

“Very good, sir.”

A short interval, then:

“Yes?” said Monte Irvin.

“My name is Brisley. I have a message for Mr. Monte Irvin.”

“Monte Irvin speaking. Anything to report, Brisley?”

Irvin’s deep, rich voice was not entirely under control.

“Yes, sir. The lady drove by taxicab from Prince’s Gate to Albemarle

Street.”

“Ah!”

“Went up to chambers of Sir Lucien Pyne and was admitted.”

“Well?”

“Twenty minutes later came out. Lady was with Sir Lucien. Both walked

around to old Bond Street. The Honorable Quentin Gray—”

“Ah!” breathed Irvin.

“—Overtook them there. He got out of a cab. He joined them. All three

up to apartments of a professional crystal-gazer styling himself Kazmah

‘the dream-reader.’”

A puzzled expression began to steal over the face of Monte Irvin. At

the sound of the telephone bell he had paled somewhat. Now he began to

recover his habitual florid coloring.

“Go on,” he directed, for the speaker had paused.

“Seven to ten minutes later,” resumed the nasal voice, “Mr. Gray came

down. He hailed a passing cab, but man refused to stop. Mr. Gray seemed

to be very irritable.”

The fact that the invisible speaker was reading from a notebook he

betrayed by his monotonous intonation and abbreviated sentences, which

resembled those of a constable giving evidence in a police court.

“He walked off rapidly in direction of Piccadilly. Colleague followed.

Near the Ritz he obtained a cab. He returned in same to old Bond

Street. He ran upstairs and was gone from four-and-a-half to five

minutes. He then came down again. He was very pale and agitated. He

discharged cab and walked away. Colleague followed. He saw Mr. Gray

enter Prince’s Restaurant. In the hall Mr. Gray met a gent unknown by

sight to colleague. Following some conversation both gents went in to

dinner. They are there now. Speaking from Dover Street Tube.”

“Yes, yes. But the lady?”

“A native, possibly Egyptian, apparently servant of Kazmah, came out a

few minutes after Mr. Gray had gone for cab, and went away. Sir Lucien

Pyne and lady are still in Kazmah’s rooms.”

“What!” cried Irvin, pulling out his watch and glancing at the disk.

“But it’s after eight o’clock!”

“Yes, sir. The place is all shut up, and other offices in block closed

at six. Door of Kazmah’s is locked. I knocked and got no reply.”

“Damn it! You’re talking nonsense! There must be another exit.”

“No, sir. Colleague has just relieved me. Left two gents over their

wine at Prince’s.”

Monte Irvin’s color began to fade slowly.

“Then it’s Pyne!” he whispered. The hand which held the receiver shook.

“Brisley—meet me at the Piccadilly end of Bond Street. I am coming

now.”

He put down the telephone, crossed to the wall and pressed a button.

The cigar stump held firmly between his teeth, he stood on the rug

before the hearth, facing the door. Presently it opened and Hinkes came

in.

“The car is ready, Hinkes?”

“Yes, sir, as you ordered. Shall Pattison come round to the door?”

“At once.”

“Very good, sir.”

He withdrew, closing the door quietly, and Monte Irvin stood staring

across the library at the full-length portrait in oils of his wife in

the pierrot dress which she had worn in the third act of _The Maid of

the Masque_.

The clock in the hall struck half-past eight.

CHAPTER II.

THE APARTMENTS OF KAZMAH

It was rather less than two hours earlier on the same evening that

Quentin Gray came out of the confectioner’s shop in old Bond Street

carrying a neat parcel. Yellow dusk was closing down upon this bazaar

of the New Babylon, and many of the dealers in precious gems, vendors

of rich stuffs, and makers of modes had already deserted their shops.

Smartly dressed show-girls, saleswomen, girl clerks and others crowded

the pavements, which at high noon had been thronged with ladies of

fashion. Here a tailor’s staff, there a hatter’s lingered awhile as

iron shutters and gratings were secured, and bidding one another good

night, separated and made off towards Tube and bus. The working day was

ended. Society was dressing for dinner.

Gray was about to enter the cab which awaited him, and his

fresh-colored, boyish face wore an expression of eager expectancy,

which must have betrayed the fact to an experienced beholder that he

was hurrying to keep an agreeable appointment. Then, his hand resting

on the handle of the cab-door, this expression suddenly changed to one

of alert suspicion.

A tall, dark man, accompanied by a woman muffled in grey furs and

wearing a silk scarf over her hair, had passed on foot along the

opposite side of the street. Gray had seen them through the cab

windows.

His smooth brow wrinkled and his mouth tightened to a thin straight

line beneath the fair “regulation” moustache. He fumbled under his

overcoat for loose silver, drew out a handful and paid off the taximan.

Sometimes walking in the gutter in order to avoid the throngs upon the

pavement, regardless of the fact that his glossy dress-boots were

becoming spattered with mud, Gray hurried off in pursuit of the pair.

Twenty yards ahead he overtook them, as they were on the point of

passing a picture dealer’s window, from which yellow light streamed

forth into the humid dusk. They were walking slowly, and Gray stopped

in front of them.

“Hello, you two!” he cried. “Where are you off to? I was on my way to

call for you, Rita.”

Flushed and boyish he stood before them, and his annoyance was

increased by their failure to conceal the fact that his appearance was

embarrassing if not unwelcome. Mrs. Monte Irvin was a petite, pretty

woman, although some of the more wonderful bronzed tints of her hair

suggested the employment of henna, and her naturally lovely complexion

was delicately and artistically enhanced by art. Nevertheless, the

flower-like face peeping out from the folds of a gauzy scarf, like a

rose from a mist, whilst her soft little chin nestled into the fur,

might have explained even in the case of an older man the infatuation

which Quentin Gray was at no pains to hide.

She glanced up at her companion, Sir Lucien Pyne, a swarthy, cynical

type of aristocrat, imperturbably. Then: “I had left a note for you,

Quentin,” she said hurriedly. She seemed to be in a dangerously

high-strung condition.

“But I have booked a table and a box,” cried Gray, with a hint of

juvenile petulance.

“My dear Gray,” said Sir Lucien coolly, “we are men of the world—and we

do not look for consistency in womenfolk. Mrs. Irvin has decided to

consult a palmist or a hypnotist or some such occult authority before

dining with you this evening. Doubtless she seeks to learn if the play

to which you propose to take her is an amusing one.”

His smile of sardonic amusement Gray found to be almost insupportable,

and although Sir Lucien refrained from looking at Mrs. Irvin whilst he

spoke, it was evident enough that his words held some covert

significance, for:

“You know perfectly well that I have a particular reason for seeing

him,” she said.

“A woman’s particular reason is a man’s feeble excuse,” murmured Sir

Lucien rudely. “At least, according to a learned Arabian philosopher.”

“I was going to meet you at Prince’s,” said Mrs. Irvin hurriedly, and

again glancing at Gray. There was a pathetic hesitancy in her manner,

the hesitancy of a weak woman who adheres to a purpose only by supreme

effort.

“Might I ask,” said Gray, “the name of the pervert you are going to

consult?”

Again she hesitated and glanced rapidly at Sir Lucien, but he was

staring coolly in another direction.

“Kazmah,” she replied in a low voice.

“Kazmah!” cried Gray. “The man who sells perfume and pretends to read

dreams? What an extraordinary notion. Wouldn’t tomorrow do? He will

surely have shut up shop!”

“I have been at pains to ascertain,” replied Sir Lucien, “at Mrs.

Irvin’s express desire, that the man of mystery is still in session and

will receive her.”

Beneath the mask of nonchalance which he wore it might have been

possible to detect excitement repressed with difficulty; and had Gray

been more composed and not obsessed with the idea that Sir Lucien had

deliberately intruded upon his plans for the evening, he could not have

failed to perceive that Mrs. Monte Irvin was feverishly preoccupied

with matters having no relation to dinner and the theatre. But his

private suspicions grew only the more acute.

“Then if the dinner is not off,” he said, “may I come along and wait

for you?”

“At Kazmah’s?” asked Mrs. Irvin. “Certainly.” She turned to Sir Lucien.

“Shall you wait? It isn’t much use as I’m dining with Quentin.”

“If I do not intrude,” replied the baronet, “I will accompany you as

far as the cave of the oracle, and then bid you good night.”

The trio proceeded along old Bond Street. Quentin Gray regarded the

story of Kazmah as a very poor lie devised on the spur of the moment.

If he had been less infatuated, his natural sense of dignity must have

dictated an offer to release Mrs. Irvin from her engagement. But

jealousy stimulates the worst instincts and destroys the best. He was

determined to attach himself as closely as the old Man of the Sea

attached himself to Es-Sindibad, in order that the lie might be

unmasked. Mrs. Irvin’s palpable embarrassment and nervousness he

ascribed to her perception of his design.

A group of shop girls and others waiting for buses rendered it

impossible for the three to keep abreast, and Gray, falling to the

rear, stepped upon the foot of a little man who was walking close

behind them.

“Sorry, sir,” said the man, suppressing an exclamation of pain—for the

fault had been Gray’s.

Gray muttered an ungenerous acknowledgment, all anxiety to regain the

side of Mrs. Irvin; for she seemed to be speaking rapidly and excitedly

to Sir Lucien.

He recovered his place as the two turned in at a lighted doorway. Upon

the wall was a bronze plate bearing the inscription:

KAZMAH

Second Floor

Gray fully expected Mrs. Irvin to suggest that he should return later.

But without a word she began to ascend the stairs. Gray followed, Sir

Lucien standing aside to give him precedence. On the second floor was a

door painted in Oriental fashion. It possessed neither bell nor

knocker, but as one stepped upon the threshold this door opened

noiselessly as if dumbly inviting the visitor to enter the square

apartment discovered. This apartment was richly furnished in the Arab

manner, and lighted by a fine brass lamp swung upon chains from the

painted ceiling. The intricate perforations of the lamp were inset with

colored glass, and the result was a subdued and warm illumination.

Odd-looking oriental vessels, long-necked jars, jugs with tenuous

spouts and squat bowls possessing engraved and figured covers emerged

from the shadows of niches. A low divan with gaily colored mattresses

extended from the door around one corner of the room where it

terminated beside a kind of _mushrabîyeh_ cabinet or cupboard. Beyond

this cabinet was a long, low counter laden with statuettes of Nile

gods, amulets, mummy-beads and little stoppered flasks of blue enamel

ware. There were two glass cases filled with other strange-looking

antiquities. A faint perfume was perceptible.

Sir Lucien entering last of the party, the door closed behind him, and

from the cabinet on the right of the divan a young Egyptian stepped

out. He wore the customary white robe, red sash and red slippers, and a

_tarbûsh_, the little scarlet cap commonly called a fez, was set upon

his head. He walked to a door on the left of the counter, and slid it

noiselessly open. Bowing gravely, “The Sheikh el Kazmah awaits,” he

said, speaking with the soft intonation of a native of Upper Egypt.

It now became evident, even to the infatuated Gray, that Mrs. Irvin was

laboring under the influence of tremendous excitement. She turned to

him quickly, and he thought that her face looked almost haggard, whilst

her eyes seemed to have changed color—become lighter, although he could

not be certain that this latter effect was not due to the peculiar

illumination of the room. But when she spoke her voice was unsteady.

“Will you see if you can find a cab,” she said. “It is so difficult at

night, and my shoes will get frightfully muddy crossing Piccadilly. I

shall not be more than a few minutes.” She walked through the doorway,

the Egyptian standing aside as she passed. He followed her, but came

out again almost immediately, reclosed the door, and retired into the

cabinet, which was evidently his private cubicle.

Silence claimed the apartment. Sir Lucien threw himself nonchalantly

upon the divan, and took out his cigarette-case.

“Will you have a cigarette, Gray?” he asked.

“No thanks,” replied the other, in tones of smothered hostility. He was

ill at ease, and paced the apartment nervously. Pyne lighted a

cigarette, and tossed the extinguished match into a brass bowl.

“I think,” said Gray jerkily, “I shall go for a cab. Are you

remaining?”

“I am dining at the club,” answered Pyne, “but I can wait until you

return.”

“As you wish,” jerked Gray. “I don’t expect to be long.”

He walked rapidly to the outer door, which opened at his approach and

closed noiselessly behind him as he made his exit.

CHAPTER III.

KAZMAH

Mrs. Monte Irvin entered the inner room. The air was heavy with the

perfume of frankincense which smouldered in a brass vessel set upon a

tray. This was the audience chamber of Kazmah. In marked contrast to

the overcrowded appointments, divans and cupboards of the first room,

it was sparsely furnished. The floor was thickly carpeted, but save for

an ornate inlaid table upon which stood the tray and incense-burner,

and a long, low-cushioned seat placed immediately beneath a hanging

lamp burning dimly in a globular green shade, it was devoid of

decoration. The walls were draped with green curtains, so that except

for the presence of the painted door, the four sides of the apartment

appeared to be uniform.

Having conducted Mrs. Irvin to the seat, the Egyptian bowed and retired

again through the doorway by which they had entered. The visitor found

herself alone.

She moved nervously, staring across at the blank wall before her. With

her little satin shoe she tapped the carpet, biting her under lip and

seeming to be listening. Nothing stirred. Not even an echo of busy Bond

Street penetrated to the place. Mrs. Irvin unfastened her cloak and

allowed it to fall back upon the settee. Her bare shoulders looked

waxen and unnatural in the weird light which shone down upon them. She

was breathing rapidly.

The minutes passed by in unbroken silence. So still was the room that

Mrs. Irvin could hear the faint crackling sound made by the burning

charcoal in the brass vessel near her. Wisps of blue-grey smoke arose

through the perforated lid and she began to watch them fascinatedly, so

lithe they seemed, like wraiths of serpents creeping up the green

draperies.

So she was seated, her foot still restlessly tapping, but her gaze

arrested by the hypnotic movements of the smoke, when at last a sound

from the outer world, penetrated to the room. A church clock struck the

hour of seven, its clangor intruding upon the silence only as a muffled

boom. Almost coincident with the last stroke came the sweeter note of a

silver gong from somewhere close at hand.

Mrs. Irvin started, and her eyes turned instantly in the direction of

the greenly draped wall before her. Her pupils had grown suddenly

dilated, and she clenched her hands tightly.

The light above her head went out.

Now that the moment was come to which she had looked forward with

mingled hope and terror, long pent-up emotion threatened to overcome

her, and she trembled wildly.

Out of the darkness dawned a vague light and in it a shape seemed to

take form. As the light increased the effect was as though part of the

wall had become transparent so as to reveal the interior of an inner

room where a figure was seated in a massive ebony chair. The figure was

that of an oriental, richly robed and wearing a white turban. His long

slim hands, of the color of old ivory, rested upon the arms of the

chair, and on the first finger of the right hand gleamed a big

talismanic ring. The face of the seated man was lowered, but from under

heavy brows his abnormally large eyes regarded her fixedly.

So dim the light remained that it was impossible to discern the details

with anything like clearness, but that the clean-shaven face of the man

with those wonderful eyes was strikingly and intellectually handsome

there could be no doubt.

This was Kazmah, “the dream reader,” and although Mrs. Irvin had seen

him before, his statuesque repose and the weirdness of his unfaltering

gaze thrilled her uncannily.

Kazmah slightly raised his hand in greeting: the big ring glittered in

the subdued light.

“Tell me your dream,” came a curious mocking voice; “and I will read

its portent.”

Such was the set formula with which Kazmah opened all interviews. He

spoke with a slight and not unmusical accent. He lowered his hand

again. The gaze of those brilliant eyes remained fixed upon the woman’s

face. Moistening her lips, Mrs. Irvin spoke.

“Dreams! What I have to say does not belong to dreams, but to reality!”

She laughed unmirthfully. “You know well enough why I am here.”

She paused.

“Why are you here?”

“You know! You know!” Suddenly into her voice had come the unmistakable

note of hysteria. “Your theatrical tricks do not impress me. I know

what you are! A spy—an eavesdropper who watches—watches, and listens!

But you may go too far! I am nearly desperate—do you understand?—nearly

desperate. Speak! Move! Answer me!”

But Kazmah preserved his uncanny repose.

“You are distracted,” he said. “I am sorry for you. But why do you come

to _me_ with your stories of desperation? You have insisted upon seeing

me. I am here.”

“And you play with me—taunt me!”

“The remedy is in your hands.”

“For the last time, I tell you I will never do it! Never, never,

never!”

“Then why do you complain? If you cannot afford to pay for your

amusements, and you refuse to compromise in a simple manner, why do you

approach _me?_”

“Oh, my God!” She moaned and swayed dizzily—“have pity on me! Who are

you, what are you, that you can bring ruin on a woman because—” She

uttered a choking sound, but continued hoarsely, “Raise your head. Let

me see your face. As heaven is my witness, I am ruined—ruined!”

“Tomorrow—”

“I cannot wait for tomorrow—”

That quivering, hoarse cry betrayed a condition of desperate febrile

excitement. Mrs. Irvin was capable of proceeding to the wildest

extremities. Clearly the mysterious Egyptian recognized this to be the

case, for slowly raising his hand:

“I will communicate with you,” he said, and the words were spoken

almost hurriedly. “Depart in peace—“; a formula wherewith he terminated

every seance. He lowered his hand.

The silver gong sounded again—and the dim light began to fade.

Thereupon the unhappy woman acted; the long suppressed outburst came at

last. Stepping rapidly to the green transparent veil behind which

Kazmah was seated, she wrenched it asunder and leapt toward the figure

in the black chair.

“You shall not trick me!” she panted. “Hear me out or I go straight to

the police—now—_now!_”

She grasped the hands of Kazmah as they rested motionless, on the

chair-arms.

Complete darkness came.

Out of it rose a husky, terrified cry—a second, louder cry; and then a

long, wailing scream... horror-laden as that of one who has touched

some slumbering reptile....

CHAPTER IV.

THE CLOSED DOOR

Rather less than five minutes later a taxicab drew up in old Bond

Street, and from it Quentin Gray leapt out impetuously and ran in at

the doorway leading to Kazmah’s stairs. So hurried was his progress

that he collided violently with a little man who, carrying himself with

a pronounced stoop, was slinking furtively out.

The little man reeled at the impact and almost fell, but:

“Hang it all!” cried Gray irritably. “Why the devil don’t you look

where you’re going!”

He glared angrily into the face of the other. It was a peculiar and

rememberable face, notable because of a long, sharp, hooked nose and

very little, foxy, brown eyes; a sly face to which a small, fair

moustache only added insignificance. It was crowned by a wide-brimmed

bowler hat which the man wore pressed down upon his ears like a Jew

pedlar.

“Why!” cried Gray, “this is the second time tonight you have jostled

me!”

He thought he had recognized the man for the same who had been

following himself, Mrs. Irvin and Sir Lucien Pyne along old Bond

Street.

A smile, intended to be propitiatory, appeared upon the pale face.

“No, sir, excuse me, sir—”

“Don’t deny it!” said Gray angrily. “If I had the time I should give

you in charge as a suspicious loiterer.”

Calling to the cabman to wait, he ran up the stairs to the second floor

landing. Before the painted door bearing the name of Kazmah he halted,

and as the door did not open, stamped impatiently, but with no better

result.

At that, since there was neither bell nor knocker, he raised his fist

and banged loudly.

No one responded to the summons.

“Hi, there!” he shouted. “Open the door! Pyne! Rita!”

Again he banged—and yet again. Then he paused, listening, his ear

pressed to the panel.

He could detect no sound of movement within. Fists clenched, he stood

staring at the closed door, and his fresh color slowly deserted him and

left him pale.

“Damn him!” he muttered savagely. “Damn him! he has fooled me!”

Passionate and self-willed, he was shaken by a storm of murderous

anger. That Pyne had planned this trick, with Rita Irvin’s consent, he

did not doubt, and his passive dislike of the man became active hatred

of the woman he dared not think. He had for long looked upon Sir Lucien

in the light of a rival, and the irregularity of his own infatuation

for another’s wife in no degree lessened his resentment.

Again he pressed his ear to the door, and listened intently. Perhaps

they were hiding within. Perhaps this charlatan, Kazmah, was an

accomplice in the pay of Sir Lucien. Perhaps this was a secret place of

rendezvous.

To the manifest absurdity of such a conjecture he was blind in his

anger. But that he was helpless, befooled, he recognized; and with a

final muttered imprecation he turned and slowly descended the stair. A

lingering hope was dispelled when, looking right and left along Bond

Street, he failed to perceive the missing pair.

The cabman glanced at him interrogatively. “I shall not require you,”

said Gray, and gave the man half-a-crown.

Busy with his poisonous conjectures, he remained all unaware of the

presence of a furtive, stooping figure which lurked behind the railings

of the arcade at this point linking old Bond Street to Albemarle

Street. Nor had the stooping stranger any wish to attract Gray’s

attention. Most of the shops in the narrow lane were already closed,

although the florist’s at the corner remained open, but of the shadow

which lay along the greater part of the arcade this alert watcher took

every advantage. From the recess formed by a shop door he peered out at

Gray, where the light of a street lamp fell upon him, studying his

face, his movements, with unrelaxing vigilance.

Gray, following some moments of indecision, strode off towards

Piccadilly. The little man came out cautiously from his hiding-place

and looked after him. Out of a dark porch, ten paces along Bond Street,

appeared a burly figure to fall into step a few yards behind Gray. The

little man licked his lips appreciatively and returned to the doorway

below the premises of Kazmah.

Reaching Piccadilly, Gray stood for a time on the corner, indifferent

to the jostling of passers-by. Finally he crossed, walked along to the

Prince’s Restaurant, and entered the lobby. He glanced at his

wrist-watch. It registered the hour of seven-twenty-five.

He cancelled his order for a table and was standing staring moodily

towards the entrance when the doors swung open and a man entered who

stepped straight up to him, hand extended, and:

“Glad to see you, Gray,” he said. “What’s the trouble?”

Quentin Gray stared as if incredulous at the speaker, and it was with

an unmistakable note of welcome in his voice that he replied:

“Seton! Seton Pasha!”

The frown disappeared from Gray’s forehead, and he gripped the other’s

hand in hearty greeting. But:

“Stick to plain Seton!” said the new-comer, glancing rapidly about him.

“Ottoman titles are not fashionable.”

The speaker was a man of arresting personality. Above medium height,

well but leanly built, the face of Seton “Pasha” was burned to a deeper

shade than England’s wintry sun is capable of producing. He wore a

close-trimmed beard and moustache, and the bronze on his cheeks

enhanced the brightness of his grey eyes and rendered very noticeable a

slight frosting of the dark hair above his temples. He had the

indescribable air of a “sure” man, a sound man to have beside one in a

tight place; and looking into the rather grim face, Quentin Gray felt

suddenly ashamed of himself. From Seton Pasha he knew that he could

keep nothing back. He knew that presently he should find himself

telling this quiet, brown-skinned man the whole story of his

humiliation—and he knew that Seton would not spare his feelings.

“My dear fellow,” he said, “you must pardon me if I sometimes fail to

respect your wishes in this matter. When I left the East the name of

Seton Pasha was on everybody’s tongue. But are you alone?”

“I am. I only arrived in London tonight and in England this morning.”

“Were you thinking of dining here?”

“No; I saw you through the doorway as I was passing. But this will do

as well as another place. I gather that you are disengaged. Perhaps you

will dine with me?”

“Splendid!” cried Gray. “Wait a moment. Perhaps my table hasn’t gone!”

He ran off in his boyish, impetuous fashion, and Seton watched him,

smiling quietly.

The table proved to be available, and ere long the two were discussing

an excellent dinner. Gray lost much of his irritability and began to

talk coherently upon topics of general interest. Presently, following

an interval during which he had been covertly watching his companion:

“Do you know, Seton,” he said, “you are the one man in London whose

company I could have tolerated tonight.”

“My arrival was peculiarly opportune.”

“Your arrivals are always peculiarly opportune.” Gray stared at Seton

with an expression of puzzled admiration. “I don’t think I shall ever

understand your turning up immediately before the Senussi raid in

Egypt. Do you remember? I was with the armored cars.”

“I remember perfectly.”

“Then you vanished in the same mysterious fashion, and the C. O. was a

sphinx on the subject. I next saw you strolling out of the gate at

Baghdad. How the devil you’d got to Baghdad, considering that you

didn’t come with us and that you weren’t with the cavalry, heaven only

knows!”

“No,” said Seton judicially, gazing through his uplifted wine-glass;

“when one comes to consider the matter without prejudice it is

certainly odd. But do I know the lady to whose non-appearance I owe the

pleasure of your company tonight?”

Quentin Gray stared at him blankly.

“Really, Seton, you amaze me. Did I say that I had an appointment with

a lady?”

“My dear Gray, when I see a man standing biting his nails and glaring

out into Piccadilly from a restaurant entrance I ask myself a question.

When I learn that he has just cancelled an order for a table for two I

answer it.”

Gray laughed. “You always make me feel so infernally young, Seton.”

“Good!”

“Yes, it’s good to feel young, but bad to feel a young fool; and that’s

what I feel—and what I am. Listen!”

Leaning across the table so that the light of the shaded lamp fell

fully upon his flushed, eager face, Gray, not without embarrassment,

told his companion of the “dirty trick”—so he phrased it—which Sir

Lucien Pyne had played upon him. In conclusion:

“What would you do, Seton?” he asked.

Seton sat regarding him in silence with a cool, calculating stare which

some men had termed insolent, absently tapping his teeth with the gold

rim of a monocle which he carried but apparently never used for any

other purpose; and it was at about this time that a long low car passed

near the door of the restaurant, crossing the traffic stream of

Piccadilly to draw up at the corner of old Bond Street.

From the car Monte Irvin alighted and, telling the man to wait, set out

on foot. Ten paces along Bond Street he encountered a small, stooping

figure which became detached from the shadows of a shop door. The light

of a street lamp shone down upon the sharp, hooked nose and into the

cunning little brown eyes of Brisley, of Spinker’s Detective Agency.

Monte Irvin started.

“Ah, Brisley!” he said, “I was looking for you. Are they still there?”

“Probably, sir.” Brisley licked his lips. “My colleague, Gunn, reports

no one came out whilst I was away ’phoning.”

“But the whole thing seems preposterous. Are there no other offices in

the block where they might be?”

“I personally saw Mr. Gray, Sir Lucien Pyne and the lady go into

Kazmah’s. At that time—roughly, ten to seven—all the other offices had

been closed, approximately, one hour.”

“There is absolutely no possibility that they might have come out

unseen by you?”

“None, sir. I should not have troubled a client if in doubt. Here’s

Gunn.”

Old Bond Street now was darkened and deserted; the yellow mist had

turned to fine rain, and Gunn, his hands thrust in his pockets, was

sheltering under the porch of the arcade. Gunn possessed a purple

complexion which attained to full vigor of coloring in the nasal

region. His moustache of dirty grey was stained brown in the centre as

if by frequent potations of stout, and his bulky figure was

artificially enlarged by the presence of two overcoats, the outer of

which was a waterproof and the inner a blue garment appreciably longer

both in sleeve and skirt than the former. The effect produced was one

of great novelty. Gunn touched the brim of his soft felt hat, which he

wore turned down all round apparently in imitation of a flower-pot.

“All snug, sir,” he said, hoarsely and confidentially, bending forward

and breathing the words into Irvin’s ear. “Snug as a bee in a hive.

You’re as good as a bachelor again.”

Monte Irvin mentally recoiled.

“Lead the way to the door of this place,” he said tersely.

“Yes, sir, this way, sir. Be careful of the step there. You may remark

that the outer door is not yet closed. I am informed upon reliable

authority as the last to go locks the door. Hence we perceive that the

last has not yet gone. It is likewise opened by the first to come of a

mornin’. Here we are, sir; door on the right.”

The landing was in darkness, but as Gunn spoke he directed the ray of a

pocket lamp upon a bronze plate bearing the name “Kazmah.” He rested

one hand upon his hip.

“All snug,” he repeated; “as snug as a eel in mud. The _decree nisi_ is

yours, sir. As an alderman of the City of London and a Justice of the

Peace you are entitled to call a police officer—”

“Hold your tongue!” rapped Irvin. “You’ve been drinking: and I place no

reliance whatever in your evidence. I do not believe that my wife or

any one else but ourselves is upon these premises.”

The watery eyes of the insulted man protruded unnaturally. “Drinkin’!”

he whispered, “drink—”

But indignation now deprived Gunn of speech and:

“Excuse me, sir,” interrupted the nasal voice of Brisley, “but I can

absolutely answer for Gunn. Reputation of the Agency at stake. Worked

with us for three years. Parties undoubtedly on the premises as

reported.”

“Drink—” whispered Gunn.

“I shall be glad,” said Monte Irvin, and his voice shook emotionally,

“if you will lend me your pocket lamp. I am naturally upset. Will you

kindly both go downstairs. I will call if I want you.”

The two men obeyed, Gunn muttering hoarsely to Brisley; and Monte Irvin

was left standing on the landing, the lamp in his hand. He waited until

he knew from the sound of their footsteps that the pair had regained

the street, then, resting his arm against the closed door, and pressing

his forehead to the damp sleeve of his coat, he stood awhile, the lamp,

which he held limply, shining down upon the floor.

His lips moved, and almost inaudibly he murmured his wife’s name.

CHAPTER V.

THE DOOR IS OPENED

Quentin Gray and Seton strolled out of Prince’s and both paused whilst

Seton lighted a long black cheroot.

“It seems a pity to waste that box,” said Gray. “Suppose we look in at

the Gaiety for an hour?”

His humor was vastly improved, and he watched the passing throngs with

an expression more suited to his boyish good looks than that of anger

and mortification which had rested upon him an hour earlier.

Seton Pasha tossed a match into the road.

“My official business is finished for the day,” he replied. “I place

myself unreservedly in your hands.”

“Well, then,” began Gray—and paused.

A long, low car, the chauffeur temporarily detained by the stoppage of

a motorbus ahead, had slowed up within three yards of the spot where

they were standing. Gray seized Seton’s arm in a fierce grip.

“Seton,” he said, his voice betraying intense excitement, “Look! There

is Monte Irvin!”

“In the car?”

“Yes, yes! But—he has two _police_ with him! Seton, what can it mean?”

The car moved away, swinging to the right across the traffic stream and

clearly heading for old Bond Street. Quentin Gray’s mercurial color

deserted him, and he turned to Seton a face grown suddenly pale.

“Good God,” he whispered, “something has happened to Rita!”

Neglectful of his personal safety, he plunged out into the traffic,

dodging this way and that, and making after Monte Irvin’s car. Of the

fact that his friend was close beside him he remained unaware until, on

the corner of old Bond Street, a firm grip settled upon his shoulder.

Gray turned angrily. But the grip was immovable, and he found himself

staring into the unemotional face of Seton Pasha.

“Seton, for God’s sake, don’t detain me! I must learn what’s wrong.”

“Pull up, Gray.”

Quentin Gray clenched his teeth.

“Listen to me, Seton. This is no time for interference. I—”

“You are about to become involved in some very unsavory business; and I

repeat—pull up. In a moment we shall learn all there is to be learned.

But are you determined openly to thrust yourself into the family

affairs of Mr. Monte Irvin?”

“If anything has happened to Rita I’ll kill that damned cur Pyne!”

“You are determined to intrude upon this man in your present frame of

mind at a time of evident trouble?”

But Gray was deaf to the promptings of prudence and good taste alike.

“I’m going to see the thing through,” he said hoarsely.

“Quite so. Rely upon me. But endeavor to behave more like a man of the

world and less like a dangerous lunatic, or we shall quarrel

atrociously.”

Quentin Gray audibly gnashed his teeth, but the cool stare of the

other’s eyes was quelling, and now as their glances met and clashed, a

sympathetic smile softened the lines of Seton’s grim mouth, and:

“I quite understand, old chap,” he said, linking his arm in Gray’s.

“But can’t you see how important it is, for everybody’s sake, that we

should tackle the thing coolly?”

“Seton”—Gray’s voice broke—“I’m sorry. I know I’m mad; but I was with

her only an hour ago, and now—”

“And now ‘her’ husband appears on the scene accompanied by a police

inspector and a sergeant. What are your relations with Mr. Monte

Irvin?”

They were walking rapidly again along Bond Street.

“What do you mean, Seton?” asked Gray.

“I mean does he approve of your friendship with his wife, or is it a

clandestine affair?”

“Clandestine?—certainly not. I was on my way to call at the house when

I met her with Pyne this evening.”

“That is what I wanted to know. Very well; since you intend to follow

the thing up, it simplifies matters somewhat. Here is the car.”

“At Kazmah’s door! What in heaven’s name does it mean?”

“It means that we shall get a very poor reception if we intrude.

Question the chauffeur.”

But Gray had already approached the man, who touched his cap in

recognition.

“What’s the trouble, Pattison?” he demanded breathlessly. “I saw police

in the car a moment ago.”

“Yes, sir. I don’t rightly know, sir, what’s happened. But Mr. Irvin

drove from home to the corner of old Bond Street a quarter of an hour

ago and told me to wait, then came back again and drove round to Vine

Street to fetch the police. They’re inside now.”

Even as he spoke, with excitement ill-concealed, a police-sergeant came

out of the doorway, and:

“Move on, there,” he said to Seton and Gray. “You mustn’t hang about

this door.”

“Excuse me, Sergeant,” cried Gray, “but if the matter concerns Mrs.

Monte Irvin I can probably supply information.”

The Sergeant stared at him hard, saw that both he and his friend wore

evening dress, and grew proportionately respectful.

“What is your name, sir?” he asked. “I’ll mention it to the officer in

charge.”

“Quentin Gray. Inform Mr. Monte Irvin that I wish to speak to him.”

“Very good, sir.” He turned to the chauffeur. “Hand me out the bag I

gave you at Vine Street.” Pattison leaned over the door at the front of

the car, and brought out a big leather grip. With this in hand the

police-sergeant returned into the doorway.

“We’re in for it now,” said Seton grimly, “whatever it is.”

Gray returned no answer, moving restlessly up and down before the door

in a fever of excitement and dread. Presently the Sergeant reappeared.

“Step this way, please,” he said.

Followed by Seton and Gray he led the way up to the landing before

Kazmah’s apartments. It was vaguely lighted by two police-lanterns.

Four men were standing there, and four pairs of eyes were focussed upon

the stair-head.

Monte Irvin, his features a distressing ashen color, spoke.

“That you, Gray?” Quentin Gray would not have recognized the voice.

“Thanks for offering your help. God knows I need all I can get. You

were with Rita tonight. What happened? Where is she?”

“Heaven knows where she is!” cried Gray. “I left her here with Pyne

shortly after seven o’clock.”

He paused, fixing his gaze upon the face of Brisley, whose shifty eyes

avoided him and who was licking his lips in the manner of a dog who has

seen the whip.

“Why,” said Gray, “I believe you are the fellow who has been following

me all night for some reason.”

He stepped toward the foxy little man but:

“Never mind, Gray,” interrupted Irvin. “I was to blame. But he was

following my wife, not you. Tell me quickly: Why did she come here?”

Gray raised his hand to his brow with a gesture of bewilderment.

“To consult this man, Kazmah. I actually saw her enter the inner room,

I went to get a cab, and when I returned the door was locked.”

“You knocked?”

“Of course. I made no end of a row. But I could get no reply and went

away.”

Monte Irvin turned, a pathetic figure, to the Inspector who stood

beside him.

“We may as well proceed, Inspector Whiteleaf,” he said. “Mr. Gray’s

evidence throws no light on the matter at all.”

“Very well, sir,” was the reply; “we have the warrant, and have given

the usual notice to whoever may be hiding inside. Burton!”

The Sergeant stepped forward, placed the leather bag on the floor, and

stooping, opened it, revealing a number of burglarious-looking

instruments.

“Shall I try to cut through the panel?” he asked.

“No, no!” cried Monte Irvin. “Waste no time. You have a crowbar there.

Force the door from its hinges. Hurry, man!”

“It doesn’t work on hinges!” Gray interrupted excitedly. “It slides to

the right by means of some arrangement concealed under the mat.”

“Pass that lantern,” directed Burton, glancing over his shoulder to

Gunn.

Setting it beside him, the Sergeant knelt and examined the threshold of

the door.

“A metal plate,” he said. “The weight moves a lever, I suppose, which

opens the door if it isn’t locked. The lock will be on the left of the

door as it opens to the right. Let’s see what we can do.”

He stood up, crowbar in hand, and inserted the chisel blade of the

implement between the edge of the door and the doorcase.

“Hold steady!” said the Inspector, standing at his elbow.

The dull metallic sound of hammer blows on steel echoed queerly around

the well of the staircase. Brisley and Gunn, standing very close

together on the bottom step of the stair to the third floor, watched

the police furtively. Irvin and Gray found a common fascination in the

door itself, and Seton, cheroot in mouth, looked from group to group

with quiet interest.

“Right!” cried the Sergeant.

The blows ceased.

Firmly grasping the bar, Burton brought all his weight to bear upon it.

There was a dull, cracking sound and a sort of rasping. The door moved

slightly.

“There’s where it locks!” said the Inspector, directing the light of a

lantern upon the crevice created. “Three inches lower. But it may be

bolted as well.”

“We’ll soon get at the bolts,” replied Burton, the lust of destruction

now strong upon him.

Wrenching the crowbar from its place he attacked the lower panel of the

door, and amid a loud splintering and crashing created a hole big

enough to allow of the passage of a hand and arm.

The Inspector reached in, groped about, and then uttered an exclamation

of triumph.

“I’ve unfastened the bolt,” he said. “If there isn’t another at the top

you ought to be able to force the door now, Burton.”

The jimmy was thrust back into position, and:

“Stand clear!” cried Burton.

Again he threw his weight upon the bar—and again.

“Drive it further in!” said Monte Irvin; and snatching up the heavy

hammer, he rained blows upon the steel butt. “Now try.”

Burton exerted himself to the utmost.

“Take hold up here, someone!” he panted. “Two of us can pull.”

Gray leapt forward, and the pair of them bent to the task.

There came a dull report of parting mechanism, more sounds of

splintering wood... and the door rolled open!

A moment of tense silence, then:

“Is anyone inside there?” cried the Inspector loudly.

Not a sound came from the dark interior.

“The lantern!” whispered Monte Irvin.

He stumbled into the room, from which a heavy smell of perfume swept

out upon the landing. Quentin Gray, snatching the lantern from the

floor, where it had been replaced, was the next to enter.

“Look for the switch, and turn the lights on!” called the Inspector,

following.

Even as he spoke, Gray had found the switch, and the apartment of

Kazmah became flooded with subdued light.

A glance showed it to be unoccupied.

Gray ran across to the _mushrabîyeh_ cabinet and jerked the curtains

aside. There was no one in the cabinet. It contained a chair and a

table. Upon the latter was a telephone and some papers and books. “This

way!” he cried, his voice high pitched and unnatural.

He burst through the doorway into the inner room which he had seen Mrs.

Irvin enter. The air was laden with the smell of frankincense.

“A lantern!” he called. “I left one on the divan.”

But Monte Irvin had caught it up and was already at his elbow. His hand

was shaking so that the light danced wildly now upon the carpet, now

upon the green walls. This room also was deserted. A black gap in the

curtain showed where the material had been roughly torn. Suddenly:

“My God, look!” muttered the Inspector, who, with the others, now stood

in the curious draped apartment.

A thin stream of blood was trickling out from beneath the torn

hangings!

Monte Irvin staggered and fell back against the Inspector, clutching at

him for support. But Sergeant Burton, who carried the second lantern,

crossed the room and wrenched the green draperies bodily from their

fastenings.

They had masked a wooden partition or stout screen, having an aperture

in the centre which could be closed by means of another of the sliding

doors. A space some five feet deep was thus walled off from this second

room. It contained a massive ebony chair. Behind the chair, and

dividing the second room into yet a third section, extended another

wooden partition in one end of which was an ordinary office door; and

immediately at the back of the chair appeared a little opening or

window, some three feet up from the floor. The sound of a groan,

followed by that of a dull thud, came from the outer room.

“Hullo!” cried Inspector Whiteleaf. “Mr. Irvin has fainted. Lend a

hand.”

“I am here,” replied the quiet voice of Seton Pasha.

“My God!” whispered Gray. “Seton! Seton!”

“Touch nothing,” cried the Inspector from outside, “until I come!”

And now the narrow apartment became filled with all the awe-stricken

company, only excepting Monte Irvin, and Brisley, who was attending to

the swooning man.

Flat upon the floor, between the door and the ebony chair, arms

extended and eyes staring upward at the ceiling, lay Sir Lucien Pyne,

his white shirt front redly dyed. In the hush which had fallen, the

footsteps of Inspector Whiteleaf sounded loudly as he opened the final

door, and swept the interior of an inner room with the rays of the

lantern.

The room was barely furnished as an office. There was another

half-glazed door opening on to a narrow corridor. This door was locked.

“_Pyne!_” whispered Gray, pale now to the lips. “Do you understand,

Seton? It’s Pyne! Look! He has been stabbed!”

Sergeant Burton knelt down and gingerly laid his hand upon the stained

linen over the breast of Sir Lucien.

“Dead?” asked the Inspector, speaking from the inner doorway.

“Yes.”

“You say, sir,” turning to Quentin Gray, “that this is Sir Lucien

Pyne?”

“Yes.”

Inspector Whiteleaf rather clumsily removed his cap. The odor of

Seton’s cheroot announced itself above the oriental perfume with which

the place was laden.

“Burton!”

“Yes?”

“See if this telephone in the office is in order. It appears to be an

extension from the outer room.”

While the others stood grouped about that still figure on the floor,

Sergeant Burton entered the little office.

“Hello!” he cried. “Yes?” A momentary interval, then: “It’s all right,

sir. What number?”

“Gentlemen,” said the Inspector, firmly and authoritatively, “I am

about to telephone to Vine Street for instructions. No one will leave

the premises.”

Amid an intense hush:

“Regent 201,” called Sergeant Burton.

CHAPTER VI.

RED KERRY

Chief Inspector Kerry, of the Criminal Investigation Department, stood

before the empty grate of his cheerless office in New Scotland Yard,

one hand thrust into the pocket of his blue reefer jacket and the other

twirling a malacca cane, which was heavily silver-mounted and which

must have excited the envy of every sergeant-major beholding it. Chief

Inspector Kerry wore a very narrow-brimmed bowler hat, having two

ventilation holes conspicuously placed immediately above the band. He

wore this hat tilted forward and to the right.

“Red Kerry” wholly merited his sobriquet, for the man was as red as

fire. His hair, which he wore cropped close as a pugilist’s, was

brilliantly red, and so was his short, wiry, aggressive moustache. His

complexion was red, and from beneath his straight red eyebrows he

surveyed the world with a pair of unblinking, intolerant steel-blue

eyes. He never smoked in public, as his taste inclined towards Irish

twist and a short clay pipe; but he was addicted to the use of

chewing-gum, and as he chewed—and he chewed incessantly—he revealed a

perfect row of large, white, and positively savage-looking teeth. High

cheek bones and prominent maxillary muscles enhanced the truculence

indicated by his chin.

But, next to this truculence, which was the first and most alarming

trait to intrude itself upon the observer’s attention, the outstanding

characteristic of Chief Inspector Kerry was his compact neatness. Of no

more than medium height but with shoulders like an acrobat, he had

slim, straight legs and the feet of a dancing master. His attire, from

the square-pointed collar down to the neat black brogues, was spotless.

His reefer jacket fitted him faultlessly, but his trousers were cut so

unfashionably narrow that the protuberant thigh muscles and the line of

a highly developed calf could quite easily be discerned. The hand

twirling the cane was small but also muscular, freckled and covered

with light down. Red Kerry was built on the lines of a whippet, but

carried the equipment of an Irish terrier.

The telephone bell rang. Inspector Kerry moved his square shoulders in

a manner oddly suggestive of a wrestler, laid the malacca cane on the

mantleshelf, and crossed to the table. Taking up the telephone:

“Yes?” he said, and his voice was high-pitched and imperious.

He listened for a moment.

“Very good, sir.”

He replaced the receiver, took up a wet oilskin overall from the back

of a chair and the cane from the mantleshelf. Then rolling chewing-gum

from one corner of his mouth into the other, he snapped off the

electric light and walked from the room.

Along the corridor he went with a lithe, silent step, moving from the

hips and swinging his shoulders. Before a door marked “Private” he

paused. From his waistcoat pocket he took a little silver convex mirror

and surveyed himself critically therein. He adjusted his neat tie,

replaced the mirror, knocked at the door and entered the room of the

Assistant Commissioner.

This important official was a man constructed on huge principles, a man

of military bearing, having tired eyes and a bewildered manner. He

conveyed the impression that the collection of documents, books,

telephones, and other paraphernalia bestrewing his table had reduced

him to a state of stupor. He looked up wearily and met the fierce gaze

of the chief inspector with a glance almost apologetic.

“Ah, Chief Inspector Kerry?” he said, with vague surprise. “Yes. I told

you to come. Really, I ought to have been at home hours ago. It’s most

unfortunate. I have to do the work of three men. This _is_ your

department, is it not, Chief Inspector?”

He handed Kerry a slip of paper, at which the Chief Inspector stared

fiercely.

“Murder!” rapped Kerry. “Sir Lucien Pyne. Yes, sir, I am still on

duty.”

His speech, in moments of interest, must have suggested to one

overhearing him from an adjoining room, for instance, the operation of

a telegraphic instrument. He gave to every syllable the value of a rap

and certain words he terminated with an audible snap of his teeth.

“Ah,” murmured the Assistant Commissioner. “Yes. Divisional

Inspector—Somebody (I cannot read the name) has detained all the

parties. But you had better report at Vine Street. It appears to be a

big case.”

He sighed wearily.

“Very good, sir. With your permission I will glance at Sir Lucien’s

pedigree.”

“Certainly—certainly,” said the Assistant Commissioner, waving one

large hand in the direction of a bookshelf.

Kerry crossed the room, laid his oilskin and cane upon a chair, and

from the shelf where it reposed took a squat volume. The Assistant

Commissioner, hand pressed to brow, began to study a document which lay

before him.

“Here we are,” said Kerry, _sotto voce_. “Pyne, Sir Lucien St. Aubyn,

fourth baronet, son of General Sir Christian Pyne, K.C.B. H’m! Born

Malta.... Oriel College; first in classics.... H’m. Blue.... India,

Burma.... Contested Wigan.... attached British Legation. ... H’m!...”

He returned the book to its place, took up his overall and cane, and:

“Very good, sir,” he said. “I will proceed to Vine Street.”

“Certainly—certainly,” murmured the Assistant Commissioner, glancing up

absently. “Good night.”

“Good night, sir.”

“Oh, Chief Inspector!”

Kerry turned, his hand on the door-knob.

“Sir?”

“I—er—what was I going to say? Oh, yes! The social importance of the

murdered man raises the case from the—er—you follow me? Public interest

will become acute, no doubt. I have therefore selected you for your

well known discretion. I met Sir Lucien once. Very sad. Good night.”

“Good night, sir.”

Kerry passed out into the corridor, closing the door quietly. The

Assistant Commissioner was a man for whom he entertained the highest

respect. Despite the bewildered air and wandering manner, he knew this

big, tired-looking soldier for an administrator of infinite capacity

and inexhaustive energy.

Proceeding to a room further along the corridor, Chief Inspector Kerry

opened the door and looked in.

“Detective-Sergeant Coombes.” he snapped, and rolled chewing-gum from

side to side of his mouth.

Detective-Sergeant Coombes, a plump, short man having lank black hair

and a smile of sly contentment perpetually adorning his round face,

rose hurriedly from the chair upon which he had been seated. Another

man who was in the room rose also, as if galvanized by the glare of the

fierce blue eyes.

“I’m going to Vine Street,” said Kerry succinctly; “you’re coming with

me,” turned, and went on his way.

Two taxicabs were standing in the yard, and into the first of these

Inspector Kerry stepped, followed by Coombes, the latter breathing

heavily and carrying his hat in his hand, since he had not yet found

time to put it on.

“Vine Street,” shouted Kerry. “Brisk.”

He leaned back in the cab, chewing industriously. Coombes, having

somewhat recovered his breath, essayed speech.

“Is it something big?” he asked.

“Sure,” snapped Kerry. “Do they send _me_ to stop dog-fights?”

Knowing the man and recognizing the mood, Coombes became silent, and

this silence he did not break all the way to Vine Street. At the

station:

“Wait,” said Chief Inspector Kerry, and went swinging in, carrying his

overall and having the malacca cane tucked under his arm.

A few minutes later he came out again and reentered the cab.

“Piccadilly corner of Old Bond Street,” he directed the man.

“Is it burglary?” asked Detective-Sergeant Coombes with interest.

“No,” said Kerry. “It’s murder; and there seems to be stacks of

evidence. Sharpen your pencil.”

“Oh!” murmured Coombes.

They were almost immediately at their destination, and Chief Inspector

Kerry, dismissing the cabman, set off along Bond Street with his lithe,

swinging gait, looking all about him intently. Rain had ceased, but the

air was damp and chilly, and few pedestrians were to be seen.

A car was standing before Kazmah’s premises, the chauffeur walking up

and down on the pavement and flapping his hands across his chest in

order to restore circulation. The Chief Inspector stopped, “Hi, my

man!” he said.

The chauffeur stood still.

“Whose car?”

“Mr. Monte Irvin’s.”

Kerry turned on his heel and stepped to the office door. It was ajar,

and Kerry, taking an electric torch from his overall pocket, flashed

the light upon the name-plate. He stood for a moment, chewing and

looking up the darkened stairs. Then, torch in hand he ascended.

Kazmah’s door was closed, and the Chief Inspector rapped loudly. It was

opened at once by Sergeant Burton, and Kerry entered, followed by

Coombes.

The room at first sight seemed to be extremely crowded. Monte Irvin,

very pale and haggard, sat upon the divan beside Quentin Gray. Seton

was standing near the cabinet, smoking. These three had evidently been

conversing at the time of the detective’s arrival with an

alert-looking, clean-shaven man whose bag, umbrella, and silk hat stood

upon one of the little inlaid tables. Just inside the second door were

Brisley and Gunn, both palpably ill at ease, and glancing at Inspector

Whiteleaf, who had been interrogating them.

Kerry chewed silently for a moment, bestowing a fierce stare upon each

face in turn, then:

“Who’s in charge?” he snapped.

“I am,” replied Whiteleaf.

“Why is the lower door open?”

“I thought—”

“Don’t think. Shut the door. Post your Sergeant inside. No one is to go

out. Grab anybody who comes in. Where’s the body?”

“This way,” said Inspector Whiteleaf hurriedly; then, over his

shoulder: “Go down to the door, Burton.”

He led Kerry towards the inner room, Coombes at his heels. Brisley and

Gunn stood aside to give them passage; Gray and Monte Irvin prepared to

follow. At the doorway Kerry turned.

“You will all be good enough to stay where you are,” he said. He

directed the aggressive stare in Seton’s direction. “And if the

gentleman smoking a cheroot is not satisfied that he has quite

destroyed any clue perceptible by the sense of smell I should be glad

to send out for some fireworks.”

He tossed his oilskin and his cane on the divan and went into the room

of seance, savagely biting at a piece of apparently indestructible

chewing-gum.

The torn green curtain had been laid aside and the electric lights

turned on in the inside rooms. Pallid, Sir Lucien Pyne lay by the ebony

chair glaring horribly upward.

Always with the keen eyes glancing this way and that, Inspector Kerry

crossed the little audience room and entered the enclosure contained

between the two screens. By the side of the dead man he stood, looking

down silently. Then he dropped upon one knee and peered closely into

the white face. He looked up.

“He has not been moved?”

“No.”

Kerry bent yet lower, staring closely at a discolored abrasion on Sir

Lucien’s forehead. His glance wandered from thence to the carved ebony

chair. Still kneeling, he drew from his waistcoat pocket a powerful

lens contained in a washleather bag. He began to examine the back and

sides of the chair. Once he laid his finger lightly on a protruding

point of the carving, and then scrutinised his finger through the

glass. He examined the dead man’s hands, his nails, his garments. Then

he crawled about, peering closely at the carpet.

He stood up suddenly. “The doctor,” he snapped.

Inspector Whiteleaf retired, but returned immediately with the

clean-shaven man to whom Monte Irvin had been talking when Kerry

arrived.

“Good evening, doctor,” said Kerry. “Do I know your name? Start your

notes, Coombes.”

“My name is Dr. Wilbur Weston, and I live in Albemarle Street.”

“Who called you?”

“Inspector Whiteleaf telephoned to me about half an hour ago.”

“You examined the dead man?”

“I did.”

“You avoided moving him?”

“It was unnecessary to move him. He was dead, and the wound was in the

left shoulder. I pulled his coat open and unbuttoned his shirt. That

was all.”

“How long dead?”

“I should say he had been dead not more than an hour when I saw him.”

“What had caused death?”

“The stab of some long, narrow-bladed weapon, such as a stiletto.”

“Why a stiletto?” Kerry’s fierce eyes challenged him. “Did you ever see

a wound made by a stiletto?”

“Several—in Italy, and one at Saffron Hill. They are characterised by

very little external bleeding.”

“Right, doctor. It had reached his heart?”

“Yes. The blow was delivered from behind.”

“How do you know?”

“The direction of the wound is forward. I have seen an almost identical

wound in the case of an Italian woman stabbed by a jealous rival.”

“He would fall on his back.”

“Oh, no. He would fall on his face, almost certainly.”

“But he lies on his back.”

“In my opinion he had been moved.”

“Right. I know he had. Good night, doctor. See him out, Inspector.”

Dr. Weston seemed rather startled by this abrupt dismissal, but the

steel-blue eyes of Inspector Kerry were already bent again upon the

dead man, and, murmuring “good night,” the doctor took his departure,

followed by Whiteleaf.

“Shut this door,” snapped Kerry after the Inspector. “I will call when

I want you. You stay, Coombes. Got it all down?”

Sergeant Coombes scratched his head with the end of a pencil, and:

“Yes,” he said, with hesitancy. “That is, except the word after

‘narrow-bladed weapon such as a’ I’ve got what looks like

‘steelhatto.’”

Kerry glared.

“Try taking the cotton-wool out of your ears,” he suggested. “The word

was stiletto, s-t-i-l-e-t-t-o—stiletto.”

“Oh,” said Coombes, “thanks.”

Silence fell between the two men from Scotland Yard. Kerry stood

awhile, chewing and staring at the ghastly face of Sir Lucien. Then:

“Go through all pockets,” he directed.

Sergeant Coombes placed his notebook and pencil upon the seat of the

chair and set to work. Kerry entered the inside room or office. It

contained a writing-table (upon which was a telephone and a pile of old

newspapers), a cabinet, and two chairs. Upon one of the chairs lay a

crush-hat, a cane, and an overcoat. He glanced at some of the

newspapers, then opened the drawers of the writing-table. They were

empty. The cabinet proved to be locked, and a door which he saw must

open upon a narrow passage running beside the suite of rooms was locked

also. There was nothing in the pockets of the overcoat, but inside the

hat he found pasted the initials L. P. He rolled chewing-gum, stared

reflectively at the little window immediately above the table, through

which a glimpse might be obtained of the ebony chair, and went out

again.

“Nothing,” reported Coombes.

“What do you mean—nothing?”

“His pockets are empty!”

“All of them?”

“Every one.”

“Good,” said Kerry. “Make a note of it. He wears a real pearl stud and

a good signet ring; also a gold wrist watch, face broken and hands

stopped at seven-fifteen. That was the time he died. He was stabbed

from behind as he stood where I’m standing now, fell forward, struck

his head on the leg of the chair, and lay face downwards.”

“I’ve got that,” muttered Coombes. “What stopped the watch?”

“Broken as he fell. There are tiny fragments of glass stuck in the

carpet, showing the exact position in which his body originally lay;

and for God’s sake stop smiling.”

Kerry threw open the door.

“Who first found the body?” he demanded of the silent company.

“I did,” cried Quentin Gray, coming forward. “I and Seton Pasha.”

“Seton Pasha!” Kerry’s teeth snapped together, so that he seemed to

bite off the words. “I don’t see a Turk present.”

Seton smiled quietly.

“My friend uses a title which was conferred upon me some years ago by

the ex-Khedive,” he said. “My name is Greville Seton.”

Inspector Kerry glanced back across his shoulder.

“Notes,” he said. “Unlock your ears, Coombes.” He looked at Gray. “What

is your name?”

“Quentin Gray.”

“Who are you, and in what way are you concerned in this case?”

“I am the son of Lord Wrexborough, and I—”

He paused, glancing helplessly at Seton. He had recognized that the

first mention of Rita Irvin’s name in the police evidence must be made

by himself.

“Speak up, sir,” snapped Kerry. “Sergeant Coombes is deaf.”

Gray’s face flushed, and his eyes gleamed angrily.

“I should be glad, Inspector,” he said, “if you would remember that the

dead man was a personal acquaintance and that other friends are

concerned in this ghastly affair.”

“Coombes will remember it,” replied Kerry frigidly. “He’s taking

notes.”

“Look here—” began Gray.

Seton laid his hand upon the angry man’s shoulder.

“Pull up, Gray,” he said quietly. “Pull up, old chap.” He turned his

cool regard upon Chief Inspector Kerry, twirling the cord of his

monocle about one finger. “I may remark, Inspector Kerry—for I

understand this to be your name—that your conduct of the inquiry is not

always characterised by the best possible taste.”

Kerry rolled chewing-gum, meeting Seton’s gaze with a stare intolerant

and aggressive. He imparted that odd writhing movement to his

shoulders.

“For my conduct I am responsible to the Commissioner,” he replied. “And

if he’s not satisfied the Commissioner can have my written resignation

at any hour in the twenty-four that he’s short of a pipe-lighter. If it

would not inconvenience you to keep quiet for two minutes I will

continue my examination of this witness.”

CHAPTER VII.

FURTHER EVIDENCE

The examination of Quentin Gray was three times interrupted by

telephone messages from Vine Street; and to the unsatisfactory

character of these the growing irascibility of Chief Inspector Kerry

bore testimony. Then the divisional surgeon arrived, and Burton

incurred the wrath of the Chief Inspector by deserting his post to show

the doctor upstairs.

“If inspired idiocy can help the law,” shouted Kerry, “the man who did

this job is as good as dead!” He turned his fierce gaze in Gray’s

direction. “Thank you, sir. I need trouble you no further.”

“Do you wish me to remain?”

“No. Inspector Whiteleaf, see these two gentlemen past the Sergeant on

duty.”

“But damn it all!” cried Gray, his pent-up emotions at last demanding

an outlet, “I won’t submit to your infernal dragooning! Do you realize

that while you’re standing here, doing nothing—absolutely nothing—an

unhappy woman is—”

“I realize,” snapped Kerry, showing his teeth in canine fashion, “that

if you’re not outside in ten seconds there’s going to be a cloud of

dust on the stairs!”

White with passion, Gray was on the point of uttering other angry and

provocative words when Seton took his arm in a firm grip. “Gray!” he

said sharply. “You leave with me now or I leave alone.”

The two walked from the room, followed by Whiteleaf. As they

disappeared:

“Read out all the _times_ mentioned in the last witness’s evidence,”

directed Kerry, undisturbed by the rencontre.

Sergeant Coombes smiled rather uneasily, consulting his notebook.

“‘At about half-past six I drove to Bond Street,’” he began.

“I said the _times_,” rapped Kerry. “I know to what they refer. Just

give me the times as mentioned.”

“Oh,” murmured Coombes, “Yes. ‘About half-past six.’” He ran his finger

down the page. “‘A quarter to seven.’ ‘Seven o’clock.’ ‘Twenty-five

minutes past seven.’ ‘Eight o’clock.’”

“Stop!” said Kerry. “That’s enough.” He fixed a baleful glance upon

Gunn, who from a point of the room discreetly distant from the terrible

red man was watching with watery eyes. “Who’s the smart in all the

overcoats?” he demanded.

“My name is James Gunn,” replied this greatly insulted man in a husky

voice.

“Who are you? What are you? What are you doing here?”

“I’m employed by Spinker’s Agency, and—”

“Oh!” shouted Kerry, moving his shoulders. He approached the speaker

and glared menacingly into his purple face. “Ho, ho! So you’re one of

the queer birds out of that roost, are you? Spinker’s Agency! Ah, yes!”

He fixed his gaze now upon the pale features of Brisley. “I’ve seen you

before, haven’t I?”

“Yes, Chief Inspector,” said Brisley, licking his lips. “Hayward’s

Heath. We have been retained by—”

“_You_ have been retained!” shouted Kerry. “_You_ have!”

He twisted round upon his heel, facing Monte Irvin. Angry words

trembled on his tongue. But at sight of the broken man who sat there

alone, haggard, a subtle change of expression crept into his fierce

eyes, and when he spoke again the high-pitched voice was almost gentle.

“You had employed these men, sir, to watch—”

He paused, glancing towards Whiteleaf, who had just entered again, and

then in the direction of the inner room where the divisional surgeon

was at work.

“To watch my wife, Inspector. Thank you, but all the world will know

tomorrow. I might as well get used to it.”

Monte Irvin’s pallor grew positively alarming. He swayed suddenly and

extended his hands in a significant groping fashion. Kerry sprang

forward and supported him.

“All right, Inspector—all right,” muttered Irvin. “Thank you. It has

been a great shock. At first I feared—”

“You thought your wife had been attacked, I understand? Well—it’s not

so bad as that, sir. I am going to walk downstairs to the car with

you.”

“But there is so much you will want to know—”

“It can keep until tomorrow. I’ve enough work in this peep-show here to

have me busy all night. Come along. Lean on my arm.”

Monte Irvin rose unsteadily. He knew that there was cardiac trouble in

his family, but he had never realized before the meaning of his

heritage. He felt physically ill.

“Inspector”—his voice was a mere whisper—“have you any theory to

explain—”

“Mrs. Irvin’s disappearance? Don’t worry, sir. Without exactly having a

theory I think I may say that in my opinion she will turn up

presently.”

“God bless you,” murmured Irvin, as Kerry assisted him out on to the

landing.

Inspector Whiteleaf held back the sliding door, the mechanism of which

had been broken so that the door now automatically remained half

closed.

“Funny, isn’t it,” said Gunn, as the two disappeared and Inspector

Whiteleaf re-entered, “that a man should be so upset about the

disappearance of a woman he was going to divorce?”

“Damn funny!” said Whiteleaf, whose temper was badly frayed by contact

with Kerry. “I should have a good laugh if I were you.”

He crossed the room, going in to where the surgeon was examining the

victim of this mysterious crime. Gunn stared after him dismally.

“A person doesn’t get much sympathy from the police, Brisley,” he

declared. “That one’s almost as bad as _him_,” jerking his thumb in the

direction of the landing.

Brisley smiled in a somewhat sickly manner.

“Red Kerry is a holy terror,” he agreed, _sotto voce_, glancing aside

to where Coombes was checking his notes. “Look out! Here he comes.”

“Now,” cried Kerry, swinging into the room, “what’s the game? Plotting

to defeat the ends of justice?”

He stood with hands thrust in reefer pockets, feet wide apart, glancing

fiercely from Brisley to Gunn, and from Gunn back again to Brisley.

Neither of the representatives of Spinker’s Agency ventured any remark,

and:

“How long have you been watching Mrs. Monte Irvin?” demanded Kerry.

“Nearly a fortnight,” replied Brisley.

“Got your evidence in writing?”

“Yes.”

“Up to tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Dictate to Sergeant Coombes.”

He turned on his heel and crossed to the divan upon which his oilskin

overall was lying. Rapidly he removed his reefer and his waistcoat,

folded them, and placed them neatly beside his overall. He retained his

bowler at its jaunty angle.

A cud of presumably flavorless chewing-gum he deposited in a brass

bowl, and from a little packet which he had taken out of his jacket

pocket he drew a fresh piece, redolent of mint. This he put into his

mouth, and returned the packet to its resting-place. A slim, trim

figure, he stood looking round him reflectively.

“Now,” he muttered, “what about it?”

CHAPTER VIII.

KERRY CONSULTS THE ORACLE

The clock of Brixton Town Hall was striking the hour of 1 a.m. as Chief

Inspector Kerry inserted his key in the lock of the door of his house

in Spenser Road.

A light was burning in the hallway, and from the little dining-room on

the left the reflection of a cheerful fire danced upon the white paint

of the half-open door. Kerry deposited his hat, cane, and overall upon

the rack, and moving very quietly entered the room and turned on the

light. A modestly furnished and scrupulously neat apartment was

revealed. On the sheepskin rug before the fire a Manx cat was dozing

beside a pair of carpet slippers. On the table some kind of cold repast

was laid, the viands concealed under china covers. At a large bottle of

Guinness’s Extra Stout Kerry looked with particular appreciation.

He heaved a long sigh of contentment, and opened the bottle of stout.

Having poured out a glass of the black and foaming liquid and satisfied

an evidently urgent thirst, he explored beneath the covers, and

presently was seated before a spread of ham and tongue, tomatoes, and

bread and butter.

A door opened somewhere upstairs, and:

“Is that yoursel’, Dan?” inquired a deep but musical female voice.

“Sure it is,” replied Kerry; and no one who had heard the high official

tones of the imperious Chief Inspector would have supposed that they

could be so softened and modulated. “You should have been asleep hours

ago, Mary.”

“Have ye to go out again?”

“I have, bad luck; but don’t trouble to come down. I’ve all I want and

more.”

“If ’tis a new case I’ll come down.”

“It’s the devil’s own case; but you’ll get your death of cold.”

Sounds of movement in the room above followed, and presently footsteps

on the stairs. Mrs. Kerry, enveloped in a woollen dressing-gown, which

obviously belonged to the Inspector, came into the room. Upon her Kerry

directed a look from which all fierceness had been effaced, and which

expressed only an undying admiration. And, indeed, Mary Kerry was in

many respects a remarkable character. Half an inch taller than Kerry,

she fully merited the compliment designed by that trite apothegm, “a

fine woman.” Large-boned but shapely, as she came in with her long dark

hair neatly plaited, it seemed to her husband—who had remained her

lover—that he saw before him the rosy-cheeked lass whom ten years

before he had met and claimed on the chilly shores of Loch Broom. By

all her neighbors Mrs. Kerry was looked upon as a proud, reserved

person, who had held herself much aloof since her husband had become

Chief Inspector; and the reputation enjoyed by Red Kerry was that of an

aggressive and uncompanionable man. Now here was a lover’s meeting, not

lacking the shy, downward glance of dark eyes as steel-blue eyes

flashed frank admiration.

Kerry, who quarrelled with everybody except the Assistant Commissioner,

had only found one cause of quarrel with Mary. He was a devout Roman

Catholic, and for five years he had clung with the bull-dog tenacity

which was his to the belief that he could convert his wife to the faith

of Rome. She remained true to the Scottish Free Church, in whose

precepts she had been reared, and at the end of the five years Kerry

gave it up and admired her all the more for her Caledonian strength of

mind. Many and heated were the debates he had held with worthy Father

O’Callaghan respecting the validity of a marriage not solemnized by a

priest, but of late years he had grown reconciled to the parting of the

ways on Sunday morning; and as the early mass was over before the

Scottish service he was regularly to be seen outside a certain

Presbyterian chapel waiting for his heretical spouse.

He pulled her down on to his knee and kissed her.

“It’s twelve hours since I saw you,” he said.

She rested her arm on the back of the saddle-back chair, and her dark

head close beside Kerry’s fiery red one.

“I kenned ye had a new case on,” she said, “when it grew so late. How

long can ye stay?”

“An hour. No more. There’s a lot to do before the papers come out in

the morning. By breakfast time all England, including the murderer,

will know I’m in charge of the case. I wish I could muzzle the Press.”

“’Tis a murder, then? The Lord gi’e us grace. Ye’ll be wishin’ to tell

me?”

“Yes. I’m stumped!”

“Ye’ve time for a rest an’ a smoke. Put ye’re slippers on.”

“I’ve no time for that, Mary.”

She stood up and took the slippers from the hearth.

“Put ye’re slippers on,” she repeated firmly.

Kerry stooped without another word and began to unlace his brogues.

Meanwhile from a side-table his wife brought a silver tobacco-box and a

stumpy Irish clay. The slippers substituted for his shoes, Kerry

lovingly filled the cracked and blackened bowl with strong Irish twist,

which he first teased carefully in his palm. The bowl rested almost

under his nostrils when he put the pipe in his mouth, and how he

contrived to light it without burning his moustache was not readily

apparent. He succeeded, however, and soon was puffing clouds of pungent

smoke into the air with the utmost contentment.

“Now,” said his wife, seating herself upon the arm of the chair, “tell

me, Dan.”

Thereupon began a procedure identical to that which had characterized

the outset of every successful case of the Chief Inspector. He rapidly

outlined the complexities of the affair in old Bond Street, and Mary

Kerry surveyed the problem with a curious and almost fey detachment of

mind, which enabled her to see light where all was darkness to the man

on the spot. With the clarity of a trained observer Kerry described the

apartments of Kazmah, the exact place where the murdered man had been

found, and the construction of the rooms. He gave the essential points

from the evidence of the several witnesses, quoting the exact times at

which various episodes had taken place. Mary Kerry, looking straightly

before her with unseeing eyes, listened in silence until he ceased

speaking; then:

“There are really but twa rooms,” she said, in a faraway voice, “but

the second o’ these is parteetioned into three parts?”

“That’s it.”

“A door free the landing opens upon the fairst room, a door free a

passage opens upon the second. Where does yon passage lead?”

“From the main stair along beside Kazmah’s rooms to a small back stair.

This back stair goes from top to bottom of the building, from the end

of the same hallway as the main stair.”

“There is na either way out but by the front door?”

“No.”

“Then if the evidence o’ the Spinker man is above suspeecion, Mrs.

Irvin and this Kazmah were still on the premises when ye arrived?”

“Exactly. I gathered that much at Vine Street before I went on to Bond

Street. The whole block was surrounded five minutes after my arrival,

and it still is.”

“What ither offices are in this passage?”

“None. It’s a blank wall on the left, and one door on the right—the one

opening into the Kazmah office. There are other premises on the same

floor, but they are across the landing.”

“What premises?”

“A solicitor and a commission agent.”

“The floor below?”

“It’s all occupied by a modiste, Renan.”

“The top floor?”

“Cubanis Cigarette Company, a servants’ and an electrician.”

“Nae more?”

“No more.”

“Where does yon back stair open on the topmaist floor?”

“In a corridor similar to that alongside Kazmah’s. It has two windows

on the right overlooking a narrow roof and the top of the arcade, and

on the left is the Cubanis Cigarette Company. The other offices are

across the landing.”

Mary Kerry stared into space awhile.

“Kazmah and Mrs. Irvin could ha’ come down to the fairst floor, or gene

up to the thaird floor unseen by the Spinker man,” she said dreamily.

“But they couldn’t have reached the street, my dear!” cried Kerry.

“No—they couldn’a ha’ gained the street.”

She became silent again, her husband watching her expectantly. Then:

“If puir Sir Lucien Pyne was killed at a quarter after seven—the time

his watch was broken—the native sairvent did no’ kill him. Frae the

Spinker’s evidence the black man went awe’ before then,” she said.

“Mrs. Irvin?”

Kerry shook his head.

“From all accounts a slip of a woman,” he replied. “It was a strong

hand that struck the blow.”

“Kazmah?”

“Probably.”

“Mr. Quentin Gray came back wi’ a cab and went upstairs, free the

Spinker’s evidence, at aboot a quarter after seven, and came doon five

meenites later sair pale an’ fretful.”

Kerry surrounded himself and the speaker with wreaths of stifling

smoke.

“We have only the bare word of Mr. Gray that he didn’t go in again,

Mary; but I believe him. He’s a hot-headed fool, but square.”

“Then ’twas yon Kazmah,” announced Mrs. Kerry. “Who is Kazmah?”

Her husband laughed shortly.

“That’s the point at which I got stumped,” he replied. “We’ve heard of

him at the Yard, of course, and we know that under the cloak of a

dealer in Eastern perfumes he carried on a fortune-telling business. He

managed to avoid prosecution, though. It took me over an hour tonight

to explore the thought-reading mechanism; it’s a sort of Maskelyne’s

Mysteries worked from the inside room. But who Kazmah is or what’s his

nationality I know no more than the man in the moon.”

“Pairfume?” queried the far-away voice.

“Yes, Mary. The first room is a sort of miniature scent bazaar. There

are funny little imitation antique flasks of Kazmah preparations,

creams, perfumes and incense, also small square wooden boxes of a kind

of Turkish delight, and a stock of Egyptian mummy-beads, statuettes,

and the like, which may be genuine for all I know.”

“Nae books or letters?”

“Not a thing, except his own advertisements, a telephone directory, and

so on.”

“The inside office bureau?”

“Empty as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard!”

“The place was ransacked by the same folk that emptied the dead man’s

pockets so as tee leave nae clue,” pronounced the sibyl-like voice.

“Mr. Gray said he had choc’lates wi’ him. Where did he leave them?”

“Mary, you’re a wonder!” exclaimed the admiring Kerry. “The box was

lying on the divan in the first room where he said he had left it on

going out for a cab.”

“Does nane o’ the evidence show if Mrs. Irvin had been to Kazmah’s

before?”

“Yes. She went there fairly regularly to buy perfume.”

“No’ for the fortune-tellin’?”

“No. According to Mr. Gray, to buy perfume.”

“Had Mr. Gray been there wi’ her before?”

“No. Sir Lucien Pyne seems to have been her pretty constant companion.”

“Do ye suspect she was his lady-love?”

“I believe Mr. Gray suspects something of the kind.”

“And Mr. Gray?”

“He is not such an old friend as Sir Lucien was. But I fancy

nevertheless it was Mr. Gray that her husband doubted.”

“Do ye suspect the puir soul had cause, Dan?”

“No,” replied Kerry promptly; “I don’t. The boy is mad about her, but I

fancy she just liked his company. He’s the heir of Lord Wrexborough,

and Mrs. Irvin used to be a stage beauty. It’s a usual state of

affairs, and more often than not means nothing.”

“I dinna ken sich folk,” declared Mary Kerry. “They a’most desairve all

they get. They are bound tee come tee nae guid end. Where did ye say

Sir Lucien lived?”

“Albemarle Street; just round the corner.”

“Ye told me that he only kepit twa sairvents: a cook, hoosekeper, who

lived awe’, an’ a man—a foreigner?”

“A kind of half-baked Dago, named Juan Mareno. A citizen of the United

States according to his own account.”

“Ye dinna like Juan Mareno?”

“He’s a hateful swine!” flashed Kerry, with sudden venom. “I’m watching

Mareno very closely. Coombes is at work upon Sir Lucien’s papers. His

life was a bit of a mystery. He seems to have had no relations living,

and I can’t find that he even employed a solicitor.”

“Ye’ll be sairchin’ for yon Egyptian?”

“The servant? Yes. We’ll have him by the morning, and then we shall

know who Kazmah is. Meanwhile, in which of the offices is Kazmah

hiding?”

Mary Kerry was silent for so long that her husband repeated the

question:

“In which of the offices is Kazmah hiding?”

“In nane,” she said dreamily. “Ye surrounded the buildings too late, I

ken.”

“Eh!” cried Kerry, turning his head excitedly. “But the man Brisley was

at the door all night!”

“It doesna’ matter. They have escapit.”

Kerry scratched his close-cropped head in angry perplexity.

“You’re always right, Mary,” he said. “But hang me if—Never mind! When

we get the servant we’ll soon get Kazmah.”

“Aye,” murmured his wife. “If ye hae na’ got Kazmah the now.”

“But—Mary! This isn’t helping me! It’s mystifying me deeper than ever!”

“It’s no’ clear eno’, Dan. But for sure behind this mystery o’ the

death o’ Sir Lucien there’s a darker mystery still; sair dark. ’Tis the

biggest case ye ever had. Dinna look for Kazmah. Look tee find why the

woman went tee him; and try tee find the meanin’ o’ the sma’ window

behind the big chair.... Yes”—she seemed to be staring at some distant

visible object—“watch the man Mareno—”

“But—Mrs. Irvin—”

“Is in God’s guid keepin’—”

“You don’t think she’s dead!”

“She is wairse than dead. Her sins have found her out.” The fey light

suddenly left her eyes, and they became filled with tears. She turned

impulsively to her husband. “Oh, Dan! Ye must find her! Ye must find

her! Puir weak hairt—dinna ye ken how she is suffering!”

“My dear,” he said, putting his arms around her, “What is it? What is

it?”

She brushed the tears from her eyes and tried to smile. “’Tis something

like the second sight, Dan,” she answered simply. “And it’s escapit me

again. I a’most had the clue to it a’ oh, there’s some horrible

wickedness in it, an’ cruelty an’ shame.”

The clock on the mantel shelf began to peal. Kerry was watching his

wife’s rosy face with a mixture of loving admiration and wonder. She

looked so very bonny and placid and capable that he was puzzled anew at

the strange gift which she seemingly inherited from her mother, who had

been equally shrewd, equally comely and similarly endowed.

“God bless us all!” he said, kissed her heartily, and stood up. “Back

to bed you go, my dear. I must be off. There’s Mr. Irvin to see in the

morning, too.”

A few minutes later he was swinging through the deserted streets, his

mind wholly occupied with lover-like reflections to the exclusion of

those professional matters which properly should have been engaging his

attention. As he passed the end of a narrow court near the railway

station, the gleam of his silver mounted malacca attracted the

attention of a couple of loafers who were leaning one on either side of

an iron pillar in the shadow of the unsavory alley. Not another

pedestrian was in sight, and only the remote night-sounds of London

broke the silence.

Twenty paces beyond, the footpads silently closed in upon their prey.

The taller of the pair reached him first, only to receive a back-handed

blow full in his face which sent him reeling a couple of yards.

Round leapt the assaulted man to face his second assailant.

“If you two smarts really want handling,” he rapped ferociously, “say

the word, and I’ll bash you flat.”

As he turned, the light of a neighboring lamp shone down upon the

savage face, and a smothered yell came from the shorter ruffian:

“Blimey, Bill! It’s _Red Kerry!_”

Whereupon, as men pursued by devils, the pair made off like the wind!

Kerry glared after the retreating figures for a moment, and a grin of

fierce satisfaction revealed his gleaming teeth. He turned again and

swung on his way toward the main road. The incident had done him good.

It had banished domestic matters from his mind, and he was become again

the highly trained champion of justice, standing, an unseen buckler,

between society and the criminal.

CHAPTER IX.

A PACKET OF CIGARETTES

Following their dismissal by Chief Inspector Kerry, Seton and Gray

walked around to the latter’s chambers in Piccadilly. They proceeded in

silence, Gray too angry for speech, and Seton busy with reflections. As

the man admitted them:

“Has anyone ’phoned, Willis?” asked Gray.

“No one, sir.”

They entered a large room which combined the characteristics of a

library with those of a military gymnasium. Gray went to a side table

and mixed drinks. Placing a glass before Seton, he emptied his own at a

draught.

“If you’ll excuse me for a moment,” he said, “I should like to ring up

and see if by any possible chance there’s news of Rita.”

He walked out to the telephone, and Seton heard him making a call.

Then:

“Hullo! Is that you, Hinkes?” he asked.... “Yes, speaking. Is Mrs.

Irvin at home?”

A few moments of silence followed, and:

“Thanks! Good-bye,” said Gray.

He rejoined his friend.

“Nothing,” he reported, and made a gesture of angry resignation.

“Evidently Hinkes is still unaware of what has happened. Irvin hasn’t

returned yet. Seton, this business is driving me mad.”

He refilled his glass, and having looked in his cigarette-case, began

to ransack a small cupboard.

“Damn it all!” he exclaimed. “I haven’t got a cigarette in the place!”

“I don’t smoke them myself,” said Seton, “but I can offer you a

cheroot.”

“Thanks. They are a trifle too strong. Hullo! here are some.”

From the back of a shelf he produced a small, plain brown packet, and

took out of it a cigarette at which he stared oddly. Seton, smoking one

of the inevitable cheroots, watched him, tapping his teeth with the rim

of his eyeglass.

“Poor old Pyne!” muttered Gray, and, looking up, met the inquiring

glance. “Pyne left these here only the other day,” he explained

awkwardly. “I don’t know where he got them, but they are something very

special. I suppose I might as well.”

He lighted one, and, uttering a weary sigh, threw himself into a deep

leather-covered arm-chair. Almost immediately he was up again. The

telephone bell had rung. His eyes alight with hope, he ran out, leaving

the door open so that his conversation was again audible to the

visitor.

“Yes, yes, speaking. What?” His tone changed “Oh, it’s you, Margaret.

What?... Certainly, delighted. No, there’s nobody here but old Seton

Pasha. What? You’ve heard the fellows talk about him who were out

East.... Yes, that’s the chap.... Come right along.”

“You don’t propose to lionise me, I hope, Gray?” said Seton, as Gray

returned to his seat.

The other laughed.

“I forgot you could hear me,” he admitted. “It’s my cousin, Margaret

Halley. You’ll like her. She’s a tip-top girl, but eccentric. Goes in

for pilling.”

“Pilling?” inquired Seton gravely.

“Doctoring. She’s an M.R.C.S., and only about twenty-four or so.

Fearfully clever kid; makes me feel an infant.”

“Flat heels, spectacles, and a judicial manner?”

“Flat heels, yes. But not the other. She’s awfully pretty, and used to

look simply terrific in khaki. She was an M.O. in Serbia, you know, and

afterwards at some nurses’ hospital in Kent. She’s started in practice

for herself now round in Dover Street. I wonder what she wants.”

Silence fell between them; for, although prompted by different reasons,

both were undesirous of discussing the tragedy; and this silence

prevailed until the ringing of the doorbell announced the arrival of

the girl. Willis opening the door, she entered composedly, and Gray

introduced Seton.

“I am so glad to have met you at last, Mr. Seton,” she said laughingly.

“From Quentin’s many accounts I had formed the opinion that you were a

kind of _Arabian Nights_ myth.”

“I am glad to disappoint you,” replied Seton, finding something very

refreshing in the company of this pretty girl, who wore a creased

Burberry, and stray locks of whose abundant bright hair floated about

her face in the most careless fashion imaginable.

She turned to her cousin, frowning in a rather puzzled way.

“Whatever have you been burning here?” she asked. “There is such a

curious smell in the room.”

Gray laughed more heartily than he had laughed that night, glancing in

Seton’s direction.

“So much for your taste in cigars!” he cried

“Oh!” said Margaret, “I’m sure it’s not Mr. Seton’s cigar. It isn’t a

smell of tobacco.”

“I don’t believe they’re _made_ of tobacco!” cried Gray, laughing

louder yet, although his merriment was forced.

Seton smiled good-naturedly at the joke, but he had perceived at the

moment of Margaret’s entrance the fact that her gaiety also was

assumed. Serious business had dictated her visit, and he wondered the

more to note how deeply this odor, real or fancied, seemed to intrigue

her.

She sat down in the chair which Gray placed by the fireside, and her

cousin unceremoniously slid the brown packet of cigarettes across the

little table in her direction.

“Try one of these, Margaret,” he said. “They are great, and will quite

drown the unpleasant odor of which you complain.”

Whereupon the observant Seton saw a quick change take place in the

girl’s expression. She had the same clear coloring as her cousin, and

now this freshness deserted her cheeks, and her pretty face became

quite pale. She was staring at the brown packet. “Where did you get

them?” she asked quietly.

A smile faded from Gray’s lips. Those five words had translated him in

spirit to that green-draped room in which Sir Lucien Pyne was lying

dead. He glanced at Seton in the appealing way which sometimes made him

appear so boyish.

“Er—from Pyne,” he replied. “I must tell you, Margaret—”

“Sir Lucien Pyne?” she interrupted.

“Yes.”

“Not from Rita Irvin?”

Quentin Gray started upright in his chair.

“No! But why do you mention her?”

Margaret bit her lip in sudden perplexity.

“Oh, I don’t know.” She glanced apologetically toward Seton. He rose

immediately.

“My dear Miss Halley,” he said, “I perceive, indeed I had perceived all

along, that you have something of a private nature to communicate to

your cousin.”

But Gray stood up, and:

“Seton!... Margaret!” he said, looking from one to the other. “I mean

to say, Margaret, if you’ve anything to tell me about Rita... Have you?

Have you?”

He fixed his gaze eagerly upon her.

“I have—yes.”

Seton prepared to take his leave, but Gray impetuously thrust him back,

immediately turning again to his cousin.

“Perhaps you haven’t heard, Margaret,” he began. “I have heard what has

happened tonight—to Sir Lucien.”

Both men stared at her silently for a moment.

“Seton has been with me all the time,” said Gray. “If he will consent

to stay, with your permission, Margaret, I should like him to do so.”

“Why, certainly,” agreed the girl. “In fact, I shall be glad of his

advice.”

Seton inclined his head, and without another word resumed his seat.

Gray was too excited to sit down again. He stood on the tiger-skin rug

before the fender, watching his cousin and smoking furiously.

“Firstly, then,” continued Margaret, “please throw that cigarette in

the fire, Quentin.”

Gray removed the cigarette from between his lips, and stared at it

dazedly. He looked at the girl, and the clear grey eyes were watching

him with an inscrutable expression.

“Right-o!” he said awkwardly, and tossed the cigarette in the fire.

“You used to smoke like a furnace, Margaret. Is this some new ‘cult’?”

“I still smoke a great deal more than is good for me,” she confessed,

“but I don’t smoke opium.”

The effect of these words upon the two men who listened was curious.

Gray turned an angry glance upon the brown packet lying on the table,

and “Faugh!” he exclaimed, and drawing a handkerchief from his sleeve

began disgustedly to wipe his lips. Seton stared hard at the speaker,

tossed his cheroot into the fire, and taking up the packet withdrew a

cigarette and sniffed at it critically. Margaret watched him.

He tore the wrapping off, and tasted a strand of the tobacco.

“Good heavens!” he whispered. “Gray, these things are doped!”

CHAPTER X.

SIR LUCIEN’S STUDY WINDOW

Old Bond Street presented a gloomy and deserted prospect to Chief

Inspector Kerry as he turned out of Piccadilly and swung along toward

the premises of Kazmah. He glanced at the names on some of the shop

windows as he passed, and wondered if the furriers, jewelers and other

merchants dealing in costly wares properly appreciated the services of

the Metropolitan Police Force. He thought of the peacefully slumbering

tradesmen in their suburban homes, the safety of their stocks wholly

dependent upon the vigilance of that Unsleeping Eye—for to an

unsleeping eye he mentally compared the service of which he was a

member.

A constable stood on duty before the door of the block. Red Kerry was

known by sight and reputation to every member of the force, and the

constable saluted as the celebrated Chief Inspector appeared.

“Anything to report, constable?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What?”

“The ambulance has been for the body, and another gentleman has been.”

Kerry stared at the man.

“Another gentleman? Who the devil’s the other gentleman?”

“I don’t know, sir. He came with Inspector Whiteleaf, and was inside

for nearly an hour.”

“Inspector Whiteleaf is off duty. What time was this?”

“Twelve-thirty, sir.”

Kerry chewed reflectively ere nodding to the man and passing on.

“Another gentleman!” he muttered, entering the hallway. “Why didn’t

Inspector Warley report this? Who the devil—” Deep in thought he walked

upstairs, finding his way by the light of the pocket torch which he

carried. A second constable was on duty at Kazmah’s door. He saluted.

“Anything to report?” rapped Kerry.

“Yes, sir. The body has been removed, and the gentleman with

Inspector—”

“Damn that for a tale! Describe this gentleman.”

“Rather tall, pale, dark, clean-shaven. Wore a fur-collared overcoat,

collar turned up. He was accompanied by Inspector Whiteleaf.”

“H’m. Anything else?”

“Yes. About an hour ago I heard a noise on the next floor—”

“Eh!” snapped Kerry, and shone the light suddenly into the man’s face

so that he blinked furiously.

“Eh? What kind of noise?”

“Very slight. Like something moving.”

“Like _something!_ Like _what_ thing? A cat or an elephant?”

“More like, say, a box or a piece of furniture.”

“And you did—what?”

“I went up to the top landing and listened.”

“What did you hear?”

“Nothing at all.”

Chief Inspector Kerry chewed audibly.

“All quiet?” he snapped.

“Absolutely. But I’m certain I heard something all the same.”

“How long had Inspector Whiteleaf and this dark horse in the fur coat

been gone at the time you heard the noise?”

“About half an hour, sir.”

“Do you think the noise came from the landing or from one of the

offices above?”

“An office I should say. It was very dim.”

Chief Inspector Kerry pushed upon the broken door, and walked into the

rooms of Kazmah. Flashing the ray of his torch on the wall, he found

the switch and snapped up the lights. He removed his overall and tossed

it on a divan with his cane. Then, tilting his bowler further forward,

he thrust his hands into his reefer pockets, and stood staring toward

the door, beyond which lay the room of the murder, in darkness.

“Who is he?” he muttered. “What’s it mean?”

Taking up the torch, he walked through and turned on the lights in the

inner rooms. For a long time he stood staring at the little square

window low down behind the ebony chair, striving to imagine uses for it

as his wife had urged him to do. The globular green lamp in the second

apartment was worked by three switches situated in the inside room, and

he had discovered that in this way the visitor who came to consult

Kazmah was treated to the illusion of a gradually falling darkness.

Then, the door in the first partition being opened, whoever sat in the

ebony chair would become visible by the gradual uncovering of a light

situated above the chair. On this light being covered again the figure

would apparently fade away.

It was ingenious, and, so far, quite clear. But two things badly

puzzled the inquirer; the little window down behind the chair, and the

fact that all the arrangements for raising and lowering the lights were

situated not in the narrow chamber in which Kazmah’s chair stood, and

in which Sir Lucien had been found, but in the room behind it—the room

with which the little window communicated.

The table upon which the telephone rested was set immediately under

this mysterious window, the window was provided with a green blind, and

the switchboard controlling the complicated lighting scheme was also

within reach of anyone seated at the table.

Kerry rolled mint gum from side to side of his mouth, and absently

tried the handle of the door opening out from this interior

room—evidently the office of the establishment—into the corridor. He

knew it to be locked. Turning, he walked through the suite and out on

to the landing, passing the constable and going upstairs to the top

floor, torch in hand.

From the main landing he walked along the narrow corridor until he

stood at the head of the back stairs. The door nearest to him bore the

name: “Cubanis Cigarette Company.” He tried the handle. The door was

locked, as he had anticipated. Kneeling down, he peered into the

keyhole, holding the electric torch close beside his face and chewing

industriously.

Ere long he stood up, descended again, but by the back stair, and stood

staring reflectively at the door communicating with Kazmah’s inner

room. Then walking along the corridor to where the man stood on, the

landing, he went in again to the mysterious apartments, but only to get

his cane and his overall and to turn out the lights.

Five minutes later he was ringing the late Sir Lucien’s door-bell.

A constable admitted him, and he walked straight through into the study

where Coombes, looking very tired but smiling undauntedly, sat at a

littered table studying piles of documents.

“Anything to report?” rapped Kerry.

“The man, Mareno, has gone to bed, and the expert from the Home office

has been—”

Inspector Kerry brought his cane down with a crash upon the table,

whereat Coombes started nervously.

“So that’s it!” he shouted furiously, “an ‘expert from the Home

office’! So that’s the dark horse in the fur coat. Coombes! I’m fed up

to the back teeth with this gun from the Home office! If I’m not to

have entire charge of the case I’ll throw it up. I’ll stand for no

blasted overseer checking my work! Wait till I see the Assistant

Commissioner! What the devil has the job to do with the Home office!”

“Can’t say,” murmured Coombes. “But he’s evidently a big bug from the

way Whiteleaf treated him. He instructed me to stay in the kitchen and

keep an eye on Mareno while he prowled about in here.”

“Instructed you!” cried Kerry, his teeth gleaming and his steel-blue

eyes creating upon Coombes’ mind an impression that they were emitting

sparks. “_Instructed_ you! I’ll ask you a question, Detective-Sergeant

Coombes: Who is in charge of this case?”

“Well, I thought you were.”

“You _thought_ I was?”

“Well, you are.”

“I am? Very well—you were saying—?”

“I was saying that I went into the kitchen—”

“Before that! Something about ‘instructed.’”

Poor Coombes smiled pathetically.

“Look here,” he said, bravely meeting the ferocious glare of his

superior, “as man to man. What could I do?”

“You could stop smiling!” snapped Kerry. “Hell!” He paced several times

up and down the room. “Go ahead, Coombes.”

“Well, there’s nothing much to report. I stayed in the kitchen, and the

man from the Home office was in here alone for about half an hour.”

“Alone?”

“Inspector Whiteleaf stayed in the dining-room.”

“Had he been ‘instructed’ too?”

“I expect so. I think he just came along as a sort of guide.”

“Ah!” muttered Kerry savagely, “a sort of guide! Any idea what the

bogey man did in here?”

“He opened the window. I heard him.”

“That’s funny. It’s exactly what I’m going to do! This smart from

Whitehall hasn’t got a corner in notions yet, Coombes.”

The room was a large and lofty one, and had been used by a former

tenant as a studio. The toplights had been roofed over by Sir Lucien,

however, but the raised platform, approached by two steps, which had

probably been used as a model’s throne, was a permanent fixture of the

apartment. It was backed now by bookcases, except where a blue plush

curtain was draped before a French window.

Kerry drew the curtain back, and threw open the folding leaves of the

window. He found himself looking out upon the leads of Albemarle

Street. No stars and no moon showed through the grey clouds draping the

wintry sky, but a dim and ghostly half-light nevertheless rendered the

ugly expanse visible from where he stood.

On one side loomed a huge tank, to the brink of which a rickety wooden

ladder invited the explorer to ascend. Beyond it were a series of iron

gangways and ladders forming part of the fire emergency arrangements of

the neighboring institution. Straight ahead a section of building

jutted up and revealed two small windows, which seemed to regard him

like watching eyes.

He walked out on to the roof, looking all about him. Beyond the tank

opened a frowning gully—the Arcade connecting Albemarle Street with old

Bond Street; on the other hand, the scheme of fire gangways was

continued. He began to cross the leads, going in the direction of Bond

Street. Coombes watched him from the study. When he came to the more

northerly of the two windows which had attracted his attention, he

knelt down and flashed the ray of his torch through the glass.

A kind of small warehouse was revealed, containing stacks of packages.

Immediately inside the window was a rough wooden table, and on this

table lay a number of smaller packages, apparently containing

cigarettes.

Kerry turned his attention to the fastening of the window. A glance

showed him that it was unlocked. Resting the torch on the leads, he

grasped the sash and gently raised the window, noting that it opened

almost noiselessly. Then, taking up the torch again, he stooped and

stepped in on to the table below.

It moved slightly beneath his weight. One of the legs was shorter than

its fellows. But he reached the floor as quietly as possible, and

instantly snapped off the light of the torch.

A heavy step sounded from outside—someone was mounting the stairs—and a

disk of light suddenly appeared upon the ground-glass panel of the

door.

Kerry stood quite still, chewing steadily.

“Who’s there?” came the voice of the constable posted on Kazmah’s

landing.

The inspector made no reply.

“Is there anyone here?” cried the man.

The disk of light disappeared, and the alert constable could be heard

moving along the corridor to inspect the other offices. But the ray had

shone upon the frosted glass long enough to enable Kerry to read the

words painted there in square black letters. They had appeared

reversed, of course, and had read thus:

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XI.

THE DRUG SYNDICATE

At six-thirty that morning Margaret Halley was aroused by her maid—the

latter but half awake—and sitting up in bed and switching on the lamp,

she looked at the card which the servant had brought to her, and read

the following:

CHIEF INSPECTOR KERRY,

C.I.D.

New Scotland Yard, S.W.I.

“Oh, dear,” she said sleepily, “what an appallingly early visitor. Is

the bath ready yet, Janet?”

“I’m afraid not,” replied the maid, a plain, elderly woman of the

old-fashioned useful servant type. “Shall I take a kettle into the

bathroom?”

“Yes—that will have to do. Tell Inspector Kerry that I shall not be

long.”

Five minutes later Margaret entered her little consulting-room, where

Kerry, having adjusted his tie, was standing before the mirror in the

overmantle, staring at a large photograph of the charming lady doctor

in military uniform. Kerry’s fierce eyes sparkled appreciatively as his

glance rested on the tall figure arrayed in a woollen dressing-gown,

the masculine style of which by no means disguised the beauty of

Margaret’s athletic figure. She had hastily arranged her bright hair

with deliberate neglect of all affectation. She belonged to that

ultra-modern school which scorns to sue masculine admiration, but which

cannot dispense with it nevertheless. She aspired to be assessed upon

an intellectual basis, an ambition which her unfortunate good looks

rendered difficult of achievement.

“Good morning, Inspector,” she said composedly. “I was expecting you.”

“Really, miss?” Kerry stared curiously. “Then you know what I’ve come

about?”

“I think so. Won’t you sit down? I am afraid the room is rather cold.

Is it about—Sir Lucien Pyne?”

“Well,” replied Kerry, “it concerns him certainly. I’ve been in

communication by telephone with Hinkes, Mr. Monte Irvin’s butler, and

from him I learned that you were professionally attending Mrs. Irvin.”

“I was not her regular medical adviser, but—”

Margaret hesitated, glancing rapidly at the Inspector, and then down at

the writing-table before which she was seated. She began to tap the

blotting-pad with an ivory paper-knife. Kerry was watching her

intently.

“Upon your evidence, Miss Halley,” he said rapidly, “may depend the

life of the missing woman.”

“Oh!” cried Margaret, “whatever can have happened to her? I rang up as

late as two o’clock this morning; after that I abandoned hope.”

“There’s something underlying the case that I don’t understand, miss. I

look to you to put me wise.”

She turned to him impulsively.

“I will tell you all I know, Inspector,” she said. “I will be perfectly

frank with you.”

“Good!” rapped Kerry. “Now—you have known Mrs. Monte Irvin for some

time?”

“For about two years.”

“You didn’t know her when she was on the stage?”

“No. I met her at a Red Cross concert at which she sang.”

“Do you think she loved her husband?”

“I know she did.”

“Was there any—prior attachment?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Mr. Quentin Gray?”

Margaret smiled, rather mirthlessly.

“He is my cousin, Inspector, and it was I who introduced him to Rita

Irvin. I sincerely wish I had never done so. He lost his head

completely.”

“There was nothing in Mrs. Irvin’s attitude towards him to justify her

husband’s jealousy?”

“She was always frightfully indiscreet, Inspector, but nothing more.

You see, she is greatly admired, and is used to the company of silly,

adoring men. Her husband doesn’t really understand the ways of these

Bohemian folks. I knew it would lead to trouble sooner or later.”

“Ah!”

Chief Inspector Kerry thrust his hands into the pockets of his jacket.

“Now—Sir Lucien?”

Margaret tapped more rapidly with the paper-knife.

“Sir Lucien belonged to a set of which Rita had been a member during

her stage career. I think—he admired her; in fact, I believe he had

offered her marriage. But she did not care for him in the least—in that

way.”

“Then in what way did she care for him?” rapped Kerry.

“Well—now we are coming to the point.” Momentarily she hesitated, then:

“They were both addicted—”

“Yes?”

“—to drugs.”

“Eh?” Kerry’s eyes grew hard and fierce in a moment. “What drugs?”

“All sorts of drugs. Shortly after I became acquainted with Rita Irvin

I learned that she was a victim of the drug habit, and I tried to cure

her. I regret to say that I failed. At that time she had acquired a

taste for opium.”

Kerry said not a word, and Margaret raised her head and looked at him

pathetically.

“I can see that you have no pity for the victims of this ghastly vice,

Inspector Kerry,” she said.

“I haven’t!” he snapped fiercely. “I admit I haven’t, miss. It’s bad

enough in the heathens, but for an Englishwoman to dope herself is

downright unchristian and beastly.”

“Yet I have come across so many of these cases, during the war and

since, that I have begun to understand how easy, how dreadfully easy it

is, for a woman especially, to fall into the fatal habit. Bereavement

or that most frightful of all mental agonies, suspense, will too often

lead the poor victim into the path that promises forgetfulness. Rita

Irvin’s case is less excusable. I think she must have begun drug-taking

because of the mental and nervous exhaustion resulting from late hours

and over-much gaiety. The demands of her profession proved too great

for her impaired nervous energy, and she sought some stimulant which

would enable her to appear bright on the stage when actually she should

have been recuperating, in sleep, that loss of vital force which can be

recuperated in no other way.”

“But _opium!_” snapped Kerry.

“I am afraid her other drug habits had impaired her will, and shaken

her self-control. She was tempted to try opium by its promise of a new

and novel excitement.”

“Her husband, I take it, was ignorant of all this?”

“I believe he was. Quentin—Mr. Gray—had no idea of it either.”

“Then it was Sir Lucien Pyne who was in her confidence in the matter?”

Margaret nodded slowly, still tapping the blotting-pad.

“He used to accompany her to places where drugs could be obtained, and

on several occasions—I cannot say how many—I believe he went with her

to some den in Chinatown. It may have been due to Mr. Irvin’s discovery

that his wife could not satisfactorily account for some of these

absences from home which led him to suspect her fidelity.”

“Ah!” said Kerry hardly, “I shouldn’t wonder. And now”—he thrust out a

pointing finger—“where did she get these drugs?”

Margaret met the fierce stare composedly.

“I have said that I shall be quite frank,” she replied. “In my opinion

she obtained them from Kazmah.”

“Kazmah!” shouted Kerry. “Excuse me, miss, but I see I’ve been wearing

blinkers without knowing it! Kazmah’s was a dope-shop?”

“That has been my belief for a long time, Inspector. I may add that I

have never been able to obtain a shred of evidence to prove it. I am so

keenly interested in seeing the people who pander to this horrible vice

unmasked and dealt with as they merit, that I have tried many times to

find out if my suspicion was correct.”

Inspector Kerry was writhing his shoulders excitedly. “Did you ever

visit Kazmah?” he asked.

“Yes. I asked Rita Irvin to take me, but she refused, and I could see

that the request embarrassed her. So I went alone.”

“Describe exactly what took place.”

Margaret Halley stared reflectively at the blotting-pad for a moment,

and then described a typical seance at Kazmah’s. In conclusion:

“As I came away,” she said, “I bought a bottle of every kind of perfume

on sale, some of the incense, and also a box of sweetmeat; but they all

proved to be perfectly harmless. I analyzed them.”

Kerry’s eyes glistened with admiration.

“We could do with you at the Yard, miss,” he said. “Excuse me for

saying so.”

Margaret smiled rather wanly.

“Now—this man Kazmah,” resumed the Chief Inspector. “Did you ever see

him again?”

“Never. I have been trying for months and months to find out who he

is.”

Kerry’s face became very grim.

“About ten trained men are trying to find that out at the present

moment!” he rapped. “Do you think he wore a make-up?”

“He may have done so,” Margaret admitted. “But his features were

obviously undisguised, and his eyes one would recognize anywhere. They

were larger than any human eyes I have ever seen.”

“He couldn’t have been the Egyptian who looked after the shop, for

instance?”

“Impossible! He did not remotely resemble him. Besides, the man to whom

you refer remained outside to receive other visitors. Oh, that’s out of

the question, Inspector.”

“The light was very dim?”

“Very dim indeed, and Kazmah never once raised his head. Indeed, except

for a dignified gesture of greeting and one of dismissal, he never

moved. His immobility was rather uncanny.”

Kerry began to pace up and down the narrow room, and:

“He bore no resemblance to the late Sir Lucien Pyne, for instance?” he

rapped.

Margaret laughed outright and her laughter was so inoffensive and so

musical that the Chief Inspector laughed also.

“That’s more hopeless than ever!” she said. “Poor Sir Lucien had

strong, harsh features and rather small eyes. He wore a moustache, too.

But Sir Lucien, I feel sure, was one of Kazmah’s clients.”

“Ah!” said Kerry. “And what leads you to suppose Miss Halley, that this

Kazmah dealt in drugs?”

“Well, you see, Rita Irvin was always going there to buy perfumes, and

she frequently sent her maid as well.”

“But”—Kerry stared—“you say that the perfume was harmless.”

“That which was sold to casual visitors was harmless, Inspector. But I

strongly suspect that regular clients were supplied with something

quite different. You see, I know no fewer than thirty unfortunate women

in the West End of London alone who are simply helpless slaves to

various drugs, and I think it more than a coincidence that upon their

dressing-tables I have almost invariably found one or more of Kazmah’s

peculiar antique flasks.”

Chief Inspector Kerry’s jaw muscles protruded conspicuously.

“You speak of patients?” he asked.

Margaret nodded her head.

“When a woman becomes addicted to the drug habit,” she explained, “she

sometimes shuns her regular medical adviser. I have many patients who

came to me originally simply because they dared not face their family

doctor. In fact, since I gave up Army work, my little practice has

threatened to develop into that of a drug-habit specialist.”

“Have you taxed any of these people with obtaining drugs from Kazmah?”

“Not directly. It would have been undiplomatic. But I have tried to

surprise them into telling me. Unfortunately, these poor people are as

cunning as any other kind of maniac, for, of course, it becomes a form

of mania. They recognize that confession might lead to a stoppage of

supplies—the eventuality they most dread.”

“Did you examine the contents of any of these flasks found on

dressing-tables?”

“I rarely had an opportunity; but when I did they proved to contain

perfume when they contained anything.”

“H’m,” mused Kerry, and although in deference to Margaret, he had

denied himself chewing-gum, his jaws worked automatically. “I gather

that Mrs. Monte Irvin had expressed a wish to see you last night?”

“Yes. Apparently she was threatened with a shortage of cocaine.”

“Cocaine was her drug?”

“One of them. She had tried them all, poor, silly girl! You must

understand that for a habitual drug-taker suddenly to be deprived of

drugs would lead to complete collapse, perhaps death. And during the

last few days I had noticed a peculiar nervous symptom in Rita Irvin

which had interested me. Finally, the day before yesterday, she

confessed that her usual source of supply had been closed to her. Her

words were very vague, but I gathered that some form of coercion was

being employed.”

“With what object?”

“I have no idea. But she used the words, ‘They will drive me mad,’ and

seemed to be in a dangerously nervous condition. She said that she was

going to make a final attempt to obtain a supply of the poison which

had become indispensable to her. ‘I cannot do without it!’ she said.

‘But if they refuse, will you give me some?’”

“What did you say?”

“I begged of her, as I had done on many previous occasions, to place

herself in my hands. But she evaded a direct answer, as is the way of

one addicted to this vice. ‘If I cannot get some by tomorrow,’ she

said, ‘I shall go mad, or dead. Can I rely on you?’”

“I told her that I would prescribe cocaine for her on the distinct

understanding that from the first dose she was to place herself under

my care for a cure.”

“She agreed?”

“She agreed. Yesterday afternoon, while I was away at an important

case, she came here. Poor Rita!” Margaret’s soft voice trembled.

“Look—she left this note.”

From a letter-rack she took a square sheet of paper and handed it to

the Chief Inspector. He bent his fierce eyes upon the writing—large,

irregular and shaky.

“‘Dear Margaret,’” he read aloud. “‘Why aren’t you at home? I am wild

with pain, and feel I am going mad. Come to me _directly_ you return,

and bring enough to keep me alive. I—’, Hullo! there’s no finish!”

He glanced up from the page. Margaret Halley’s eyes were dim.

“She despaired of my coming and went to Kazmah,” she said. “Can you

doubt that that was what she went for?”

“No!” snapped Kerry savagely, “I can’t. But do you mean to tell me,

Miss Halley, that Mrs. Irvin couldn’t get cocaine anywhere else? I know

for a fact that it’s smuggled in regularly, and there’s more than one

receiver.”

Margaret looked at him strangely.

“I know it, too, Inspector,” she said quietly. “Owing to the lack of

enterprise on the part of our British drug-houses, even reputable

chemists are sometimes dependent upon illicit stock from Japan and

America. But do you know that the price of these smuggled drugs has

latterly become so high as to be prohibitive in many cases?”

“I don’t. What are you driving at, miss?”

“At this: Somebody had made a corner in contraband drugs. The most

wicked syndicate that ever was formed has got control of the lives of,

it may be, thousands of drug-slaves!”

Kerry’s teeth closed with a sharp snap.

“At last,” he said, “I see where the smart from the Home office comes

in.”

“The Secretary of State has appointed a special independent

commissioner to inquire into this hellish traffic,” replied Margaret

quietly. “I am glad to say that I have helped in getting this done by

the representations which I have made to my uncle, Lord Wrexborough.

But I give you my word, Inspector Kerry, that I have withheld nothing

from you any more than from him.”

“Him!” snapped Kerry, eyes fiercely ablaze.

“From the Home Office representative—before whom I have already given

evidence.”

Chief Inspector Kerry took up his hat, cane and overall from the chair

upon which he had placed them and, his face a savage red mask, bowed

with a fine courtesy. He burned to learn particulars; he disdained to

obtain them from a woman.

“Good morning, Miss Halley,” he said. “I am greatly indebted to you.”

He walked stiffly from the room and out of the flat without waiting for

a servant to open the door.

PART SECOND

MRS. SIN

CHAPTER XII.

THE MAID OF THE MASQUE

The past life of Mrs. Monte Irvin, in which at this time three distinct

groups of investigators became interested—namely, those of Whitehall,

Scotland Yard, and Fleet Street—was of a character to have horrified

the prudish, but to have excited the compassion of the wise.

Daughter of a struggling suburban solicitor, Rita Esden, at the age of

seventeen, from a delicate and rather commonplace child began to

develop into a singularly pretty girl of an elusive and fascinating

type of beauty, almost ethereal in her dainty coloring, and possessed

of large and remarkably fine eyes, together with a wealth of copper-red

hair, a crown which seemed too heavy for her slender neck to support.

Her father viewed her increasing charms and ever-growing list of

admirers with the gloomy apprehension of a disappointed man who had

come to look upon each gift of the gods as a new sorrow cunningly

disguised. Her mother, on the contrary, fanned the girl’s natural

vanity and ambition with a success which rarely attended the

enterprises of this foolish old woman, and Rita proving to be endowed

with a moderately good voice, a stage career was determined upon

without reference to the contrary wishes of Mr. Esden.

Following the usual brief “training” which is counted sufficient for an

aspirant to musical comedy honors, Rita, by the prefixing of two

letters to her name, set out to conquer the play-going world as Rita

Dresden.

Two years of hard work and disappointment served to dispel the girl’s

illusions. She learned to appreciate at its true value that masculine

admiration which, in an unusual degree, she had the power to excite.

Those of her admirers who were in a position to assist her

professionally were only prepared to use their influence upon terms

which she was unprepared to accept. Those whose intentions were

strictly creditable, by some malignancy of fate, possessed no influence

whatever. She came to regard herself as a peculiarly unlucky girl,

being ignorant of the fact that Fortune, an impish hierophant, imposes

identical tests upon every candidate who aspires to the throne of a

limelight princess.

Matters stood thus when a new suitor appeared in the person of Sir

Lucien Pyne. When his card was brought up to Rita, her heart leaped

because of a mingled emotion of triumph and fear which the sight of the

baronet’s name had occasioned. He was a director of the syndicate in

whose production she was playing—a man referred to with awe by every

girl in the company as having it in his power to make or mar a

professional reputation. Not that he took any active part in the

affairs of the concern; on the contrary, he was an aristocrat who held

himself aloof from all matters smacking of commerce, but at the same

time one who invested his money shrewdly. Sir Lucien’s protegee of

today was London’s idol of tomorrow, and even before Rita had spoken to

him she had fought and won a spiritual battle between her true self and

that vain, admiration-loving Rita Dresden who favored capitulation.

She knew that Sir Lucien’s card represented a signpost at the

cross-roads where many a girl, pretty but not exceptionally talented,

had hesitated with beating heart. It was no longer a question of

remaining a member of the chorus (and understudy for a small part) or

of accepting promotion to “lead” in a new production; it was that of

accepting whatever Sir Lucien chose to offer—or of retiring from the

profession so far as this powerful syndicate was concerned.

Such was the reputation enjoyed at this time by Sir Lucien Pyne among

those who had every opportunity of forming an accurate opinion.

Nevertheless, Rita was determined not to succumb without a struggle.

She did not count herself untalented nor a girl to be lightly valued,

and Sir Lucien might prove to be less black than rumor had painted him.

As presently appeared, both in her judgment of herself and in that of

Sir Lucien, she was at least partially correct. He was very courteous,

very respectful, and highly attentive.

Her less favored companions smiled significantly when the familiar

Rolls-Royce appeared at the stage door night after night, never

doubting that Rita Dresden was chosen to “star” in the forthcoming

production, but, with rare exceptions, frankly envying her this good

fortune.

Rita made no attempt to disillusion them, recognizing that it must

fail. She was resigned to being misjudged. If she could achieve success

at that price, success would have been purchased cheaply.

That Sir Lucien was deeply infatuated she was not slow to discover, and

with an address perfected by experience and a determination to avoid

the easy path inherited from a father whose scrupulous honesty had

ruined his professional prospects, she set to work to win esteem as

well as admiration.

Sir Lucien was first surprised, then piqued, and finally interested by

such unusual tactics. The second phase was the dangerous one for Rita,

and during a certain luncheon at Romanos her fate hung in the balance.

Sir Lucien realized that he was in peril of losing his head over this

tantalizingly pretty girl who gracefully kept him at a distance,

fencing with an adroitness which was baffling, and Sir Lucien Pyne had

set out with no intention of doing anything so preposterous as falling

in love. Keenly intuitive, Rita scented danger and made a bold move.

Carelessly rolling a bread-crumb along the cloth:

“I am giving up the stage when the run finishes,” she said.

“Indeed,” replied Sir Lucien imperturbably. “Why?”

“I am tired of stage life. I have been invited to go and live with my

uncle in New York and have decided to accept. You see”—she bestowed

upon him a swift glance of her brilliant eyes—“men in the theatrical

world are not all like you. Real friends, I mean. It isn’t very nice,

sometimes.”

Sir Lucien deliberately lighted a cigarette. If Rita was bluffing, he

mused, she had the pluck to make good her bluff. And if she did so? He

dropped the extinguished match upon a plate. Did he care? He glanced at

the girl, who was smiling at an acquaintance on the other side of the

room. Fortune’s wheel spins upon a needle point. By an artistic

performance occupying less than two minutes, but suggesting that Rita

possessed qualities which one day might spell success, she had decided

her fate. Her heart was beating like a hammer in her breast, but she

preserved an attitude of easy indifference. Without for a moment

believing in the American uncle, Sir Lucien did believe, correctly,

that Rita Dresden was about to elude him. He realized, too, that he was

infinitely more interested than he had ever been hitherto, and more

interested than he had intended to become.

This seemingly trivial conversation was a turning point, and twelve

months later Rita Dresden was playing the title rôle in _The Maid of

the Masque_. Sir Lucien had discovered himself to be really in love

with her, and he might quite possibly have offered her marriage even if

a dangerous rival had not appeared to goad him to that desperate

leap—for so he regarded it. Monte Irvin, although considerably Rita’s

senior, had much to commend him in the eyes of the girl—and in the eyes

of her mother, who still retained a curious influence over her

daughter. He was much more wealthy than Pyne, and although the latter

was a baronet, Irvin was certain to be knighted ere long, so that Rita

would secure the appendage of “Lady” in either case. Also, his

reputation promised a more reliable husband than Sir Lucien could be

expected to make. Moreover, Rita liked him, whereas she had never

sincerely liked and trusted Sir Lucien. And there was a final reason—of

which Mrs. Esden knew nothing.

On the first night that Rita had been entrusted with a part of any

consequence—and this was shortly after the conversation at Romanos—she

had discovered herself to be in a state of hopeless panic. All her

scheming and fencing would have availed her nothing if she were to

break down at the critical moment. It was an eventuality which Sir

Lucien had foreseen, and he seized the opportunity at once of securing

a new hold upon the girl and of rendering her more pliable than he had

hitherto found her to be. At this time the idea of marriage had not

presented itself to Sir Lucien.

Some hours before the performance he detected her condition of abject

fright... and from his waistcoat pocket he took a little gold

snuff-box.

At first the girl declined to follow advice which instinctively she

distrusted, and Sir Lucien was too clever to urge it upon her. But he

glanced casually at his wrist-watch—and poor Rita shuddered. The gold

box was hidden again in the baronet’s pocket.

To analyze the process which thereupon took place in Rita’s mind would

be a barren task, since its result was a foregone conclusion. Daring

ambition rather than any merely abstract virtue was the keynote of her

character. She had rebuffed the advances of Sir Lucien as she had

rebuffed others, primarily because her aim in life was set higher than

mere success in light comedy. This she counted but a means to a more

desirable end—a wealthy marriage. To the achievement of such an

alliance the presence of an accepted lover would be an obstacle; and

true love Rita Dresden had never known. Yet, short of this final

sacrifice which some women so lightly made, there were few scruples

which she was not prepared to discard in furtherance of her designs.

Her morality, then, was diplomatic, for the vice of ambition may

sometimes make for virtue.

Rita’s vivacious beauty and perfect self-possession on the fateful

night earned her a permanent place in stageland: Rita Dresden became a

“star.” She had won a long and hard-fought battle; but in avoiding one

master she had abandoned herself to another.

The triumph of her debut left her strangely exhausted. She dreaded the

coming of the second night almost as keenly as she had dreaded the

ordeal of the first. She struggled, poor victim, and only increased her

terrors. Not until the clock showed her that in twenty minutes she must

make her first entrance did she succumb. But Sir Lucien’s gold

snuff-box lay upon her dressing-table—and she was trembling. When at

last she heard the sustained note of the oboe in the orchestra giving

the pitch to the answering violins, she raised the jewelled lid of the

box.

So she entered upon the path which leads down to destruction, and since

to conjure with the drug which pharmacists know as methylbenzoyl

ecgonine is to raise the demon Insomnia, ere long she found herself

exploring strange by-paths in quest of sleep.

By the time that she was entrusted with the leading part in _The Maid

of the Masque_, she herself did not recognize how tenacious was the

hold which this fatal habit had secured upon her. In the company of Sir

Lucien Pyne she met other devotees, and for a time came to regard her

unnatural mode of existence as something inseparable from the Bohemian

life. To the horrible side of it she was blind.

It was her meeting with Monte Irvin during the run of this successful

play which first awakened a dawning comprehension; not because she

ascribed his admiration to her artificial vivacity, but because she

realized the strength of the link subsisting between herself and Sir

Lucien. She liked and respected Irvin, and as a result began to view

her conduct from a new standpoint. His life was so entirely open and

free from reproach while part of her own was dark and secret. She

conceived a desire to be done with that dark and secret life.

This was a shadow-land over which Sir Lucien Pyne presided, and which

must be kept hidden from Monte Irvin; and it was not until she thus

contemplated cutting herself adrift from it all that she perceived the

Gordian knot which bound her to the drug coterie. How far, yet how

smoothly, by all but imperceptible stages she had glided down the

stream since that night when the gold box had lain upon her

dressing-table! Kazmah’s drug store in Bond Street had few secrets for

her; or so she believed. She knew that the establishment of the

strange, immobile Egyptian was a source from which drugs could always

be obtained; she knew that the dream-reading business served some

double purpose; but she did not know the identity of Kazmah.

Two of the most insidious drugs familiar to modern pharmacy were wooing

her to slavery, and there was no strong hand to hold her back. Even the

presence of her mother might have offered some slight deterrent at this

stage of Rita’s descent, but the girl had quitted her suburban home as

soon as her salary had rendered her sufficiently independent to do so,

and had established herself in a small but elegant flat situated in the

heart of theatreland.

But if she had walked blindly into the clutches of cocaine and veronal,

her subsequent experiments with _chandu_ were prompted by indefensible

curiosity, and a false vanity which urged her to do everything that was

“done” by the ultra-smart and vicious set of which she had become a

member.

Her first introduction to opium-smoking was made under the auspices of

an American comedian then appearing in London, an old devotee of the

poppy, and it took place shortly after Sir Lucien Pyne had proposed

marriage to Rita. This proposal she had not rejected outright; she had

pleaded time for consideration. Monte Irvin was away, and Rita secretly

hoped that on his return he would declare himself. Meanwhile she

indulged in every new craze which became fashionable among her

associates. A _chandu_ party took place at the American’s flat in Duke

Street, and Rita, who had been invited, and who had consented to go

with Sir Lucien Pyne, met there for the first time the woman variously

known as “Lola” and “Mrs. Sin.”

CHAPTER XIII.

A CHANDU PARTY

From the restaurant at which she had had supper with Sir Lucien, Rita

proceeded to Duke Street. Alighting from Pyne’s car at the door, they

went up to the flat of the organizer of the opium party—Mr. Cyrus

Kilfane. One other guest was already present—a slender, fair woman, who

was introduced by the American as Mollie Gretna, but whose weakly

pretty face Rita recognized as that of a notorious society divorcée,

foremost in the van of every new craze, a past-mistress of the smartest

vices.

Kilfane had sallow, expressionless features and drooping, light-colored

eyes. His straw-hued hair, brushed back from a sloping brow, hung

lankly down upon his coat-collar. Long familiarity with China’s ruling

vice and contact with those who practiced it had brought about that

mysterious physical alteration—apparently reflecting a mental change—so

often to be seen in one who has consorted with Chinamen. Even the light

eyes seemed to have grown slightly oblique; the voice, the

unimpassioned greeting, were those of a son of Cathay. He carried

himself with a stoop and had a queer, shuffling gait.

“Ah, my dear daughter,” he murmured in a solemnly facetious manner,

“how glad I am to welcome you to our poppy circle.”

He slowly turned his half-closed eyes in Pyne’s direction, and slowly

turned them back again.

“Do you seek forgetfulness of old joys?” he asked. “This is my own case

and Pyne’s. Or do you, as Mollie does, seek new joys—youth’s eternal

quest?”

Rita laughed with a careless abandon which belonged to that part of her

character veiled from the outer world.

“I think I agree with Miss Gretna,” she said lightly. “There is not so

much happiness in life that I want to forget the little I have had.”

“Happiness,” murmured Kilfane. “There is no real happiness. Happiness

is smoke. Let us smoke.”

“I am curious, but half afraid,” declared Rita. “I have heard that

opium sometimes has no other effect than to make one frightfully ill.”

“Oh, my dear!” cried Miss Gretna, with a foolish giggling laugh, “you

will love it! Such fascinating dreams! Such delightful adventures!”

“Other drugs,” drawled Sir Lucien, “merely stimulate one’s normal

mental activities. _Chandu_ is a key to another life. Cocaine, for

instance enhances our capacity for work. It is only a heretic like De

Quincey who prostitutes the magic gum to such base purposes. _Chandu_

is misunderstood in Europe; in Asia it is the companion of the

aesthete’s leisure.”

“But surely,” said Rita, “one pipe of opium will not produce all these

wonders.”

“Some people never experience them at all,” interrupted Miss Gretna.

“The great idea is to get into a comfortable position, and just resign

yourself—let yourself go. Oh, it’s heavenly!”

Cyrus Kilfane turned his dull eyes in Rita’s direction.

“A question of temperament and adaptability,” he murmured. “De Quincey,

Pyne”—slowly turning towards the baronet—“is didactic, of course; but

his _Confessions_ may be true, nevertheless. He forgets, you see, that

he possessed an unusual constitution, and the temperament of a

Norwegian herring. He forgets, too, that he was a laudanum drinker, not

an opium smoker. Now you, my daughter”—the lustreless eyes again sought

Rita’s flushed face—“are vivid—intensely vital. If you can succeed in

resigning yourself to the hypnosis induced your experiences will be

delightful. Trust your Uncle Cy.”

Leaving Rita chatting with Miss Gretna, Kilfane took Pyne aside,

offering him a cigarette from an ornate, jewelled case.

“Hello,” said the baronet, “can you still get these?”

“With the utmost difficulty,” murmured Kilfane, returning the case to

his pocket. “Lola charges me five guineas a hundred for them, and only

supplies them as a favor. I shall be glad to get back home, Pyne. The

right stuff is the wrong price in London.”

Sir Lucien laughed sardonically, lighting Kilfane’s cigarette and then

his own.

“I find it so myself,” he said. “Everything except opium is to be had

at Kazmah’s, and nothing except opium interests me.”

“He supplies me with cocaine,” murmured the comedian. “His figure works

out, as nearly as I can estimate it, at 10s 7½d. a grain. I saw him

about it yesterday afternoon, pointing out to the brown guy that as the

wholesale price is roughly 2¼d., I regarded his margin of profit as

somewhat broad.”

“Indeed!”

“The first time I had ever seen him, Pyne. I brought an introduction

from Dr. Silver, of New York, and Kazmah supplied me without

question—at a price.”

“You always saw Rashîd?”

“Yes. If there were other visitors I waited. But yesterday I made a

personal appointment with Kazmah. He pretended to think I had come to

have a dream interpreted. He is clever, Pyne. He never moved a muscle

throughout the interview. But finally he assured me that all the

receivers in England had amalgamated, and that the price he charged

represented a very narrow margin of profit. Of course he is a liar. He

is making a fortune. Do you know him personally?”

“No,” replied Sir Lucien, “outside his Bond Street home of mystery he

is unknown. A clever man, as you say. You obtain your opium from Lola?”

“Yes. Kazmah sent her to me. She keeps me on ridiculously low rations,

and if I had not brought my own outfit I don’t think she would have

sold me one. Of course, her game is beating up clients for the

Limehouse dive.”

“You have visited ‘The House of a Hundred Raptures’?”

“Many times, at week-ends. Opium, like wine, is better enjoyed in

company.”

“Does she post you the opium?”

“Oh, no; my man goes to Limehouse for it. Ah! here she is.”

A woman came in, carrying a brown leather attaché case. She had left

her hat and coat in the hall, and wore a smart blue serge skirt and a

white blouse. She was not tall, but she possessed a remarkably

beautiful figure which the cut of her garments was not intended to

disguise, and her height was appreciably increased by a pair of suéde

shoes having the most wonderful heels which Rita ever remembered to

have seen worn on or off the stage. They seemed to make her small feet

appear smaller, and lent to her slender ankles an exaggerated frontal

curve.

Her hair was of that true, glossy black which suggests the blue sheen

of raven’s plumage, and her thickly fringed eyes were dark and southern

as her hair. She had full, voluptuous lips, and a bold self-assurance.

In the swift, calculating glance which she cast about the room there

was something greedy and evil; and when it rested upon Rita Dresden’s

dainty beauty to the evil greed was added cruelty.

“Another little sister, dear Lola,” murmured Kilfane. “Of course, you

know who it is? This, my daughter,” turning the sleepy glance towards

Rita, “is our officiating priestess, Mrs. Sin.”

The woman so strangely named revealed her gleaming teeth in a swift,

unpleasant smile, then her nostrils dilated and she glanced about her

suspiciously.

“Someone smokes the _chandu_ cigarettes,” she said, speaking in a low

tone which, nevertheless, failed to disguise her harsh voice, and with

a very marked accent.

“I am the offender, dear Lola,” said Kilfane, dreamily waving his

cigarette towards her. “I have managed to make the last hundred spin

out. You have brought me a new supply?”

“Oh no, indeed,” replied Mrs. Sin, tossing her head in a manner oddly

reminiscent of a once famous Spanish dancer. “Next Tuesday you get some

more. Ah! it is no good! You talk and talk and it cannot alter

anything. Until they come I cannot give them to you.”

“But it appears to me,” murmured Kilfane, “that the supply is always

growing less.”

“Of course. The best goes all to Edinburgh now. I have only three

sticks of Yezd left of all my stock.”

“But the cigarettes.”

“Are from Buenos Ayres? Yes. But Buenos Ayres must get the opium before

we get the cigarettes, eh? Five cases come to London on Tuesday, Cy. Be

of good courage, my dear.”

She patted the sallow cheek of the American with her jewelled fingers,

and turned aside, glancing about her.

“Yes,” murmured Kilfane. “We are all present, Lola. I have had the room

prepared. Come, my children, let us enter the poppy portico.”

He opened a door and stood aside, waving one thin yellow hand between

the first two fingers of which smouldered the drugged cigarette. Led by

Mrs. Sin the company filed into an apartment evidently intended for a

drawing-room, but which had been hastily transformed into an opium

divan.

Tables, chairs, and other items of furniture had been stacked against

one of the walls and the floor spread with rugs, skins, and numerous

silk cushions. A gas fire was alight, but before it had been placed an

ornate Japanese screen whereon birds of dazzling plumage hovered amid

the leaves of gilded palm trees. In the centre of the room stood a

small card-table, and upon it were a large brass tray and an ivory

pedestal exquisitely carved in the form of a nude figure having one arm

upraised. The figure supported a lamp, the light of which was subdued

by a barrel-shaped shade of Chinese workmanship.

Mollie Gretna giggled hysterically.

“Make yourself comfortable, dear,” she cried to Rita, dropping down

upon a heap of cushions stacked in a recess beside the fireplace. “I am

going to take off my shoes. The last time, Cyrus, when I woke up my

feet were quite numb.”

“You should come down to my place,” said Mrs. Sin, setting the leather

case on the little card-table beside the lamp. “You have there your own

little room and silken sheets to lie in, and it is quiet—so quiet.”

“Oh!” cried Mollie Gretna, “I _must_ come! But I daren’t go alone. Will

you come with me, dear?” turning to Rita.

“I don’t know,” was the reply. “I may not like opium.”

“But if you do—and I know you will?”

“Why,” said Rita, glancing rapidly at Pyne, “I suppose it would be a

novel experience.”

“Let me arrange it for you,” came the harsh voice of Mrs. Sin. “Lucy

will drive you both down—won’t you, my dear?” The shadowed eyes glanced

aside at Sir Lucien Pyne.

“Certainly,” he replied. “I am always at the ladies’ service.”

Rita Dresden settled herself luxuriously into a nest of silk and fur in

another corner of the room, regarding the baronet coquettishly through

her half-lowered lashes.

“I won’t go unless it is my party, Lucy,” she said. “You must let me

pay.”

“A detail,” murmured Pyne, crossing and standing beside her.

Interest now became centred upon the preparations being made by Mrs.

Sin. From the attaché case she took out a lacquered box, silken-lined

like a jewel-casket. It contained four singular-looking pipes, the

parts of which she began to fit together. The first and largest of

these had a thick bamboo stem, an amber mouthpiece, and a tiny,

disproportionate bowl of brass. The second was much smaller and was of

some dark, highly-polished wood, mounted with silver conceived in an

ornate Chinese design representing a long-tailed lizard. The mouthpiece

was of jade. The third and fourth pipes were yet smaller, a perfectly

matched pair in figured ivory of exquisite workmanship, delicately

gold-mounted.

“These for the ladies,” said Mrs. Sin, holding up the pair.

“You”—glancing at Kilfane—“have got your own pipe, I know.”

She laid them upon the tray, and now took out of the case a little

copper lamp, a smaller lacquered box and a silver spatula, her jewelled

fingers handling the queer implements with a familiarity bred of habit.

“What a strange woman!” whispered Rita to Pyne. “Is she an oriental?”

“Cuban-Jewess,” he replied in a low voice.

Mrs. Sin carefully lighted the lamp, which burned with a short, bluish

flame, and, opening the lacquered box, she dipped the spatula into the

thick gummy substance which it contained and twisted the little

instrument round and round between her fingers, presently withdrawing

it with a globule of _chandu_, about the size of a bean, adhering to

the end. She glanced aside at Kilfane.

“Chinese way, eh?” she said.

She began to twirl the prepared opium above the flame of the lamp. From

it a slight, sickly smelling vapor arose. No one spoke, but all watched

her closely; and Rita was conscious of a growing, pleasurable

excitement. When by evaporation the _chandu_ had become reduced to the

size of a small pea, and a vague spirituous blue flame began to dance

round the end of the spatula, Mrs. Sin pressed it adroitly into the

tiny bowl of one of the ivory pipes, having first held the bowl

inverted for a moment over the lamp. She turned to Rita.

“The guest of the evening,” she said. “Do not be afraid. Inhale—oh, so

gentle—and blow the smoke from the nostrils. You know how to smoke?”

“The same as a cigarette?” asked Rita excitedly, as Mrs. Sin bent over

her.

“The same, but very, very gentle.”

Rita took the pipe and raised the mouthpiece to the lips.

CHAPTER XIV.

IN THE SHADE OF THE LONELY PALM

Persian opium of good quality contains from ten to fifteen percent

morphine, and _chandu_ made from opium of Yezd would contain perhaps

twenty-five per cent of this potent drug; but because in the act of

smoking distillation occurs, nothing like this quantity of morphine

reaches the smoker. To the distilling process, also, may be due the

different symptoms resulting from smoking _chandu_ and injecting

morphia—or drinking tincture of opium, as De Quincey did.

Rita found the flavor of the preparation to be not entirely unpleasant.

Having overcome an initial aversion, caused by its marked medicinal

tang, she grew reconciled to it and finished her first smoke without

experiencing any other effect than a sensation of placid contentment.

Deftly, Mrs. Sin renewed the pipe. Silence had fallen upon the party.

The second “pill” was no more than half consumed when a growing feeling

of nausea seized upon the novice, becoming so marked that she dropped

the ivory pipe weakly and uttered a faint moan.

Instantly, silently, Mrs. Sin was beside her.

“Lean forward—so,” she whispered, softly, as if fearful of intruding

her voice upon these sacred rites. “In a moment you will be better.

Then, if you feel faint, lie back. It is the sleep. Do not fight

against it.”

The influence of the stronger will prevailed. Self-control and judgment

are qualities among the first to succumb to opium. Rita ceased to think

longingly of the clean, fresh air, of escape from these sickly fumes

which seemed now to fill the room with a moving vacuum. She bent

forward, her chin resting upon her breast, and gradually the deathly

sickness passed. Mentally, she underwent a change, too. From an active

state of resistance the ego traversed a descending curve ending in

absolute passivity. The floor had seemingly begun to revolve and was

moving insidiously, so that the pattern of the carpet formed a series

of concentric rings. She found this imaginary phenomenon to be soothing

rather than otherwise, and resigned herself almost eagerly to the

delusion.

Mrs. Sin allowed her to fall back upon the cushions—so gently and so

slowly that the operation appeared to occupy several minutes and to

resemble that of sinking into innumerable layers of swansdown. The

sinuous figure bending over her grew taller with the passage of each

minute, until the dark eyes of Mrs. Sin were looking down at Rita from

a dizzy elevation. As often occurs in the case of a neurotic subject,

delusion as to time and space had followed the depression of the

sensory cells.

But surely, she mused, this could not be Mrs. Sin who towered so

loftily above her. Of course, how absurd to imagine that a woman could

remain motionless for so many hours. And Rita thought, now, that she

had been lying for several hours beneath the shadow of that tall,

graceful, and protective shape.

Why—it was a slender palm-tree, which stretched its fanlike foliage

over her! Far, far above her head the long, dusty green fronds

projected from the mast-like trunk. The sun, a ball of fiery brass,

burned directly in the zenith, so that the shadow of the foliage lay

like a carpet about her feet. That which she had mistaken for the

ever-receding eyes of Mrs. Sin, wondering with a delightful vagueness

why they seemed constantly to change color, proved to be a pair of

brilliantly plumaged parrakeets perched upon a lofty branch of the

palm.

This was an equatorial noon, and even if she had not found herself to

be under the influence of a delicious abstraction Rita would not have

moved; for, excepting the friendly palm, not another vestige of

vegetation was visible right away to the horizon; nothing but an ocean

of sand whereon no living thing moved. She and the parrakeets were

alone in the heart of the Great Sahara.

But stay! Many, many miles away, a speck on the dusty carpet of the

desert, something moved! Hours must elapse before that tiny figure,

provided it were approaching, could reach the solitary palm.

Delightedly, Rita contemplated the infinity of time. Even if the figure

moved ever so slowly, she should be waiting there beneath the palm to

witness its arrival. Already, she had been there for a period which she

was far too indolent to strive to compute—a week, perhaps. She turned

her attention to the parrakeets. One of them was moving, and she noted

with delight that it had perceived her far below and was endeavoring to

draw the attention of its less observant companion to her presence. For

many hours she lay watching it and wondering why, since the one bird

was so singularly intelligent, its companion was equally dull. When she

lowered her eyes and looked out again across the sands, the figure had

approached so close as to be recognizable.

It was that of Mrs. Sin. Rita appreciated the fitness of her presence,

and experienced no surprise, only a mild curiosity. This curiosity was

not concerned with Mrs. Sin herself, but with the nature of the burden

which she bore upon her head.

She was dressed in a manner which Rita dreamily thought would have been

inadequate in England, or even in Cuba, but which was appropriate in

the Great Sahara. How exquisitely she carried herself, mused the

dreamer; no doubt this fine carriage was due in part to her wearing

golden shoes with heels like stilts, and in part to her having been

trained to bear heavy burdens upon her head. Rita remembered that Sir

Lucien had once described to her the elegant deportment of the Arab

women, ascribing it to their custom of carrying water-jars in that way.

The appearance of the speck on the horizon had marked the height of her

trance. Her recognition of Mrs. Sin had signalized the decline of the

_chandu_ influence. Now, the intrusion of a definite, uncontorted

memory was evidence of returning cerebral activity.

Rita had no recollection of the sunset; indeed, she had failed to

perceive any change in the form and position of the shadow cast by the

foliage. It had spread, an ebony patch, equally about the bole of the

tree, so that the sun must have been immediately overhead. But, of

course, she had lain watching the parrakeets for several hours, and now

night had fallen. The desert mounds were touched with silver, the sky

was a nest of diamonds, and the moon cast a shadow of the palm like a

bar of ebony right across the prospect to the rim of the sky dome.

Mrs. Sin stood before her, one half of her lithe body concealed by this

strange black shadow and the other half gleaming in the moonlight so

that she resembled a beautiful ivory statue which some iconoclast had

cut in two.

Placing her burden upon the ground, Mrs. Sin knelt down before Rita and

reverently kissed her hand, whispering: “I am your slave, my poppy

queen.”

She spoke in a strange language, no doubt some African tongue, but one

which Rita understood perfectly. Then she laid one hand upon the object

which she had carried on her head, and which now proved to be a large

lacquered casket covered with Chinese figures and bound by three hoops

of gold. It had a very curious shape.

“Do you command that the chest be opened?” she asked.

“Yes,” answered Rita languidly.

Mrs. Sin threw up the lid, and from the interior of the casket which,

because of the glare of the moon light, seemed every moment to assume a

new form, drew out a bronze lamp.

“The sacred lamp,” she whispered, and placed it on the sand. “Do you

command that it be lighted?”

Rita inclined her head.

The lamp became lighted; in what manner she did not observe, nor was

she curious to learn. Next from the large casket Mrs. Sin took another

smaller casket and a very long, tapering silver bodkin. The first

casket had perceptibly increased in size. It was certainly much larger

than Rita had supposed; for now out from its shadowy interior Mrs. Sin

began to take pipes—long pipes and short pipes, pipes of gold and pipes

of silver, pipes of ivory and pipes of jade. Some were carved to

represent the heads of demons, some had the bodies of serpents wreathed

about them; others were encrusted with precious gems, and filled the

night with the venomous sheen of emeralds, the blood-rays of rubies and

golden glow of topaz, while the spear-points of diamonds flashed a

challenge to the stars.

“Do you command that the pipes be lighted?” asked the harsh voice.

Rita desired to answer, “No,” but heard herself saying, “Yes.”

Thereupon, from a thousand bowls, linking that lonely palm to the

remote horizon, a thousand elfin fires arose—blue-tongued and

spirituous. Grey pencilings of smoke stole straightly upward to the

sky, so that look where she would Rita could discern nothing but these

countless thin, faintly wavering, vertical lines of vapor.

The dimensions of the lacquered casket had increased so vastly as to

conceal the kneeling figure of Mrs. Sin, and staring at it wonderingly,

Rita suddenly perceived that it was not an ordinary casket. She knew at

last why its shape had struck her as being unusual.

It was a Chinese coffin.

The smell of the burning opium was stifling her. Those remorseless

threads of smoke were closing in, twining themselves about her throat.

It was becoming cold, too, and the moonlight was growing dim. The

position of the moon had changed, of course, as the night had stolen on

towards morning, and now it hung dimly before her. The smoke obscured

it.

But was this smoke obscuring the moon? Rita moved her hands for the

first time since she had found herself under the palm tree, weakly

fending off those vaporous tentacles which were seeking to entwine

themselves about her throat. Of course, it was not smoke obscuring the

moon, she decided; it was a lamp, upheld by an ivory figure—a lamp with

a Chinese shade.

A subdued roaring sound became audible; and this was occasioned by the

gas fire, burning behind the Japanese screen on which gaily plumaged

birds sported in the branches of golden palms. Rita raised her hands to

her eyes. Mist obscured her sight. Swiftly, now, reality was asserting

itself and banishing the phantasmagoria conjured up by _chandu_.

In her dim, cushioned corner Mollie Gretna lay back against the wall,

her face pale and her weak mouth foolishly agape. Cyrus Kilfane was

indistinguishable from the pile of rugs amid which he sprawled by the

table, and of Sir Lucien Pyne nothing was to be seen but the

outstretched legs and feet which projected grotesquely from a recess.

Seated, oriental fashion, upon an improvised divan near the grand piano

and propped up by a number of garish cushions, Rita beheld Mrs. Sin.

The long bamboo pipe had fallen from her listless fingers. Her face

wore an expression of mystic rapture like that characterizing the

features of some Chinese Buddhas.

Fear, unaccountable but uncontrollable, suddenly seized upon Rita. She

felt weak and dizzy, but she struggled partly upright.

“Lucy!” she whispered.

Her voice was not under control, and once more she strove to call to

Pyne.

“Lucy!” came the hoarse whisper again.

The fire continued its muted roaring, but no other sound answered to

the appeal. A horror of the companionship in which she found herself

thereupon took possession of the girl. She must escape from these

sleepers, whose spirits had been expelled by the potent necromancer,

opium, from these empty tenements whose occupants had fled. The idea of

the cool night air in the open streets was delicious.

She staggered to her feet, swaying drunkenly, but determined to reach

the door. She shuddered, because of a feeling of internal chill which

assailed her, but step by step crept across the room, opened the door,

and tottered out into the hallway. There was no sound in the flat.

Presumably Kilfane’s man had retired, or perhaps he, too, was a

devotee.

Rita’s fur coat hung upon the rack, and although her fingers appeared

to have lost all their strength and her arm to have become weak as that

of an infant, she succeeded in detaching the coat from the hook. Not

pausing to put it on, she opened the door and stumbled out on to the

darkened landing. Whereas her first impulse had been to awaken someone,

preferably Sir Lucien, now her sole desire was to escape undetected.

She began to feel less dizzy, and having paused for a moment on the

landing, she succeeded in getting her coat on. Then she closed the door

as quietly as possible, and clutching the handrail began to grope her

way downstairs. There was only one flight, she remembered, and a short

passage leading to the street door. She reached the passage without

mishap, and saw a faint light ahead.

The fastenings gave her some trouble, but finally her efforts were

successful, and she found herself standing in deserted Duke Street.

There was no moon, but the sky was cloudless. She had no idea of the

time, but because of the stillness of the surrounding streets she knew

that it must be very late. She set out for her flat, walking slowly and

wondering what explanation she should offer if a constable observed

her.

Oxford Street showed deserted as far as the eye could reach, and her

light footsteps seemed to awaken a hundred echoes. Having proceeded for

some distance without meeting anyone, she observed—and experienced a

childish alarm—the head-lights of an approaching car. Instantly the

idea of hiding presented itself to her, but so rapidly did the big

automobile speed along the empty thoroughfare that Rita was just

passing a street lamp as the car raced by, and she must therefore have

been clearly visible to the occupants.

Never for a moment glancing aside, Rita pressed on as quickly as she

could. Then her vague alarm became actual terror. She heard the brakes

being applied to the car, and heard the gritty sound of the tires upon

the roadway as the vehicle’s headlong progress was suddenly checked.

She had been seen—perhaps recognized, and whoever was in the car

proposed to return to speak to her.

If her strength had allowed she would have run, but now it threatened

to desert her altogether and she tottered weakly. A pattering of

footsteps came from behind. Someone was running back to overtake her.

Recognizing escape to be impossible, Rita turned just as the runner

came up with her.

“Rita!” he cried, rather breathlessly. “Miss Dresden!”

She stood very still, looking at the speaker.

It was Monte Irvin.

CHAPTER XV.

METAMORPHOSIS

As Irvin seized her hands and looked at her eagerly, half-fearfully,

Rita achieved sufficient composure to speak.

“Oh, Mr. Irvin,” she said, and found that her voice was not entirely

normal, “what must you think—”

He continued to hold her hands, and:

“I think you are very indiscreet to be out alone at three o’clock in

the morning,” he answered gently. “I was recalled to London by urgent

business, and returned by road—fortunately, since I have met you.”

“How can I explain—”

“I don’t ask you to explain—Miss Dresden. I have no right and no desire

to ask. But I wish I had the right to advise you.”

“How good you are,” she began, “and I—”

Her voice failed her completely, and her sensitive lips began to

tremble. Monte Irvin drew her arm under his own and led her back to

meet the car, which the chauffeur had turned and which was now

approaching.

“I will drive you home,” he said, “and if I may call in the morning. I

should like to do so.”

Rita nodded. She could not trust herself to speak again. And having

placed her in the car, Monte Irvin sat beside her, reclaiming her hand

and grasping it reassuringly and sympathetically throughout the short

drive. They parted at her door.

“Good night,” said Irvin, speaking very deliberately because of an

almost uncontrollable desire which possessed him to take Rita in his

arms, to hold her fast, to protect her from her own pathetic self and

from those influences, dimly perceived about her, but which intuitively

he knew to be evil.

“If I call at eleven will that be too early?”

“No,” she whispered. “Please come early. There is a matinee tomorrow.”

“You mean today,” he corrected. “Poor little girl, how tired you will

be. Good night.”

“Good night,” she said, almost inaudibly.

She entered, and, having closed the door, stood leaning against it for

several minutes. Bleakness and nausea threatened to overcome her anew,

and she felt that if she essayed another step she must collapse upon

the floor. Her maid was in bed, and had not been awakened by Rita’s

entrance. After a time she managed to grope her way to her bedroom,

where, turning up the light, she sank down helplessly upon the bed.

Her mental state was peculiar, and her thoughts revolved about the

journey from Oxford Street homeward. A thousand times she mentally

repeated the journey, speaking the same words over and over again, and

hearing Monte Irvin’s replies.

In those few minutes during which they had been together her sentiments

in regard to him had undergone a change. She had always respected

Irvin, but this respect had been curiously compounded of the personal

and the mercenary; his well-ordered establishment at Prince’s Gate had

loomed behind the figure of the man forming a pleasing background to

the portrait. Without being showy he was a splendid “match” for any

woman. His wife would have access to good society, and would enjoy

every luxury that wealth could procure. This was the picture lovingly

painted and constantly retouched by Rita’s mother.

Now it had vanished. The background was gone, and only the man

remained; the strong, reserved man whose deep voice had spoken so

gently, whose devotion was so true and unselfish that he only sought to

shield and protect her from follies the nature of which he did not even

seek to learn. She was stripped of her vanity, and felt loathsome and

unworthy of such a love.

“Oh,” she moaned, rocking to and fro. “I hate myself—I hate myself!”

Now that the victory so long desired seemed at last about to be won,

she hesitated to grasp the prize. One solacing reflection she had. She

would put the errors of the past behind her. Many times of late she had

found herself longing to be done with the feverish life of the stage.

Envied by those who had been her companions in the old chorus days, and

any one of whom would have counted ambition crowned could she have

played _The Maid of the Masque_, Rita thought otherwise. The ducal

mansions and rose-bowered Riviera hotels through which she moved

nightly had no charm for her; she sighed for reality, and had wearied

long ago of the canvas palaces and the artificial Southern moonlight.

In fact, stage life had never truly appealed to her—save as a means to

an end.

Again and yet again her weary brain reviewed the episodes of the night

since she had left Cyrus Kilfane’s flat, so that nearly an hour had

elapsed before she felt capable of the operation of undressing.

Finally, however, she undressed, shuddering although the room was

warmed by an electric radiator. The weakness and sickness had left her,

but she was quite wide awake, although her brain demanded rest from

that incessant review of the events of the evening.

She put on a warm wrap and seated herself at the dressing-table,

studying her face critically. She saw that she was somewhat pale and

that she had an indefinable air of dishevelment. Also she detected

shadows beneath her eyes, the pupils of which were curiously

contracted. Automatically, as a result of habit, she unlocked her

jewel-case and took out a tiny phial containing minute cachets. She

shook several out on to the palm of her hand, and then paused, staring

at her reflection in the mirror.

For fully half a minute she hesitated, then:

“I shall never close my eyes all night if I don’t!” she whispered, as

if in reply to a spoken protest, “and I should be a wreck in the

morning.”

Thus, in the very apogee of her resolve to reform, did she drive one

more rivet into the manacles which held her captive to Kazmah and

Company.

Upon a little spirit-stove stood a covered vessel containing milk,

which was placed there nightly by Rita’s maid. She lighted the burner

and warmed the milk. Then, swallowing three of the cachets from the

phial, she drank the milk. Each cachet contained three decigrams of

malourea, the insidious drug notorious under its trade name of Veronal.

She slept deeply, and was not awakened until ten o’clock. Her breakfast

consisted of a cup of strong coffee; but when Monte Irvin arrived at

eleven Rita exhibited no sign of nerve exhaustion. She looked bright

and charming, and Irvin’s heart leapt hotly in his breast at sight of

her.

Following some desultory and unnatural conversation:

“May I speak quite frankly to you?” he said, drawing his chair nearer

to the settee upon which Rita was seated.

She glanced at him swiftly. “Of course,” she replied. “Is it—about my

late hours?”

He shook his head, smiling rather sadly.

“That is only one phase of your rather feverish life, little girl,” he

said. “I don’t mean that I want to lecture you or reproach you. I only

want to ask you if you are satisfied?”

“Satisfied?” echoed Rita, twirling a tassel that hung from a cushion

beside her.

“Yes. You have achieved success in your profession.” He strove in vain

to banish bitterness from his voice. “You are a ‘star,’ and your

photograph is to be seen frequently in the smartest illustrated papers.

You are clever and beautiful and have hosts of admirers. But—are you

satisfied?”

She stared absently at the silk tassel, twirling it about her white

fingers more and more rapidly. Then:

“No,” she answered softly.

Monte Irvin hesitated for a moment ere bending forward and grasping her

hands.

“I am glad you are not satisfied,” he whispered. “I always knew you had

a soul for something higher—better.”

She avoided his ardent gaze, but he moved to the settee beside her and

looked into the bewitching face.

“Would it be a great sacrifice to give it all up?” he whispered in a

yet lower tone.

Rita shook her head, persistently staring at the tassel.

“For me?”

She gave him a swift, half-frightened glance, pressing her hands

against his breast and leaning, back.

“Oh, you don’t know me—you don’t know me!” she said, the good that was

in her touched to life by the man’s sincerity. “I—don’t deserve it.”

“Rita!” he murmured. “I won’t hear you say that!”

“You know nothing about my friends—about my life—”

“I know that I want you for my wife, so that I can protect you from

those ‘friends.’” He took her in his arms, and she surrendered her lips

to him.

“My sweet little girl,” he whispered. “I cannot believe it—yet.”

But the die was cast, and when Rita went to the theatre to dress for

the afternoon performance she was pledged to sever her connection with

the stage on the termination of her contract. She had luncheon with

Monte Irvin, and had listened almost dazedly to his plans for the

future. His wealth was even greater than her mother had estimated it to

be, and Rita’s most cherished dreams were dwarfed by the prospects

which Monte Irvin opened up before her. It almost seemed as though he

knew and shared her dearest ambitions. She was to winter beneath real

Southern palms and to possess a cruising yacht, not one of boards and

canvas like that which figured in _The Maid of the Masque_.

Real Southern palms, she mused guiltily, not those conjured up by

opium. That he was solicitous for her health the nature of his schemes

revealed. They were to visit Switzerland, and proceed thence to a villa

which he owned in Italy. Christmas they would spend in Cairo, explore

the Nile to Assouan in a private _dahabîyeh_, and return home via the

Riviera in time to greet the English spring. Rita’s delicate, swiftly

changing color, her almost ethereal figure, her intense nervous energy

he ascribed to a delicate constitution.

She wondered if she would ever dare to tell him the truth; if she ought

to tell him.

Pyne came to her dressing-room just before the performance began. He

had telephoned at an early hour in the morning, and had learned from

her maid that Rita had come home safely and was asleep. Rita had

expected him; but the influence of Monte Irvin, from whom she had

parted at the stage-door, had prevailed until she actually heard Sir

Lucien’s voice in the corridor. She had resolutely refrained from

looking at the little jewelled casket, engraved “From Lucy to Rita,”

which lay in her make-up box upon the table. But the imminence of an

ordeal which she dreaded intensely weakened her resolution. She swiftly

dipped a little nail-file into the white powder which the box

contained, and when Pyne came in she turned to him composedly.

“I am so sorry if I gave you a scare last night, Lucy,” she said. “But

I woke up feeling sick, and I had to go out into the fresh air.”

“I was certainly alarmed,” drawled Pyne, whose swarthy face looked more

than usually worn in the hard light created by the competition between

the dressing-room lamps and the grey wintry daylight which crept

through the windows. “Do you feel quite fit again?”

“Quite, thanks.” Rita glanced at a ring which she had not possessed

three hours before. “Oh, Lucy—I don’t know how to tell you—”

She turned in her chair, looking up wistfully at Pyne, who was standing

behind her. His jaw hardened, and his glance sought the white hand upon

which the costly gems glittered. He coughed nervously.

“Perhaps”—his drawling manner of speech temporarily deserted him; he

spoke jerkily—“perhaps—I can guess.”

She watched him in a pathetic way, and there was a threat of tears in

her beautiful eyes; for whatever his earlier intentions may have been,

Sir Lucien had proved a staunch friend and, according to his own

peculiar code, an honorable lover.

“Is it—Irvin?” he asked jerkily.

Rita nodded, and a tear glistened upon her darkened lashes.

Sir Lucien cleared his throat again, then coolly extended his hand,

once more master of his emotions.

“Congratulations, Rita,” he said. “The better man wins. I hope you will

be very happy.”

He turned and walked quietly out of the dressing-room.

CHAPTER XVI.

LIMEHOUSE

It was on the following Tuesday evening that Mrs. Sin came to the

theatre, accompanied by Mollie Gretna. Rita instructed that she should

be shown up to the dressing-room. The personality of this singular

woman interested her keenly. Mrs. Sin was well known in certain

Bohemian quarters, but was always spoken of as one speaks of a pet

vice. Not to know Mrs. Sin was to be outside the magic circle which

embraced the exclusively smart people who practiced the latest

absurdities.

The so-called artistic temperament is compounded of great strength and

great weakness; its virtues are whiter than those of ordinary people

and its vices blacker. For such a personality Mrs. Sin embodied the

idea of secret pleasure. Her bold good looks repelled Rita, but the

knowledge in her dark eyes was alluring.

“I arrange for you for Saturday night,” she said. “Cy Kilfane is coming

with Mollie, and you bring—”

“Oh,” replied Rita hesitatingly, “I am sorry you have gone to so much

trouble.”

“No trouble, my dear,” Mrs. Sin assured her. “Just a little matter of

business, and you can pay the bill when it suits you.”

“I am frightfully excited!” cried Mollie Gretna. “It is so nice of you

to have asked me to join your party. Of course Cy goes practically

every week, but I have always wanted another girl to go with. Oh, I

shall be in a perfectly delicious panic when I find myself all among

funny Chinamen and things! I think there is something so magnificently

wicked-looking about a pigtail—and the very name of Limehouse thrills

me to the soul!”

That fixity of purpose which had enabled Rita to avoid the cunning

snares set for her feet and to snatch triumph from the very cauldron of

shame without burning her fingers availed her not at all in dealing

with Mrs. Sin. The image of Monte receded before this appeal to the

secret pleasure-loving woman, of insatiable curiosity, primitive and

unmoral, who dwells, according to a modern cynic philosopher, within

every daughter of Eve touched by the fire of genius.

She accepted the arrangement for Saturday, and before her visitors had

left the dressing-room her mind was busy with plausible deceits to

cover the sojourn in Chinatown. Something of Mollie Gretna’s foolish

enthusiasm had communicated itself to Rita.

Later in the evening Sir Lucien called, and on hearing of the scheme

grew silent. Rita glancing at his reflection in the mirror, detected a

black and angry look upon his face. She turned to him.

“Why, Lucy,” she said, “don’t you want me to go?”

He smiled in his sardonic fashion.

“Your wishes are mine, Rita,” he replied.

She was watching him closely.

“But you don’t seem keen,” she persisted. “Are you angry with me?”

“Angry?”

“We are still friends, aren’t we?”

“Of course. Do you doubt my friendship?”

Rita’s maid came in to assist her in changing for the third act, and

Pyne went out of the room. But, in spite of his assurances, Rita could

not forget that fierce, almost savage expression which had appeared

upon his face when she had told him of Mrs. Sin’s visit.

Later she taxed him on the point, but he suffered her inquiry with

imperturbable sangfroid, and she found herself no wiser respecting the

cause of his annoyance. Painful twinges of conscience came during the

ensuing days, when she found herself in her fiancé’s company, but she

never once seriously contemplated dropping the acquaintance of Mrs.

Sin.

She thought, vaguely, as she had many times thought before, of cutting

adrift from the entire clique, but there was no return of that sincere

emotional desire to reform which she had experienced on the day that

Monte Irvin had taken her hand, in blind trust, and had asked her to be

his wife. Had she analyzed, or been capable of analyzing, her

intentions with regard to the future, she would have learned that daily

they inclined more and more towards compromise. The drug habit was

sapping will and weakening morale, insidiously, imperceptibly. She was

caught in a current of that “sacred river” seen in an opium-trance by

Coleridge, and which ran—

“Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.”

Pyne’s big car was at the stage-door on the fateful Saturday night, for

Rita had brought her dressing-case to the theatre, and having called

for Kilfane and Mollie Gretna they were to proceed direct to Limehouse.

Rita, as she entered the car, noticed that Juan Mareno, Sir Lucien’s

man, and not the chauffeur with whom she was acquainted, sat at the

wheel. As they drove off:

“Why is Mareno driving tonight, Lucy?” she asked.

Sir Lucien glanced aside at her.

“He is in my confidence,” he replied. “Fraser is not.”

“Oh, I see. You don’t want Fraser to know about the Limehouse journey?”

“Naturally I don’t. He would talk to all the men at the garage, and

from South Audley Street the tit-bit of scandal would percolate through

every stratum of society.”

Rita was silent for a few moments, then:

“Were you thinking about Monte?” she asked diffidently.

Pyne laughed.

“He would scarcely approve, would he?”

“No,” replied Rita. “Was that why you were angry when I told you I was

going?”

“This ‘anger,’ to which you constantly revert, had no existence outside

your own imagination, Rita. But” he hesitated—“you will have to

consider your position, dear, now that you are the future Mrs. Monte.”

Rita felt her cheeks flush, and she did not reply immediately.

“I don’t understand you, Lucy,” she declared at last. “How odd you

are.”

“Am I? Well, never mind. We will talk about my eccentricity later. Here

is Cyrus.”

Kilfane was standing in the entrance to the stage door of the theatre

at which he was playing. As the car drew up he lifted two leather grips

on to the step, and Mareno, descending, took charge of them.

“Come along, Mollie,” said Kilfane, looking back.

Miss Gretna, very excited, ran out and got into the car beside Rita.

Pyne lowered two of the collapsible seats for Kilfane and himself, and

the party set out for Limehouse.

“Oh!” cried the fair-haired Mollie, grasping Rita’s hand, “my heart

began palpitating with excitement the moment I woke up this morning!

How calm you are, dear.”

“I am only calm outside,” laughed Rita.

The _joie de vivre_ and apparently unimpaired vitality, of this woman,

for whom (if half that which rumor whispered were true) vice had no

secrets, astonished Rita. Her physical resources were unusual, no

doubt, because the demand made upon them by her mental activities was

slight.

As the car sped along the Strand, where theatre-goers might still be

seen making for tube, omnibus, and tramcar, and entered Fleet Street,

where the car and taxicab traffic was less, a mutual silence fell upon

the party. Two at least of the travellers were watching the lighted

windows of the great newspaper offices with a vague sense of

foreboding, and thinking how, bound upon a secret purpose, they were

passing along the avenue of publicity. It is well that man lacks

prescience. Neither Rita nor Sir Lucien could divine that a day was

shortly to come when the hidden presses which throbbed about them that

night should be busy with the story of the murder of one and

disappearance of the other.

Around St. Paul’s Churchyard whirled the car, its engine running

strongly and almost noiselessly. The great bell of St. Paul’s boomed

out the half-hour.

“Oh!” cried Mollie Gretna, “how that made me jump! What a beautifully

gloomy sound!”

Kilfane murmured some inaudible reply, but neither Pyne nor Rita spoke.

Cornhill and Leadenhall Street, along which presently their route lay,

offered a prospect of lamp-lighted emptiness, but at Aldgate they found

themselves amid East End throngs which afforded a marked contrast to

those crowding theatreland; and from thence through Whitechapel and the

seemingly endless Commercial Road it was a different world into which

they had penetrated.

Rita hitherto had never seen the East End on a Saturday night, and the

spectacle afforded by these busy marts, lighted by naphtha flames, in

whose smoky glare Jews and Jewesses, Poles, Swedes, Easterns, dagoes,

and halfcastes moved feverishly, was a fascinating one. She thought how

utterly alien they were, the men and women of a world unknown to that

society upon whose borders she dwelled; she wondered how they lived,

where they lived, why they lived. The wet pavements were crowded with

nondescript humanity, the night was filled with the unmusical voices of

Hebrew hucksters, and the air laden with the smoky odor of their lamps.

Tramcars and motorbuses were packed unwholesomely with these children

of shadowland drawn together from the seven seas by the magnet of

London.

She glanced at Pyne, but he was seemingly lost in abstraction, and

Kilfane appeared to be asleep. Mollie Gretna was staring eagerly out on

the opposite side of the car at a group of three dago sailors, whom

Mareno had nearly run down, but she turned at that moment and caught

Rita’s glance.

“Don’t you simply love it!” she cried. “Some of those men were really

handsome, dear. If they would only wash I am sure I could adore them!”

“Even such charms as yours can be bought at too high a price,” drawled

Sir Lucien. “They would gladly do murder for you, but never wash.”

Crossing Limehouse Canal, the car swung to the right into West India

Dock Road. The uproar of the commercial thoroughfare was left far

behind. Dark, narrow streets and sinister-looking alleys lay right and

left of them, and into one of the narrowest and least inviting of all

Mareno turned the car.

In the dimly-lighted doorway of a corner house the figure of a Chinaman

showed as a motionless silhouette.

“Oh!” sighed Mollie Gretna rapturously, “a Chinaman! I begin to feel

deliciously sinful!”

The car came to a standstill.

“We get out here and walk,” said Sir Lucien. “It would not be wise to

drive further. Mareno will deliver our baggage by hand presently.”

“But we shall all be murdered,” cried Mollie, “murdered in cold blood!

I am dreadfully frightened!”

“Something of the kind is quite likely,” drawled Sir Lucien, “if you

draw attention to our presence in the neighborhood so deliberately.

Walk ahead, Kilfane, with Mollie. Rita and I will follow at a discreet

distance. Leave the door ajar.”

Temporarily subdued by Pyne’s icy manner, Miss Gretna became silent,

and went on ahead with Cyrus Kilfane, who had preserved an almost

unbroken silence throughout the journey. Rita and Sir Lucien followed

slowly.

“What a creepy neighborhood,” whispered Rita. “Look! Someone is

standing in that doorway over there, watching us.”

“Take no notice,” he replied. “A cat could not pass along this street

unobserved by the Chinese, but they will not interfere with us provided

we do not interfere with them.”

Kilfane had turned to the right into a narrow court, at the entrance to

which stood an iron pillar. As he and his companion passed under the

lamp in a rusty bracket which projected from the wall, they vanished

into a place of shadows. There was a ceaseless chorus of distant

machinery, and above it rose the grinding and rattling solo of a steam

winch. Once a siren hooted apparently quite near them, and looking

upward at a tangled, indeterminable mass which overhung the street at

this point, Rita suddenly recognized it for a ship’s bow-sprit.

“Why,” she said, “we are right on the bank of the river!”

“Not quite,” answered Pyne. “We are skirting a dock basin. We are

nearly at our destination.”

Passing in turn under the lamp, they entered the narrow court, and from

a doorway immediately on the left a faint light shone out upon the wet

pavement. Pyne pushed the door fully open and held it for Rita to

enter. As she did so:

“Hello! hello!” croaked a harsh voice. “Number one p’lice chop, lo! Sin

Sin Wa!”

The uncanny cracked voice proceeded to give an excellent imitation of a

police whistle, and concluded with that of the clicking of castanets.

“Shut the door, Lucy,” came the murmurous tones of Kilfane from the

gloom of the stuffy little room, in the centre of which stood a stove

wherefrom had proceeded the dim light shining out upon the pavement.

“Light up, Sin Sin.”

“Sin Sin Wa! Sin Sin Wa!” shrieked the voice, and again came the

rattling of imaginary castanets. “Smartest leg in Buenos Ayres—Buenos

Ayres—p’lice chop—p’lice chop, lo!”

“Oh,” whispered Mollie Gretna, in the darkness, “I believe I am going

to scream!”

Pyne closed the door, and a dimly discernible figure on the opposite

side of the room stooped and opened a little cupboard in which was a

lighted ship’s lantern. The lantern being lifted out and set upon a

rough table near the stove, it became possible to view the apartment

and its occupants.

It was a small, low-ceiled place, having two doors, one opening upon

the street and the other upon a narrow, uncarpeted passage. The window

was boarded up. The ceiling had once been whitewashed and a few limp,

dark fragments of paper still adhering to the walls proved that some

forgotten decorator had exercised his art upon them in the past. A

piece of well-worn matting lay upon the floor, and there were two

chairs, a table, and a number of empty tea-chests in the room.

Upon one of the tea-chests placed beside the cupboard which had

contained the lantern a Chinaman was seated. His skin was of so light a

yellow color as to approximate to dirty white, and his face was

pock-marked from neck to crown. He wore long, snake-like moustaches,

which hung down below his chin. They grew from the extreme outer edges

of his upper lip, the centre of which, usually the most hirsute, was

hairless as the lip of an infant. He possessed the longest and thickest

pigtail which could possibly grow upon a human scalp, and his left eye

was permanently closed, so that a smile which adorned his extraordinary

countenance seemed to lack the sympathy of his surviving eye, which,

oblique, beady, held no mirth in its glittering depths.

The garments of the one-eyed Chinaman, who sat complacently smiling at

the visitors, consisted of a loose blouse, blue trousers tucked into

grey socks, and a pair of those native, thick-soled slippers which

suggest to a Western critic the acme of discomfort. A raven, black as a

bird of ebony, perched upon the Chinaman’s shoulder, head a-tilt,

surveying the newcomers with a beady, glittering left eye which

strangely resembled the beady, glittering right eye of the Chinaman.

For, singular, uncanny circumstance, this was a one-eyed raven which

sat upon the shoulder of his one-eyed master!

Mollie Gretna uttered a stifled cry. “Oh!” she whispered. “I knew I was

going to scream!”

The eye of Sin Sin Wa turned momentarily in her direction, but

otherwise he did not stir a muscle.

“Are you ready for us, Sin?” asked Sir Lucien.

“All ready. Lola hate gotchee topside loom ready,” replied the Chinaman

in a soft, crooning voice.

“Go ahead, Kilfane,” directed Sir Lucien.

He glanced at Rita, who was standing very near him, surveying the evil

little room and its owner with ill-concealed disgust.

“This is merely the foyer, Rita,” he said, smiling slightly. “The state

apartments are upstairs and in the adjoining house.”

“Oh,” she murmured—and no more.

Kilfane and Mollie Gretna were passing through the inner doorway, and

Mollie turned.

“Isn’t it loathsomely delightful?” she cried.

“Smartest leg in Buenos Ayres!” shrieked the raven. “Sin Sin, Sin Sin!”

Uttering a frightened exclamation, Mollie disappeared along the

passage. Sir Lucien indicated to Rita that she was to follow; and he,

passing through last of the party, closed the door behind him.

Sin Sin Wa never moved, and the raven, settling down upon the

Chinaman’s shoulder, closed his serviceable eye.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE BLACK SMOKE

Up an uncarpeted stair Cyrus Kilfane led the party, and into a kind of

lumber-room lighted by a tin oil lamp and filled to overflowing with

heterogeneous and unsavory rubbish. Here were garments, male and

female, no less than five dilapidated bowler hats, more tea-chests,

broken lamps, tattered fragments of cocoanut-matting, steel bed-laths

and straw mattresses, ruins of chairs—the whole diffusing an

indescribably unpleasant odor.

Opening a cupboard door, Kilfane revealed a number of pendent, ragged

garments, and two more bowler hats. Holding the garments aside, he

banged upon the back of the cupboard—three blows, a pause, and then two

blows.

Following a brief interval, during which even Mollie Gretna was held

silent by the strangeness of the proceedings.

“Who is it?” inquired a muffled voice.

“Cy and the crowd,” answered Kilfane.

Thereupon ensued a grating noise, and hats and garments swung suddenly

backward, revealing a doorway in which Mrs. Sin stood framed. She wore

a Japanese kimona of embroidered green silk and a pair of green and

gold brocaded slippers which possessed higher heels than Rita

remembered to have seen even Mrs. Sin mounted upon before. Her ankles

were bare, and it was impossible to determine in what manner she was

clad beneath the kimona. Undoubtedly she had a certain dark beauty, of

a bold, abandoned type.

“Come right in,” she directed. “Mind your head, Lucy.”

The quartette filed through into a carpeted corridor, and Mrs. Sin

reclosed the false back of the cupboard, which, viewed from the other

side, proved to be a door fitted into a recess in the corridor of the

adjoining house. This recess ceased to exist when a second and heavier

door was closed upon the first.

“You know,” murmured Kilfane, “old Sin Sin has his uses, Lola. Those

doors are perfectly made.”

“Pooh!” scoffed the woman, with a flash of her dark eyes; “he is half a

ship’s carpenter and half an ape!”

She moved along the passage, her arm linked in that of Sir Lucien. The

others followed, and:

“Is she truly _married_ to that dreadful Chinaman?” whispered Mollie

Gretna.

“Yes, I believe so,” murmured Kilfane. “She is known as Mrs. Sin Sin

Wa.”

“Oh!” Mollie’s eyes opened widely. “I almost envy her! I have read that

Chinamen tie their wives to beams in the roof and lash them with

leather thongs until they swoon. I could die for a man who lashed me

with leather thongs. Englishmen are so ridiculously gentle to women.”

Opening a door on the left of the corridor, Mrs. Sin displayed a room

screened off into three sections. One shaded lamp high up near the

ceiling served to light all the cubicles, which were heated by small

charcoal stoves. These cubicles were identical in shape and

appointment, each being draped with quaint Chinese tapestry and

containing rugs, a silken divan, an armchair, and a low, Eastern table.

“Choose for yourself,” said Mrs. Sin, turning to Rita and Mollie

Gretna. “Nobody else come tonight. You two in this room, eh? Next door

each other for company.”

She withdrew, leaving the two girls together. Mollie clasped her hands

ecstatically.

“Oh, my dear!” she said. “What do you think of it all?”

“Well,” confessed Rita, looking about her, “personally I feel rather

nervous.”

“My dear!” cried Mollie. “_I_ am simply quivering with delicious

terror!”

Rita became silent again, looking about her, and listening. The harsh

voice of the Cuban-Jewess could be heard from a neighboring room, but

otherwise a perfect stillness reigned in the house of Sin Sin Wa. She

remembered that Mrs. Sin had said, “It is quiet—so quiet.”

“The idea of undressing and reclining on these divans in real oriental

fashion,” declared Mollie, giggling, “makes me feel that I am an

odalisque already. I have dreamed that I was an odalisque, dear—after

smoking, you know. It was heavenly. At least, I don’t know that

‘heavenly’ is quite the right word.”

And now that evil spirit of abandonment came to Rita—communicated to

her, possibly, by her companion. Dread, together with a certain sense

of moral reluctance, departed, and she began to enjoy the adventure at

last. It was as though something in the faintly perfumed atmosphere of

the place had entered into her blood, driving out reserve and stifling

conscience.

When Sir Lucien reappeared she ran to him excitedly, her charming face

flushed and her eyes sparkling.

“Oh, Lucy,” she cried, “how long will our things be? I’m keen to

smoke!”

His jaw hardened, and when he spoke it was with a drawl more marked

than usual.

“Mareno will be here almost immediately,” he answered.

The tone constituted a rebuff, and Rita’s coquetry deserted her,

leaving her mortified and piqued. She stared at Pyne, biting her lip.

“You don’t like me tonight,” she declared. “If I look ugly, it’s your

fault; you told me to wear this horrid old costume!”

He laughed in a forced, unnatural way.

“You are quite well aware that you could never look otherwise than

maddeningly beautiful,” he said harshly. “Do you want me to recall the

fact to you again that you are shortly to be Monte Irvin’s wife—or

should you prefer me to remind you that you have declined to be mine?”

Turning slowly, he walked away, but:

“Oh, Lucy!” whispered Rita.

He paused, looking back.

“I know now why you didn’t want me to come,” she said. “I—I’m sorry.”

The hard look left Sir Lucien’s face immediately and was replaced by a

curious, indefinable expression, an expression which rarely appeared

there.

“You only know half the reason,” he replied softly.

At that moment Mrs. Sin came in, followed by Mareno carrying two

dressing-cases. Mollie Gretna had run off to Kilfane, and could be

heard talking loudly in another room; but, called by Mrs. Sin, she now

returned, wide-eyed with excitement.

Mrs. Sin cast a lightning glance at Sir Lucien, and then addressed

Rita.

“Which of these three rooms you choose?” she asked, revealing her teeth

in one of those rapid smiles which were mirthless as the eternal smile

of Sin Sin Wa.

“Oh,” said Rita hurriedly, “I don’t know. Which do you want, Mollie?”

“I love this end one!” cried Mollie. “It has cushions which simply reek

of oriental voluptuousness and cruelty. It reminds me of a delicious

book I have been reading called _Musk, Hashish, and Blood_.”

“Hashish!” said Mrs. Sin, and laughed harshly. “One night you shall eat

the hashish, and then—”

She snapped her fingers, glancing from Rita to Pyne.

“Oh, really? Is that a promise?” asked Mollie eagerly.

“No, no!” answered Mrs. Sin. “It is a threat!”

Something in the tone of her voice as she uttered the last four words

in mock dramatic fashion caused Mollie and Rita to stare at one another

questioningly. That suddenly altered tone had awakened an elusive

memory, but neither of them could succeed in identifying it.

Mareno, a lean, swarthy fellow, his foreign cast of countenance

accentuated by close-cut side-whiskers, deposited Miss Gretna’s case in

the cubicle which she had selected and, Rita pointing to that adjoining

it, he disposed the second case beside the divan and departed silently.

As the sound of a closing door reached them:

“You notice how quiet it is?” asked Mrs. Sin.

“Yes,” replied Rita. “It is extraordinarily quiet.”

“This an empty house—‘To let,’” explained Mrs. Sin. “We watch it stay

so. Sin the landlord, see? Windows all boarded up and everything

padded. No sound outside, no sound inside. Sin call it the ‘House of a

Hundred Raptures,’ after the one he have in Buenos Ayres.”

The voice of Cyrus Kilfane came, querulous, from a neighboring room.

“Lola, my dear, I am almost ready.”

“Ho!” Mrs. Sin uttered a deep-toned laugh. “He is a glutton for

_chandu!_ I am coming, Cy.”

She turned and went out. Sir Lucien paused for a moment, permitting her

to pass, and:

“Good night, Rita,” he said in a low voice. “Happy dreams!”

He moved away.

“Lucy!” called Rita softly.

“Yes?”

“Is it—is it really safe here?”

Pyne glanced over his shoulder towards the retreating figure of Mrs.

Sin, then:

“I shall be awake,” he replied. “I would rather you had not come, but

since you are here you must go through with it.” He glanced again along

the narrow passage created by the presence of the partitions, and spoke

in a voice lower yet. “You have never really trusted me, Rita. You were

wise. But you can trust me now. Good night, dear.”

He walked out of the room and along the carpeted corridor to a little

apartment at the back of the house, furnished comfortably but in

execrably bad taste. A cheerful fire was burning in the grate, the flue

of which had been ingeniously diverted by Sin Sin Wa so that the smoke

issued from a chimney of the adjoining premises. On the mantelshelf,

which was garishly draped, were a number of photographs of Mrs. Sin in

Spanish dancing costume.

Pyne seated himself in an armchair and lighted a cigarette. Except for

the ticking of a clock the room was silent as a padded cell. Upon a

little Moorish table beside a deep, low settee lay a complete

opium-smoking outfit.

Lolling back in the chair and crossing his legs, Sir Lucien became lost

in abstraction, and he was thus seated when, some ten minutes later,

Mrs. Sin came in.

“Ah!” she said, her harsh voice softened to a whisper. “I wondered. So

you wait to smoke with me?” Pyne slowly turned his head, staring at her

as she stood in the doorway, one hand resting on her hip and her

shapely figure boldly outlined by the kimono.

“No,” he replied. “I don’t want to smoke. Are they all provided for?”

Mrs. Sin shook her head.

“Not Cy,” she said. “Two pipes are nothing to him. He will need two

more—perhaps three. But you are not going to smoke?”

“Not tonight, Lola.”

She frowned, and was about to speak, when:

“Lola, my dear,” came a distant, querulous murmur. “Give me another

pipe.”

Sin tossed her head, turned, and went out again. Sir Lucien lighted

another cigarette. When finally the woman came back, Cyrus Kilfane had

presumably attained the opium-smoker’s paradise, for Lola closed the

door and seated herself upon the arm of Sir Lucien’s chair. She bent

down, resting her dusky cheek against his.

“You smoke with me?” she whispered coaxingly.

“No, Lola, not tonight,” he said, patting her jewel-laden hand and

looking aside into the dark eyes which were watching him intently.

Mrs. Sin became silent for a few moments.

“Something has changed in you,” she said at last. “You are

different—lately.”

“Indeed!” drawled Sir Lucien. “Possibly you are right. Others have said

the same thing.”

“You have lots of money now. Your investments have been good. You want

to become respectable, eh?”

Pyne smiled sardonically.

“Respectability is a question of appearance,” he replied. “The change

to which you refer would seem to go deeper.”

“Very likely,” murmured Mrs. Sin. “I know why you don’t smoke. You have

promised your pretty little friend that you will stay awake and see

that nobody tries to cut her sweet white throat.”

Sir Lucien listened imperturbably.

“She is certainly nervous,” he admitted coolly. “I may add that I am

sorry I brought her here.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Sin, her voice rising half a note. “Then why do you

bring her to the House?”

“She made the arrangement herself, and I took the easier path. I am

considering your interests as much as my own, Lola. She is about to

marry Monte Irvin, and if his suspicions were aroused he is quite

capable of digging down to the ‘Hundred Raptures.’”

“You brought her to Kazmah’s.”

“She was not at that time engaged to Irvin.”

“Ah, I see. And now everybody says you are changed. Yes, she is a

charming friend.”

Pyne looked up into the half-veiled dark eyes.

“She never has been and never can be any more to me, Lola,” he said.

At those words, designed to placate, the fire which smouldered in

Lola’s breast burst into sudden flame. She leapt to her feet,

confronting Sir Lucien.

“I know! I know!” she cried harshly. “Do you think I am blind? If she

had been like any of the others, do you suppose it would have mattered

to _me?_ But you _respect_ her—you _respect_ her!”

Eyes blazing and hands clenched, she stood before him, a woman mad with

jealousy, not of a successful rival but of a respected one. She

quivered with passion, and Pyne, perceiving his mistake too late, only

preserved his wonted composure by dint of a great effort. He grasped

Lola and drew her down on to the arm of the chair by sheer force, for

she resisted savagely. His ready wit had been at work, and:

“What a little spitfire you are,” he said, firmly grasping her arms,

which felt rigid to the touch. “Surely you can understand? Rita amused

me, at first. Then, when I found she was going to marry Monte Irvin I

didn’t bother about her any more. In fact, because I like and admire

Irvin, I tried to keep her away from the dope. We don’t want trouble

with a man of that type, who has all sorts of influence. Besides, Monte

Irvin is a good fellow.”

Gradually, as he spoke, the rigid arms relaxed and the lithe body

ceased to quiver. Finally, Lola sank back against his shoulder,

sighing.

“I don’t believe you,” she whispered. “You are telling me lies. But you

have always told me lies; one more does not matter, I suppose. How

strong you are. You have hurt my wrists. You will smoke with me now?”

For a moment Pyne hesitated, then:

“Very well,” he said. “Go and lie down. I will roast the _chandu_.”

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE DREAM OF SIN SIN WA

For a habitual opium-smoker to abstain when the fumes of _chandu_

actually reach his nostrils is a feat of will-power difficult

adequately to appraise. An ordinary tobacco smoker cannot remain for

long among those who are enjoying the fragrant weed without catching

the infection and beginning to smoke also. Twice to redouble the lure

of my lady Nicotine would be but loosely to estimate the seductiveness

of the Spirit of the Poppy; yet Sir Lucien Pyne smoked one pipe with

Mrs. Sin, and perceiving her to be already in a state of dreamy

abstraction, loaded a second, but in his own case with a fragment of

cigarette stump which smouldered in a tray upon the table. His was that

rare type of character whose possessor remains master of his vices.

Following the fourth pipe—Pyne, after the second, had ceased to trouble

to repeat his feat of legerdemain, “The sleep” claimed Mrs. Sin. Her

languorous eyes closed, and her face assumed that rapt expression of

Buddha-like beatitude which Rita had observed at Kilfane’s flat.

According to some scientific works on the subject, sleep is not

invariably induced in the case of Europeans by the use of _chandu_.

Loosely, this is true. But this type of European never becomes an

habitué; the habitué always sleeps. That dream-world to which opium

alone holds the key becomes the real world “for the delights of which

the smoker gladly resigns all mundane interests.” The exiled Chinaman

returns again to the sampan of his boyhood, floating joyously on the

waters of some willow-lined canal; the Malay hears once more the mystic

whispering in the mangrove swamps, or scents the fragrance of nutmeg

and cinnamon in the far-off golden Chersonese. Mrs. Sin doubtless lived

anew the triumphs of earlier days in Buenos Ayres, when she had been La

Belle Lola, the greatly beloved, and before she had met and married Sin

Sin Wa. _Chandu_ gives much, but claims all, and he who would open the

poppy-gates must close the door of ambition and bid farewell to

manhood.

Sir Lucien stood looking at the woman, and although one pipe had

affected him but slightly, his imagination momentarily ran riot and a

pageant of his life swept before him, so that his jaw grew hard and

grim and he clenched his hands convulsively. An unbroken stillness

prevailed in the opium-house of Sin Sin Wa.

Recovering from his fit of abstraction, Pyne, casting a final keen

glance at the sleeper, walked out of the room. He looked along the

carpeted corridor in the direction of the cubicles, paused, and then

opened the heavy door masking the recess behind the cupboard. Next

opening the false back of the cupboard, he passed through to the

lumber-room beyond, and partly closed the second door.

He descended the stair and went along the passage; but ere he reached

the door of the room on the ground floor:

“Hello! hello! Sin Sin! Sin Sin Wa!” croaked the raven. “Number one

p’lice chop, lo!” The note of a police whistle followed, rendered with

uncanny fidelity.

Pyne entered the room. It presented the same aspect as when he had left

it. The ship’s lantern stood upon the table, and Sin Sin Wa sat upon

the tea-chest, the great black bird perched on his shoulder. The fire

in the stove had burned lower, and its downcast glow revealed less

mercilessly the dirty condition of the floor. Otherwise no one,

nothing, seemed to have been disturbed. Pyne leaned against the

doorpost, taking out and lighting a cigarette. The eye of Sin Sin Wa

glanced sideways at him.

“Well, Sin Sin,” said Sir Lucien, dropping a match and extinguishing it

under his foot, “you see I am not smoking _chandu_ tonight.”

“No smokee,” murmured the Chinaman. “Velly good stuff.”

“Yes, the stuff is all right, Sin.”

“Number one proper,” crooned Sin Sin Wa, and relapsed into smiling

silence.

“Number one p’lice,” croaked the raven sleepily. “Smartest—” He even

attempted the castanets imitation, but was overcome by drowsiness.

For a while Sir Lucien stood watching the singular pair and smiling in

his ironical fashion. The motive which had prompted him to leave the

neighboring house and to seek the companionship of Sin Sin Wa was so

obscure and belonged so peculiarly to the superdelicacies of chivalry,

that already he was laughing at himself. But, nevertheless, in this

house and not in its secret annex of a Hundred Raptures he designed to

spend the night. Presently:

“Hon’lable p’lice patrol come ’long plenty soon,” murmured Sin Sin Wa.

“Indeed?” said Sir Lucien, glancing at his wristwatch. “The door is

open above.”

Sin Sin Wa raised one yellow forefinger, without moving either hand

from the knee upon which it rested, and shook it slightly to and fro.

“Allee lightee,” he murmured. “No bhobbery. Allee peaceful fellers.”

“Will they want to come in?”

“Wantchee dlink,” replied Sin Sin Wa.

“Oh, I see. If I go out into the passage it will be all right?”

“Allee lightee.”

Even as he softly crooned the words came a heavy squelch of rubbers

upon the wet pavement outside, followed by a rapping on the door. Sin

Sin Wa glanced aside at Sir Lucien, and the latter immediately

withdrew, partly closing the door. The Chinaman shuffled across and

admitted two constables. The raven, remaining perched upon his

shoulder, shrieked, “Smartest leg in Buenos Ayres,” and, fully

awakened, rattled invisible castanets.

The police strode into the stuffy little room without ceremony, a pair

of burly fellows, fresh-complexioned, and genial as men are wont to be

who have reached a welcome resting-place on a damp and cheerless night.

They stood by the stove, warming their hands; and one of them stooped,

took up the little poker, and stirred the embers to a brighter glow.

“Been havin’ a pipe, Sin?” he asked, winking at his companion. “I can

smell something like opium!”

“No smokee opium,” murmured Sin Sin Wa complacently. “Smokee Woodbine.”

“Ho, ho!” laughed the other constable. “I _don’t_ think.”

“You likee tly one piecee pipee one time?” inquired the Chinaman.

“Gotchee fliend makee smokee.”

The man who had poked the fire slapped his companion on the back.

“Now’s your chance, Jim!” he cried. “You always said you’d like to have

a cut at it.”

“H’m!” muttered the other. “A ‘double’ o’ that fifteen over-proof

Jamaica of yours, Sin, would hit me in a tender spot tonight.”

“Lum?” murmured Sin Sin blandly. “No hate got.”

He resumed his seat on the tea-chest, and the raven muttered sleepily,

“Sin Sin—Sin.”

“H’m!” repeated the constable.

He raised the skirt of his heavy top-coat, and from his trouser-pocket

drew out a leather purse. The eye of Sin Sin Wa remained fixed upon a

distant corner of the room. From the purse the constable took a

shilling, ringing it loudly upon the table.

“Double rum, miss, please!” he said, facetiously. “There’s no treason

allowed nowadays, so my pal’s—”

“I stood _yours_ last night Jim, anyway!” cried the other, grinning.

“Go on, stump up!”

Jim rang a second shilling on the table.

“_Two_ double rums!” he called.

Sin Sin Wa reached a long arm into the little cupboard beside him and

withdrew a bottle and a glass. Leaning forward he placed bottle and

glass on the table, and adroitly swept the coins into his yellow palm.

“Number one p’lice chop,” croaked the raven.

“You’re right, old bird!” said Jim, pouring out a stiff peg of the

spirit and disposing of it at a draught. “We should freeze to death on

this blasted riverside beat if it wasn’t for Sin Sin.”

He measured out a second portion for his companion, and the latter

drank the raw spirit off as though it had been ale, replaced the glass

on the table, and having adjusted his belt and lantern in that

characteristic way which belongs exclusively to members of the

Metropolitan Police Force, turned and departed.

“Good night, Sin,” he said, opening the door.

“So-long,” murmured the Chinaman.

“Good night, old bird,” cried Jim, following his colleague.

“So-long.”

The door closed, and Sin Sin Wa, shuffling across, rebolted it. As Sir

Lucien came out from his hiding-place Sin Sin Wa returned to his seat

on the tea-chest, first putting the glass, unwashed, and the rum bottle

back in the cupboard.

To the ordinary observer the Chinaman presents an inscrutable mystery.

His seemingly unemotional character and his racial inability to express

his thoughts intelligibly in any European tongue stamp him as a

creature apart, and one whom many are prone erroneously to classify

very low in the human scale and not far above the ape. Sir Lucien

usually spoke to Sin Sin Wa in English, and the other replied in that

weird jargon known as “pidgin.” But the silly Sin Wa who murmured

gibberish and the Sin Sin Wa who could converse upon many and curious

subjects in his own language were two different beings—as Sir Lucien

was aware. Now, as the one-eyed Chinaman resumed his seat and the

one-eyed raven sank into slumber, Pyne suddenly spoke in Chinese, a

tongue which he understood as it is understood by few Englishmen; that

strange, sibilant speech which is alien from all Western conceptions of

oral intercourse as the Chinese institutions and ideals are alien from

those of the rest of the civilized world.

“So you make a profit on your rum, Sin Sin Wa,” he said ironically, “at

the same time that you keep in the good graces of the police?”

Sin Sin Wa’s expression underwent a subtle change at the sound of his

native language. He moved his hands and became slightly animated.

“A great people of the West, most honorable sir,” he replied in the

pure mandarin dialect, “claim credit for having said that ‘business is

business.’ Yet he who thus expressed himself was a Chinaman.”

“You surprise me.”

“The wise man must often find occasion for surprise most honorable

sir.”

Sir Lucien lighted a cigarette.

“I sometimes wonder, Sin Sin Wa,” he said slowly, “what your aim in

life can be. Your father was neither a ship’s carpenter nor a

shopkeeper. This I know. Your age I do not know and cannot guess, but

you are no longer young. You covet wealth. For what purpose, Sin Sin

Wa?”

Standing behind the Chinaman, Sir Lucien’s dark face, since he made no

effort to hide his feelings, revealed the fact that he attached to this

seemingly abstract discussion a greater importance than his tone of

voice might have led one to suppose. Sin Sin Wa remained silent for

some time, then:

“Most honorable sir,” he replied, “when I have smoked the opium, before

my eyes—for in dreams I have two—a certain picture arises. It is that

of a farm in the province of Ho-Nan. Beyond the farm stretch

paddy-fields as far as one can see. Men and women and boys and girls

move about the farm, happy in their labors, and far, far away dwell the

mountain gods, who send the great Yellow River sweeping down through

the valleys where the poppy is in bloom. It is to possess that farm,

most honorable sir, and those paddy-fields that I covet wealth.”

“And in spite of the opium which you consume, you have never lost sight

of this ideal?”

“Never.”

“But—your wife?”

Sin Sin Wa performed a curious shrugging movement, peculiarly racial.

“A man may not always have the same wife,” he replied cryptically. “The

honorable wife who now attends to my requirements, laboring unselfishly

in my miserable house and scorning the love of other men as she has

always done—and as an honorable and upright woman is expected to do—may

one day be gathered to her ancestors. A man never knows. Or she may

leave me. I am not a good husband. It may be that some little maiden of

Ho-Nan, mild-eyed like the musk-deer and modest and tender, will

consent to minister to my old age. Who knows?”

Sir Lucien blew a thick cloud of tobacco smoke into the room, and:

“She will never love you, Sin Sin Wa,” he said, almost sadly. “She will

come to your house only to cheat you.”

Sin Sin Wa repeated the eloquent shrug.

“We have a saying in Ho-Nan, most honorable sir,” he answered, “and it

is this: ‘He who has tasted the poppy-cup has nothing to ask of love.’

She will cook for me, this little one, and stroke my brow when I am

weary, and light my pipe. My eye will rest upon her with pleasure. It

is all I ask.”

There came a soft rapping on the outer door—three raps, a pause, and

then two raps. The raven opened his beady eye.

“Sin Sin Wa,” he croaked, “number one p’lice chop, lo!”

Sin Sin Wa glanced aside at Sir Lucien.

“The traffic. A consignment of opium,” he said. “Sam Tûk calls.”

Sir Lucien consulted his watch, and:

“I should like to go with you, Sin Sin Wa,” he said. “Would it be safe

to leave the house—with the upper door unlocked?”

Sin Sin Wa glanced at him again.

“All are sleeping, most honorable sir?”

“All.”

“I will lock the room above and the outer door. It is safe.”

He raised a yellow hand, and the raven stepped sedately from his

shoulder on to his wrist.

“Come, Tling-a-Ling,” crooned Sin Sin Wa, “you go to bed, my little

black friend, and one day you, too, shall see the paddy-fields of

Ho-Nan.”

Opening the useful cupboard, he stooped, and in hopped the raven. Sin

Sin Wa closed the cupboard, and stepped out into the passage.

“I will bring you a coat and a cap and scarf,” he said. “Your

magnificent apparel would be out of place among the low pigs who wait

in my other disgusting cellar to rob me. Forgive my improper absence

for one moment, most honorable sir.”

CHAPTER XIX.

THE TRAFFIC

Sir Lucien came out into the alley wearing a greasy cloth cap pulled

down over his eyes and an old overall, the collar turned up about a red

woollen muffler which enveloped the lower part of his face. The odor of

the outfit was disgusting, but this man’s double life had brought him

so frequently in contact with all forms of uncleanness, including that

of the Far East, compared with which the dirt of the West is hygienic,

that he suffered it without complaint.

A Chinese “boy” of indeterminable age, wearing a slop-shop suit and a

cap, was waiting outside the door, and when Sin Sin Wa appeared,

carefully locking up, he muttered something rapidly in his own sibilant

language.

Sin Sin Wa made no reply. To his indoor attire he had added a

pea-jacket and a bowler hat; and the oddly assorted trio set off

westward, following the bank of the Thames in the direction of

Limehouse Basin. The narrow, ill-lighted streets were quite deserted,

but from the river and the riverside arose that ceaseless jangle of

industry which belongs to the great port of London. On the Surrey shore

whistles shrieked, and endless moving chains sent up their monstrous

clangor into the night. Human voices sometimes rose above the din of

machinery.

In silence the three pursued their way, crossing inlets and circling

around basins dimly divined, turning to the right into a lane flanked

by high, eyeless walls, and again to the left, finally to emerge nearly

opposite a dilapidated gateway giving access to a small wharf, on the

rickety gates bills were posted announcing, “This Wharf to Let.” The

annexed building appeared to be a mere shell. To the right again they

turned, and once more to the left, halting before a two-story brick

house which had apparently been converted into a barber’s shop. In one

of the grimy windows were some loose packets of cigarettes, a

soapmaker’s advertisement, and a card:

SAM TÛK

BARBER

Opening the door with a key which he carried, the boy admitted Sir

Lucien and Sin Sin Wa to the dimly-lighted interior of a room the

pretensions of which to be regarded as a shaving saloon were supported

by the presence of two chairs, a filthy towel, and a broken mug. Sin

Sin Wa shuffled across to another door, and, followed by Sir Lucien,

descended a stone stair to a little cellar apparently intended for

storing coal. A tin lamp stood upon the bottom step.

Removing the lamp from the step, Sin Sin Wa set it on the cellar floor,

which was black with coal dust, then closed and bolted the door. A heap

of nondescript litter lay piled in a corner of the cellar. This Sin Sin

Wa disturbed sufficiently to reveal a movable slab in the roughly paved

floor. It was so ingeniously concealed by coal dust that one who had

sought it unaided must have experienced great difficulty in detecting

it. Furthermore, it could only be raised in the following manner:

A piece of strong iron wire, which lay among the other litter, was

inserted in a narrow slot, apparently a crack in the stone. About an

inch of the end of the wire being bent outward to form a right angle,

when the seemingly useless piece of scrap-iron had been thrust through

the slab and turned, it formed a handle by means of which the trap

could be raised.

Again Sin Sin Wa took up the lamp, placing it at the brink of the

opening revealed. A pair of wooden steps rested below, and Sir Lucien,

who evidently was no stranger to the establishment, descended

awkwardly, since there was barely room for a big man to pass. He found

himself in the mouth of a low passage, unpaved and shored up with rough

timbers in the manner of a mine-working. Sin Sin Wa followed with the

lamp, drawing the slab down into its place behind him.

Stooping forward and bending his knees, Sir Lucien made his way along

the passage, the Chinaman following. It was of considerable length, and

terminated before a strong door bearing a massive lock. Sin Sin Wa

reached over the stooping figure of Sir Lucien and unfastened the lock.

The two emerged in a kind of dug-out. Part of it had evidently been in

existence before the ingenious Sin Sin Wa had exercised his skill upon

it, and was of solid brickwork and stone-paved; palpably a storage

vault. But it had been altered to suit the Chinaman’s purpose, and one

end—that in which the passage came out—was timbered. It contained a

long counter and many shelves; also a large oil-stove and a number of

pots, pans, and queer-looking jars. On the counter stood a ship’s

lantern. The shelves were laden with packages and bottles. Behind the

counter sat a venerable and perfectly bald Chinaman. The only trace of

hair upon his countenance grew on the shrunken upper lip—mere wisps of

white down. His skin was shrivelled like that of a preserved fig, and

he wore big horn-rimmed spectacles. He never once exhibited the

slightest evidence of life, and his head and face, and the horn-rimmed

spectacles, might quite easily have passed for those of an unwrapped

mummy. This was Sam Tûk.

Bending over a box upon which rested a canvas-bound package was a burly

seaman engaged in unknotting the twine with which the canvas was kept

in place. As Sin Sin Wa and Sir Lucien came in he looked up, revealing

a red-bearded, ugly face, very puffy under the eyes.

“Wotcher, Sin Sin!” he said gruffly. “Who’s your long pal?”

“Friend,” murmured Sin Sin Wa complacently. “You gotchee _pukka_ stuff

thisee time, George?”

“I allus brings the _pukka_ stuff!” roared the seaman, ceasing to

fumble with the knots and glaring at Sin Sin Wa. “Wotcher mean—_pukka_

stuff?”

“Gotchee no use for bran,” murmured Sin Sin Wa. “Gotchee no use for

tin-tack. Gotchee no use for glue.”

“Bran!” roared the man, his glance and pose very menacing. “Tin-tacks

and glue! Who the flamin’ ’ell ever tried to sell _you_ glue?”

“Me only wantchee lemindee you,” said Sin Sin Wa. “No pidgin.”

“George” glared for a moment, breathing heavily; then he stooped and

resumed his task, Sin Sin Wa and Sir Lucien watching him in silence. A

sound of lapping water was faintly audible.

Opening the canvas wrappings, the man began to take out and place upon

the counter a number of reddish balls of “leaf” opium, varying in

weight from about eight ounces to a pound or more.

“H’m!” murmured Sin Sin Wa. “Smyrna stuff.”

From a pocket of his pea-jacket he drew a long bodkin, and taking up

one of the largest balls he thrust the bodkin in and then withdrew it,

the steel stained a coffee color. Sin Sin Wa smelled and tasted the

substance adhering to the bodkin, weighed the ball reflectively in his

yellow palm, and then set it aside. He took up a second, whereupon:

“’Alf a mo’, guvnor!” cried the seaman furiously. “D’you think I’m

going to wait ’ere while you prods about in all the blasted lot? It’s

damn near high tide—I shan’t get out. ’Alf time! Savvy? Shove it on the

scales!”

Sin Sin Wa shook his head.

“Too muchee slick. Too muchee bhobbery,” he murmured. “Sin Sin Wa

gotchee sabby what him catchee buy or no pidgin.”

“What’s the game?” inquired George menacingly. “Don’t you know a cake

o’ Smyrna when you smells it?”

“No sabby lead chop till ploddem withee dipper,” explained the

Chinaman, imperturbably.

“Lead!” shouted the man. “There ain’t no bloody lead in ’em!”

“H’m,” murmured Sin Sin Wa smilingly. “So fashion, eh? All velly

proper.”

He calmly inserted the bodkin in the second cake; seemed to meet with

some obstruction, and laid the ball down upon the counter. From beneath

his jacket he took out a clasp-knife attached to a steel chain.

Undeterred by a savage roar from the purveyor, he cut the sticky mass

in half, and digging his long nails into one of the halves, brought out

two lead shots. He directed a glance of his beady eye upon the man.

“Bloody liar,” he murmured sweetly. “Lobber.”

“Who’s a robber?” shouted George, his face flushing darkly, and

apparently not resenting the earlier innuendo; “Who’s a robber?”

“One sarcee Smyrna feller packee stuff so fashion,” murmured Sin Sin

Wa. “Thief-feller lobbee poor sailorman.”

George jerked his peaked cap from his head, revealing a tangle of

unkempt red hair. He scratched his skull with savage vigor.

“Blimey!” he said pathetically. “’Ere’s a go! I been done brown,

guv’nor.”

“Lough luck,” murmured Sin Sin Wa, and resumed his examination of the

cakes of opium.

The man watched him now in silence, only broken by exclamations of

“Blimey” and “Flaming hell” when more shot was discovered. The tests

concluded:

“Gotchee some more?” asked Sin Sin Wa.

From the canvas wrapping George took out and tossed on the counter a

square packet wrapped in grease-paper.

“H’m,” murmured Sin Sin Wa, “Patna. Where you catchee?”

“Off of a lascar,” growled the man.

The cake of Indian opium was submitted to the same careful scrutiny as

that which the balls of Turkish had already undergone, but the Patna

opium proved to be unadulterated. Reaching over the counter Sin Sin Wa

produced a pair of scales, and, watched keenly by George, weighed the

leaf and then the cake.

“Ten-six Smyrna; one ’leben Patna,” muttered Sin Sin Wa. “You catchee

eighty jimmies.”

“Eh?” roared George. “Eighty quid! Eighty quid! Flamin’ blind o’ Riley!

D’you think I’m up the pole? Eighty quid? You’re barmy!”

“Eighty-ten,” murmured Sin Sin Wa. “Eighty jimmies opium; ten bob

lead.”

“I give more’n that for it!” cried the seaman. “An’ I damn near hit a

police boat comin’ in, too!”

Sir Lucien spoke a few words rapidly in Chinese. Sin Sin Wa performed

his curious oriental shrug, and taking a fat leather wallet from his

hip-pocket, counted out the sum of eighty-five pounds upon the counter.

“You catchee eighty-five,” he murmured. “Too muchee price.”

The man grabbed the money and pocketed it without a word of

acknowledgment. He turned and strode along the room, his heavy,

iron-clamped boots ringing on the paved floor.

“Fetch a grim, Sin Sin,” he cried. “I’ll never get out if I don’t jump

to it.”

Sin Sin Wa took the lantern from the counter and followed. Opening a

door at the further end of the place, he set the lantern at the head of

three descending wooden steps discovered. With the opening of the door

the sound of lapping water had grown perceptibly louder. George

clattered down the steps, which led to a second but much stouter door.

Sin Sin Wa followed, nearly closing the first door, so that only a

faint streak of light crept down to them.

The second door was opened, and the clangor of the Surrey shore

suddenly proclaimed itself. Cold, damp air touched them, and the faint

light of the lantern above cast their shadows over unctuous gliding

water, which lapped the step upon which they stood. Slimy shapes uprose

dim and ghostly from its darkly moving surface.

A boat was swinging from a ring beside the door, and into it George

tumbled. He unhitched the lashings, and strongly thrust the boat out

upon the water. Coming to the first of the dim shapes, he grasped it

and thereby propelled the skiff to another beyond. These indistinct

shapes were the piles supporting the structure of a wharf.

“Good night, guv’nor!” he cried hoarsely

“So-long,” muttered Sin Sin Wa.

He waited until the boat was swallowed in the deeper shadows, then

reclosed the water-gate and ascended to the room where Sir Lucien

awaited. Such was the receiving office of Sin Sin Wa. While the wharf

remained untenanted it was not likely to be discovered by the

authorities, for even at low tide the river-door was invisible from

passing craft. Prospective lessees who had taken the trouble to inquire

about the rental had learned that it was so high as to be prohibitive.

Sin Sin Wa paid fair prices and paid cash. This was no more than a

commercial necessity. For those who have opium, cocaine, veronal, or

heroin to sell can always find a ready market in London and elsewhere.

But one sufficiently curious and clever enough to have solved the

riddle of the vacant wharf would have discovered that the mysterious

owner who showed himself so loath to accept reasonable offers for the

property could well afford to be thus independent. Those who control

“the traffic” control El Dorado—a city of gold which, unlike the fabled

Manoa, actually exists and yields its riches to the unscrupulous

adventurer.

Smiling his mirthless, eternal smile, Sin Sin Wa placed the newly

purchased stock upon a shelf immediately behind Sam Tûk; and Sam Tûk

exhibited the first evidence of animation which had escaped him

throughout the progress of the “deal.” He slowly nodded his hairless

head.

CHAPTER XX.

KAZMAH’S METHODS

Rita Dresden married Monte Irvin in the spring and bade farewell to the

stage. The goal long held in view was attained at last. But another

farewell which at one time she had contemplated eagerly no longer

appeared desirable or even possible. To cocamania had been added a

tolerance for opium, and at the last _chandu_ party given by Cyrus

Kilfane she had learned that she could smoke nearly as much opium as

the American habitué.

The altered attitude of Sir Lucien surprised and annoyed her. He, who

had first introduced her to the spirit of the coca leaf and to the

goddess of the poppy, seemed suddenly to have determined to convince

her of the folly of these communions. He only succeeded in losing her

confidence. She twice visited the “House of a Hundred Raptures” with

Mollie Gretna, and once with Mollie and Kilfane, unknown to Sir Lucien.

Urgent affairs of some kind necessitated his leaving England a few

weeks before the date fixed for Rita’s wedding, and as Kilfane had

already returned to America, Rita recognized with a certain dismay that

she would be left to her own resources—handicapped by the presence of a

watchful husband. This subtle change in her view of Monte Irvin she was

incapable of appreciating, for Rita was no psychologist. But the effect

of the drug habit was pointedly illustrated by the fact that in a

period of little more than six months, from regarding Monte Irvin as a

rock of refuge—a chance of salvation—she had come to regard him in the

light of an obstacle to her indulgence. Not that her respect had

diminished. She really loved at last, and so well that the idea of

discovery by this man whose wholesomeness was the trait of character

which most potently attracted her, was too appalling to be

contemplated. The chance of discovery would be enhanced, she

recognized, by the absence of her friends and accomplices.

Of course she was acquainted with many other devotees. In fact, she met

so many of them that she had grown reconciled to her habits, believing

them to be common to all “smart” people—a part of the Bohemian life.

The truth of the matter was that she had become a prominent member of a

coterie closely knit and associated by a bond of mutual vice—a kind of

masonry whereof Kazmah of Bond Street was Grand Master and Mrs. Sin

Grand Mistress.

The relations existing between Kazmah and his clients were of a most

peculiar nature, too, and must have piqued the curiosity of anyone but

a drug-slave. Having seen him once, in his oracular cave, Rita had been

accepted as one of the initiated. Thereafter she had had no occasion to

interview the strange, immobile Egyptian, nor had she experienced any

desire to do so. The method of obtaining drugs was a simple one. She

had merely to present herself at the establishment in Bond Street and

to purchase either a flask of perfume or a box of sweetmeats. There

were several varieties of perfume, and each corresponded to a

particular drug. The sweetmeats corresponded to morphine. Rashîd, the

attendant, knew all Kazmah’s clients, and with the box or flask he gave

them a quantity of the required drug. This scheme was precautionary.

For if a visitor should chance to be challenged on leaving the place,

there was the legitimate purchase to show in evidence of the purpose of

the visit.

No conversation was necessary, merely the selection of a scent and the

exchange of a sum of money. Rashîd retired to wrap up the purchase, and

with it a second and smaller package was slipped into the customer’s

hand. That the prices charged were excessive—nay, ridiculous—did not

concern Rita, for, in common with the rest of her kind, she was

careless of expenditure.

_Chandu_, alone, Kazmah did not sell. He sold morphine, tincture of

opium, and other preparations; but those who sought the solace of the

pipe were compelled to deal with Mrs. Sin. She would arrange _chandu_

parties, or would prepare the “Hundred Raptures” in Limehouse for

visitors; but, except in the form of opiated cigarettes, she could

rarely be induced to part with any of the precious gum. Thus she

cleverly kept a firm hold upon the devotees of the poppy.

Drug-takers form a kind of brotherhood, and outside the charmed circle

they are secretive as members of the Mafia, the Camorra, or the

Catouse-Menegant.

In this secrecy, which, indeed, is a recognized symptom of drug mania,

lay Kazmah’s security. Rita experienced no desire to peer behind the

veil which, literally and metaphorically, he had placed between himself

and the world. At first she had been vaguely curious, and had

questioned Sir Lucien and others, but nobody seemed to know the real

identity of Kazmah, and nobody seemed to care provided that he

continued to supply drugs. They all led secret, veiled lives, these

slaves of the laboratory, and that Kazmah should do likewise did not

surprise them. He had excellent reasons.

During this early stage of faint curiosity she had suggested to Sir

Lucien that for Kazmah to conduct a dream-reading business seemed to be

to add to the likelihood of police interference.

The baronet had smiled sardonically.

“It is an additional safeguard,” he had assured her. “It corresponds to

the method of a notorious Paris assassin who was very generally

regarded by the police as a cunning pickpocket. Kazmah’s business of

‘dreamreading’ does not actually come within the Act. He is clever

enough for that. Remember, he does not profess to tell fortunes. It

also enables him to balk idle curiosity.”

At the time of her marriage Rita was hopelessly in the toils, and had

been really panic-stricken at the prospect—once so golden—of a

protracted sojourn abroad. The war, which rendered travel impossible,

she regarded rather in the light of a heaven-sent boon. Irvin, though

personally favoring a quiet ceremony, recognized that Rita cherished a

desire to quit theatreland in a chariot of fire, and accordingly the

wedding was on a scale of magnificence which outshone that of any other

celebrated during the season. Even the lugubrious Mr. Esden, who gave

his daughter away, was seen to smile twice. Mrs. Esden moved in a

rarified atmosphere of gratified ambition and parental pride, which no

doubt closely resembled that which the angels breathe.

It was during the early days of her married life, and while Sir Lucien

was still abroad, that Rita began to experience difficulty in obtaining

the drugs which she required. She had lost touch to a certain extent

with her former associates; but she had retained her maid, Nina, and

the girl regularly went to Kazmah’s and returned with the little flasks

of perfume. When an accredited representative was sent upon such a

mission, Kazmah dispatched the drugs disguised in a scent flask; but on

each successive occasion that Nina went to him the prices increased,

and finally became so exorbitant that even Rita grew astonished and

dismayed.

She mentioned the matter to another habitué, a lady of title addicted

to the use of the hypodermic syringe, and learned that she (Rita) was

being charged nearly twice as much as her friend.

“I should bring the man to his senses, dear,” said her ladyship. “I

know a doctor who will be only too glad to supply you. When I say a

doctor, he is no longer recognized by the B.M.A., but he’s none the

less clever and kind for all that.”

To the clever and kind medical man Rita repaired on the following day,

bearing a written introduction from her friend. The discredited

physician supplied her for a short time, charging only moderate fees.

Then, suddenly, this second source of supply was closed. The man

declared that he was being watched by the police, and that he dared not

continue to supply her with cocaine and veronal. His shifty eyes gave

the lie to his words, but he was firm in his resolution, whatever may

have led him to it, and Rita was driven back to Kazmah. His charges had

become more exorbitant than ever, but her need was imperative.

Nevertheless, she endeavored to find another drug dealer, and after a

time was again successful.

At a certain supper club she was introduced to a suave little man,

quite palpably an uninterned alien, who smilingly offered to provide

her with any drug to be found in the British Pharmacopeia, at most

moderate charges. With this little German-Jew villain she made a pact,

reflecting that, provided that his wares were of good quality, she had

triumphed over Kazmah.

The craving for _chandu_ seized her sometimes and refused to be

exorcised by morphia, laudanum, or any other form of opium; but she had

not dared to spend a night at the “House of a Hundred Raptures” since

her marriage. Her new German friend volunteered to supply the necessary

gum, outfit, and to provide an apartment where she might safely indulge

in smoking. She declined—at first. But finally, on Mollie Gretna’s

return from France, where she had been acting as a nurse, Rita and

Mollie accepted the suave alien’s invitation to spend an evening in his

private opium divan.

Many thousands of careers were wrecked by the war, and to the war and

the consequent absence of her husband Rita undoubtedly owed her relapse

into opium-smoking. That she would have continued secretly to employ

cocaine, veronal, and possibly morphine was probable enough; but the

constant society of Monte Irvin must have made it extremely difficult

for her to indulge the craving for _chandu_. She began to regret the

gaiety of her old life. Loneliness and monotony plunged her into a

state of suicidal depression, and she grasped eagerly at every promise

of excitement.

It was at about this time that she met Margaret Halley, and between the

two, so contrary in disposition, a close friendship arose. The girl

doctor ere long discovered Rita’s secret, of course, and the discovery

was hastened by an event which occurred shortly after they had become

acquainted.

The suave alien gentleman disappeared.

That was the entire story in five words—or all of the story that Rita

ever learned. His apartments were labelled “To Let,” and the night

clubs knew him no more. Rita for a time was deprived of drugs, and the

nervous collapse which resulted revealed to Margaret Halley’s trained

perceptions the truth respecting her friend.

Kazmah’s terms proved to be more outrageous than ever, but Rita found

herself again compelled to resort to the Egyptian. She went personally

to the rooms in old Bond Street and arranged with Rashîd to see Kazmah

on the following day, Friday, for Kazmah only received visitors by

appointment. As it chanced, Sir Lucien Pyne returned to England on

Thursday night and called upon Rita at Prince’s Gate. She welcomed him

as a friend in need, unfolding the pitiful story, to the truth of which

her nervous condition bore eloquent testimony.

Sir Lucien began to pace up and down the charming little room in which

Rita had received him. She watched him, haggard-eyed. Presently:

“Leave Kazmah to me,” he said. “If you visit him he will merely shield

himself behind the mystical business, or assure you that he is making

no profit on his sales. Kilfane had similar trouble with him.”

“Then _you_ will see him?” asked Rita.

“I will make a point of interviewing him in the morning. Meanwhile, if

you will send Nina around to Albemarle Street in about an hour I will

see what can be done.”

“Oh, Lucy,” whispered Rita, “what a pal you are.”

Sir Lucien smiled in his cold fashion.

“I try to be,” he said enigmatically; “but I don’t always succeed.” He

turned to her. “Have you ever thought of giving up this doping?” he

asked. “Have you ever realized that with increasing tolerance the

quantities must increase as well, and that a day is sure to come when—”

Rita repressed a nervous shudder.

“You are trying to frighten me,” she replied. “You have tried before; I

don’t know why. But it’s no good, Lucy. You know I cannot give it up.”

“You can try.”

“I don’t want to try!” she cried irritably. “It will be time enough

when Monte is back again, and we can really ‘live.’ This wretched

existence, with everything restricted and rationed, and all one’s

friends in Flanders or Mesopotamia or somewhere, drives me mad! I tell

you I should die, Lucy, if I tried to do without it now.”

The hollow presence of reform contemplated in a hazy future did not

deceive Sir Lucien. He suppressed a sigh, and changed the topic of

conversation.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE CIGARETTES FROM BUENOS AYRES

Sir Lucien’s intervention proved successful. Kazmah’s charges became

more modest, and Rita no longer found it necessary to deprive herself

of hats and dresses in order to obtain drugs. But, nevertheless, these

were not the halcyon days of old. She was now surrounded by spies. It

was necessary to resort to all kinds of subterfuge in order to cover

her expenditures at the establishment in old Bond Street. Her husband

never questioned her outlay, but on the other hand it was expedient to

be armed against the possibility of his doing so, and Rita’s debts were

accumulating formidably.

Then there was Margaret Halley to consider. Rita had never hitherto

given her confidence to anyone who was not addicted to the same

practices as herself, and she frequently experienced embarrassment

beneath the grave scrutiny of Margaret’s watchful eyes. In another this

attitude of gentle disapproval would have been irritating, but Rita

loved and admired Margaret, and suffered accordingly.

As for Sir Lucien, she had ceased to understand him. An impalpable

barrier seemed to have arisen between them. The inner man had became

inaccessible. Her mind was not subtle enough to grasp the real

explanation of this change in her old lover. Being based upon wrong

premises, her inferences were necessarily wide of the truth, and she

believed that Sir Lucien was jealous of Margaret’s cousin, Quentin

Gray.

Gray met Rita at Margaret Halley’s flat shortly after he had returned

home from service in the East, and he immediately conceived a violent

infatuation for this pretty friend of his cousin’s. In this respect his

conduct was in no way peculiar. Few men were proof against the

seductive Mrs. Monte Irvin, not because she designedly encouraged

admiration, but because she was one of those fortunately rare

characters who inspire it without conscious effort. Her appeal to men

was sweetly feminine and quite lacking in that self-assertive and

masculine “take me or leave me” attitude which characterizes some of

the beauties of today. There was nothing abstract about her delicate

loveliness, yet her charm was not wholly physical. Many women disliked

her.

At dance, theatre, and concert Quentin Gray played the doting cavalier;

and Rita, who was used to at least one such adoring attendant, accepted

his homage without demur. Monte Irvin returned to civil life, but Rita

showed no disposition to dispense with her new admirer. Both Gray and

Sir Lucien had become frequent visitors at Prince’s Gate, and Irvin,

who understood his wife’s character up to a point, made them his

friends.

Shortly after Monte Irvin’s return Sir Lucien taxed Rita again with her

increasing subjection to drugs. She was in a particularly gay humor, as

the supplies from Kazmah had been regular, and she laughingly fenced

with him when he reminded her of her declared intention to reform when

her husband should return.

“You are really as bad as Margaret,” she declared. “There is nothing

the matter with me. You talk of ‘curing’ me as though I were ill.

Physician, heal thyself.”

The sardonic smile momentarily showed upon Pyne’s face, and:

“I know when and where to pull up, Rita,” he said. “A woman never knows

this. If I were deprived of opium tomorrow I could get along without

it.”

“I have given up opium,” replied Rita. “It’s too much trouble, and the

last time Mollie and I went—”

She paused, glancing quickly at Sir Lucien.

“Go on,” he said grimly. “I know you have been to Sin Sin Wa’s. What

happened the last time?”

“Well,” continued Rita hurriedly, “Monte seemed to be vaguely

suspicious. Besides, Mrs. Sin charged me most preposterously. I really

cannot afford it, Lucy.”

“I am glad you cannot. But what I was about to say was this: suppose

_you_ were to be deprived, not of _chandu_, but of cocaine and veronal,

do you know what would happen to you?”

“Oh!” whispered Rita, “why _will_ you persist in trying to frighten me!

I am not going to be deprived of them.”

“I persist, dear, because I want you to try, gradually, to depend less

upon drugs, so that if the worst should happen you would have a

chance.”

Rita stood up and faced him, biting her lip.

“Lucy,” she said, “do you mean that Kazmah—”

“I mean that anything might happen, Rita. After all, we do possess a

police service in London, and one day there might be an accident.

Kazmah has certain influence, but it may be withdrawn. Rita, won’t you

try?”

She was watching him closely, and now the pupils of her beautiful eyes

became dilated.

“You know something,” she said slowly, “which you are keeping from me.”

He laughed and turned aside.

“I know that I am compelled to leave England again, Rita, for a time;

and I should be a happier man if I knew that you were not so utterly

dependent upon Kazmah.”

“Oh, Lucy, are you going away again?”

“I must. But I shall not be absent long, I hope.”

Rita sank down upon the settee from which she had risen, and was silent

for some time; then:

“I _will_ try, Lucy,” she promised. “I will go to Margaret Halley, as

she is always asking me to do.”

“Good girl,” said Pyne quietly. “It is just a question of making the

effort, Rita. You will succeed, with Margaret’s help.”

A short time later Sir Lucien left England, but throughout the last

week that he remained in London Rita spent a great part of every day in

his company. She had latterly begun to experience an odd kind of

remorse for her treatment of the inscrutably reserved baronet. His

earlier intentions she had not forgotten, but she had long ago forgiven

them, and now she often felt sorry for this man whom she had

deliberately used as a stepping-stone to fortune.

Gray was quite unable to conceal his jealousy. He seemed to think that

he had a proprietary right to Mrs. Monte Irvin’s society, and during

the week preceding Sir Lucien’s departure Gray came perilously near to

making himself ridiculous on more than one occasion.

One night, on leaving a theatre, Rita suggested to Pyne that they

should proceed to a supper club for an hour. “It will be like old

times,” she said.

“But your husband is expecting you,” protested Sir Lucien.

“Let’s ring him up and ask him to join us. He won’t, but he cannot very

well object then.”

As a result they presently found themselves descending a broad carpeted

stairway. From the rooms below arose the strains of an American melody.

Dancing was in progress, or, rather, one of those orgiastic ceremonies

which passed for dancing during this pagan period. Just by the foot of

the stairs they paused and surveyed the scene.

“Why,” said Rita, “there is Quentin—glaring insanely, silly boy.”

“Do you see whom he is with?” asked Sir Lucien.

“Mollie Gretna.”

“But I mean the woman sitting down.”

Rita stood on tiptoe, trying to obtain a view, and suddenly:

“Oh!” she exclaimed, “Mrs. Sin!”

The dance at that moment concluding, they crossed the floor and joined

the party. Mrs. Sin greeted them with one of her rapid, mirthless

smiles. She was wearing a gown noticeable, but not for quantity, even

in that semi-draped assembly. Mollie Gretna giggled rapturously. But

Gray’s swiftly changing color betrayed a mood which he tried in vain to

conceal by his manner. Having exchanged a few words with the new

arrivals, he evidently realized that he could not trust himself to

remain longer, and:

“Now I must be off,” he said awkwardly. “I have an

appointment—important business. Good night, everybody.”

He turned away and hurried from the room. Rita flushed slightly and

exchanged a glance with Sir Lucien. Mrs. Sin, who had been watching the

three intently, did not fail to perceive this glance. Mollie Gretna

characteristically said a silly thing.

“Oh!” she cried. “I wonder whatever is the matter with him! He looks as

though he had gone mad!”

“It is perhaps his heart,” said Mrs. Sin harshly, and she raised her

bold dark eyes to Sir Lucien’s face.

“Oh, please don’t talk about hearts,” cried Rita, willfully

misunderstanding. “Monte has a weak heart, and it frightens me.”

“So?” murmured Mrs. Sin. “Poor fellow.”

“_I_ think a weak heart is most romantic,” declared Mollie Gretna.

But Gray’s behavior had cast a shadow upon the party which even

Mollie’s empty light-hearted chatter was powerless to dispel, and when,

shortly after midnight, Sir Lucien drove Rita home to Prince’s Gate,

they were very silent throughout the journey. Just before the car

reached the house:

“Where does Mrs. Sin live?” asked Rita, although it was not of Mrs. Sin

that she had been thinking.

“In Limehouse, I believe,” replied Sir Lucien; “at The House. But I

fancy she has rooms somewhere in town also.”

He stayed only a few minutes at Prince’s Gate, and as the car returned

along Piccadilly, Sir Lucien, glancing upward towards the windows of a

tall block of chambers facing the Green Park, observed a light in one

of them. Acting upon a sudden impulse, he raised the speaking-tube.

“Pull up, Fraser,” he directed.

The chauffeur stopped the car and Sir Lucien alighted, glancing at the

clock inside as he did so, and smiling at his own quixotic behavior. He

entered an imposing doorway and rang one of the bells. There was an

interval of two minutes or so, when the door opened and a man looked

out.

“Is that you, Willis?” asked Pyne.

“Oh, I beg pardon, Sir Lucien. I didn’t know you in the dark.”

“Has Mr. Gray retired yet?”

“Not yet. Will you please follow me, Sir Lucien. The stairway lights

are off.”

A few moments later Sir Lucien was shown into the apartment of Gray’s

which oddly combined the atmosphere of a gymnasium with that of a

study. Gray, wearing a dressing-gown and having a pipe in his mouth,

was standing up to receive his visitor, his face rather pale and the

expression of his lips at variance with that in his eyes. But:

“Hello, Pyne,” he said quietly. “Anything wrong—or have you just looked

in for a smoke?”

Sir Lucien smiled a trifle sadly.

“I wanted a chat, Gray,” he replied. “I’m leaving town tomorrow, or I

should not have intruded at such an unearthly hour.”

“No intrusion,” muttered Gray; “try the armchair, no, the big one. It’s

more comfortable.” He raised his voice: “Willis, bring some fluid!”

Sir Lucien sat down, and from the pocket of his dinner jacket took out

a plain brown packet of cigarettes and selected one.

“Here,” said Gray, “have a cigar!”

“No, thanks,” replied Pyne. “I rarely smoke anything but these.”

“Never seen that kind of packet before,” declared Gray. “What brand are

they?”

“No particular brand. They are imported from Buenos Ayres, I believe.”

Willis having brought in a tray of refreshments and departed again, Sir

Lucien came at once to the point.

“I really called, Gray,” he said, “to clear up any misunderstanding

there may be in regard to Rita Irvin.”

Quentin Gray looked up suddenly when he heard Rita’s name, and:

“What misunderstanding?” he asked.

“Regarding the nature of my friendship with her,” answered Sir Lucien

coolly. “Now, I am going to speak quite bluntly, Gray, because I like

Rita and I respect her. I also like and respect Monte Irvin; and I

don’t want you, or anybody else, to think that Rita and I are, or ever

have been, anything more than pals. I have known her long enough to

have learned that she sails straight, and has always sailed straight.

Now—listen, Gray, please. You embarrassed me tonight, old chap, and you

embarrassed Rita. It was unnecessary.” He paused, and then added

slowly: “She is as sacred to me, Gray, as she is to you—and we are both

friends of Monte Irvin.”

For a moment Quentin Gray’s fiery temper flickered up, as his

heightened color showed, but the coolness of the older and cleverer man

prevailed. Gray laughed, stood up, and held out his hand.

“You’re right, Pyne!” he said. “But she’s damn pretty!” He uttered a

loud sigh. “If only she were not married!”

Sir Lucien gripped the outstretched hand, but his answering smile had

much pathos in it.

“If only she were not, Gray,” he echoed.

He took his departure shortly afterwards, absently leaving a brown

packet of cigarettes upon the table. It was an accident. Yet there were

few, when the truth respecting Sir Lucien Pyne became known, who did

not believe it to have been a deliberate act, designed to lure Quentin

Gray into the path of the poppy.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE STRANGLE-HOLD

Less than a month later Rita was in a state of desperation again.

Kazmah’s prices had soared above anything that he had hitherto

extorted. Her bank account, as usual, was greatly overdrawn, and

creditors of all kinds were beginning to press for payment. Then,

crowning catastrophe, Monte Irvin, for the first time during their

married life, began to take an interest in Rita’s reckless expenditure.

By a combination of adverse circumstances, she, the wife of one of the

wealthiest aldermen of the City of London, awakened to the fact that

literally she had no money.

She pawned as much of her jewellery as she could safely dispose of, and

temporarily silenced the more threatening tradespeople; but Kazmah

declined to give credit, and cheques had never been acceptable at the

establishment in old Bond Street.

Rita feverishly renewed her old quest, seeking in all directions for

some less extortionate purveyor. But none was to be found. The

selfishness and secretiveness of the drug slave made it difficult for

her to learn on what terms others obtained Kazmah’s precious goods; but

although his prices undoubtedly varied, she was convinced that no one

of all his clients was so cruelly victimized as she.

Mollie Gretna endeavored to obtain an extra supply to help Rita, but

Kazmah evidently saw through the device, and the endeavor proved a

failure.

She demanded to see Kazmah, but Rashîd, the Egyptian, blandly assured

her that “the Sheikh-el-Kazmah” was away. She cast discretion to the

winds and wrote to him, protesting that it was utterly impossible for

her to raise so much ready money as he demanded, and begging him to

grant her a small supply or to accept the letter as a promissory note

to be redeemed in three months. No answer was received, but when Rita

again called at old Bond Street, Rashîd proposed one of the few

compromises which the frenzied woman found herself unwilling to accept.

“The Sheikh-el-Kazmah say, my lady, your friend Mr. Gray never come to

him. If you bring him it will be all right.”

Rita found herself stricken dumb by this cool proposal. The degradation

which awaits the drug slave had never been more succinctly expounded to

her. She was to employ Gray’s foolish devotion for the commercial

advantage of Kazmah. Of course Gray might any day become one of the

three wealthiest peers in the realm. She divined the meaning of

Kazmah’s hitherto incomprehensible harshness (or believed that she

did); she saw what was expected of her. “My God!” she whispered. “I

have not come to that yet.”

Rashîd she knew to be incorruptible or powerless, and she turned away,

trembling, and left the place, whose faint perfume of frankincense had

latterly become hateful to her.

She was at this time bordering upon a state of collapse. Insomnia,

which latterly had defied dangerously increased doses of veronal, was

telling upon nerve and brain. Now, her head aching so that she often

wondered how long she could retain sanity, she found herself deprived

not only of cocaine, but also of malourea. Margaret Halley was her last

hope, and to Margaret she hastened on the day before the tragedy which

was destined to bring to light the sinister operations of the Kazmah

group.

Although, perhaps mercifully, she was unaware of the fact,

representatives of Spinker’s Agency had been following her during the

whole of the preceding fortnight. That Rita was in desperate trouble of

some kind her husband had not failed to perceive, and her reticence had

quite naturally led him to a certain conclusion. He had sought to win

her confidence by every conceivable means and had failed. At last had

come doubt—and the hateful interview with Spinker.

As Rita turned in at the doorway below Margaret’s flat, then, Brisley

was lighting a cigarette in the shelter of a porch nearly opposite, and

Gunn was not far away.

Margaret immediately perceived that her friend’s condition was

alarming. But she realized that whatever the cause to which it might be

due, it gave her the opportunity for which she had been waiting. She

wrote a prescription containing one grain of cocaine, but declined

firmly to issue others unless Rita authorized her, in writing, to

undertake a cure of the drug habit.

Rita’s disjointed statements pointed to a conspiracy of some kind on

the part of those who had been supplying her with drugs, but Margaret

knew from experience that to exhibit curiosity in regard to the matter

would be merely to provoke evasions.

A hopeless day and a pain-racked, sleepless night found Kazmah’s

unhappy victim in the mood for any measure, however desperate, which

should promise even temporary relief. Monte Irvin went out very early,

and at about eleven o’clock Rita rang up Kazmah’s, but only to be

informed by Rashîd, who replied, that Kazmah was still away. “This

evening he tell me that he see your friend if he come, my lady.” As if

the Fates sought to test her endurance to the utmost, Quentin Gray

called shortly afterwards and invited her to dine with him and go to a

theatre that evening.

For five age-long seconds Rita hesitated. If no plan offered itself by

nightfall she knew that her last scruple would be conquered. “After

all,” whispered a voice within her brain, “Quentin is a man. Even if I

took him to Kazmah’s and he was in some way induced to try opium, or

even cocaine, he would probably never become addicted to drug-taking.

But I should have done my part—”

“Very well, Quentin,” she heard herself saying aloud. “Will you call

for me?”

But when he had gone Rita sat for more than half an hour, quite still,

her hands clenched and her face a tragic mask. (Gunn, of Spinker’s

Agency, reported telephonically to Monte Irvin in the City that the

Hon. Quentin Gray had called and had remained about twenty-five

minutes; that he had proceeded to the Prince’s Restaurant, and from

there to Mudie’s, where he had booked a box at the Gaiety Theatre.)

Towards the fall of dusk the more dreadful symptoms which attend upon a

sudden cessation of the use of cocaine by a victim of cocainophagia

began to assert themselves again. Rita searched wildly in the lining of

her jewel-case to discover if even a milligram of the drug had by

chance fallen there from the little gold box. But the quest was in

vain.

As a final resort she determined to go to Margaret Halley again.

She hurried to Dover Street, and her last hope was shattered. Margaret

was out, and Janet had no idea when she was likely to return. Rita had

much ado to prevent herself from bursting into tears. She scribbled a

few lines, without quite knowing what she was writing, sealed the paper

in an envelope, and left it on Margaret’s table.

Of returning to Prince’s Gate and dressing for the evening she had only

a hazy impression. The hammer-beats in her head were depriving her of

reasoning power, and she felt cold, numbed, although a big fire blazed

in her room. Then as she sat before her mirror, drearily wondering if

her face really looked as drawn and haggard as the image in the glass,

or if definite delusions were beginning, Nina came in and spoke to her.

Some moments elapsed before Rita could grasp the meaning of the girl’s

words.

“Sir Lucien Pyne has rung up, Madam, and wishes to speak to you.”

Sir Lucien! Sir Lucien had come back? Rita experienced a swift return

of feverish energy. Half dressed as she was, and without pausing to

take a wrap, she ran out to the telephone.

Never had a man’s voice sounded so sweet as that of Sir Lucien when he

spoke across the wires. He was at Albemarle Street, and Rita, wasting

no time in explanations, begged him to await her there. In another ten

minutes she had completed her toilette and had sent Nina to ’phone for

a cab. (One of the minor details of his wife’s behavior which latterly

had aroused Irvin’s distrust was her frequent employment of public

vehicles in preference to either of the cars.)

Quentin Gray she had quite forgotten, until, as she was about to leave:

“Is there any message for Mr. Gray, Madam?” inquired Nina naively.

“Oh!” cried Rita. “Of course! Quick! Give me some paper and a pencil.”

She wrote a hasty note, merely asking Gray to proceed to the

restaurant, where she promised to join him, left it in charge of the

maid, and hurried off to Albemarle Street.

Mareno, the silent, yellow-faced servant who had driven the car on the

night of Rita’s first visit to Limehouse, admitted her. He showed her

immediately into the lofty study, where Sir Lucien awaited.

“Oh, Lucy—Lucy!” she cried, almost before the door had closed behind

Mareno. “I am desperate—desperate!”

Sir Lucien placed a chair for her. His face looked very drawn and grim.

But Rita was in too highly strung a condition to observe this fact, or

indeed to observe anything.

“Tell me,” he said gently.

And in a torrent of disconnected, barely coherent language, the

tortured woman told him of Kazmah’s attempt to force her to lure

Quentin Gray into the drug coterie. Sir Lucien stood behind her chair,

and the icy reserve which habitually rendered his face an impenetrable

mask deserted him as the story of Rita’s treatment at the hands of the

Egyptian of Bond Street was unfolded in all its sordid hideousness.

Rita’s soft, musical voice, for which of old she had been famous, shook

and wavered; her pose, her twitching gestures, all told of a nervous

agony bordering on prostration or worse. Finally:

“He dare not refuse you!” she cried. “Ring him up and insist upon him

seeing me tonight!”

“_I_ will see him, Rita.”

She turned to him, wild-eyed.

“You shall not! You shall not!” she said. “I am going to speak to that

man face to face, and if he is human he must listen to me. Oh! I have

realized the hold he has upon me, Lucy! I know what it means, this

disappearance of all the others who used to sell what Kazmah sells. If

I am to suffer, _he_ shall not escape! I swear it. Either he listens to

me tonight or I go straight to the police!”

“Be calm, little girl,” whispered Sir Lucien, and he laid his hand upon

her shoulder.

But she leapt up, her pupils suddenly dilating and her delicate

nostrils twitching in a manner which unmistakably pointed to the

impossibility of thwarting her if sanity were to be retained.

“Ring him up, Lucy,” she repeated in a low voice. “He is there. Now

that I have someone behind me I see my way at last!”

“There may, nevertheless, be a better way,” said Sir Lucien; but he

added quickly: “Very well, dear, I will do as you wish. I have a little

cocaine, which I will give you.”

He went out to the telephone, carefully closing the study door.

That he had counted upon the influence of the drug to reduce Rita to a

more reasonable frame of mind was undoubtedly the fact, for presently

as they proceeded on foot towards old Bond Street he reverted to

something like his old ironical manner. But Rita’s determination was

curiously fixed. Unmoved by every kind of appeal, she proceeded to the

appointment which Sir Lucien had made—ignorant of that which Fate held

in store for her—and Sir Lucien, also humanly blind, walked on to meet

his death.

PART THIRD

THE MAN FROM WHITEHALL

CHAPTER XXIII.

CHIEF INSPECTOR KERRY RESIGNS

“Come in,” said the Assistant Commissioner. The door opened and Chief

Inspector Kerry entered. His face was as fresh-looking, his attire as

spruce and his eyes were as bright, as though he had slept well,

enjoyed his bath and partaken of an excellent breakfast. Whereas he had

not been to bed during the preceding twenty-four hours, had breakfasted

upon biscuits and coffee, and had spent the night and early morning in

ceaseless toil. Nevertheless he had found time to visit a hairdressing

saloon, for he prided himself upon the nicety of his personal

appearance.

He laid his hat, cane and overall upon a chair, and from a pocket of

his reefer jacket took out a big notebook.

“Good morning, sir,” he said.

“Good morning, Chief Inspector,” replied the Assistant Commissioner.

“Pray be seated. No doubt”—he suppressed a weary sigh—“you have a long

report to make. I observe that some of the papers have the news of Sir

Lucien Pyne’s death.”

Chief Inspector Kerry smiled savagely.

“Twenty pressmen are sitting downstairs,” he said “waiting for

particulars. One of them got into my room.” He opened his notebook. “He

didn’t stay long.”

The Assistant Commissioner gazed wearily at his blotting-pad, striking

imaginary chords upon the table-edge with his large widely extended

fingers. He cleared his throat.

“Er—Chief Inspector,” he said, “I fully recognize the difficulties

which—you follow me? But the Press is the Press. Neither you nor I

could hope to battle against such an institution even if we desired to

do so. Where active resistance is useless, a little tact—you quite

understand?”

“Quite, sir. Rely upon me,” replied Kerry. “But I didn’t mean to open

my mouth until I had reported to you. Now, sir, here is a précis of

evidence, nearly complete, written out clearly by Sergeant Coombes. You

would probably prefer to read it?”

“Yes, yes, I will read it. But has Sergeant Coombes been on duty all

night?”

“He has, sir, and so have I. Sergeant Coombes went home an hour ago.”

“Ah,” murmured the Assistant Commissioner

He took the notebook from Kerry, and resting his head upon his hand

began to read. Kerry sat very upright in his chair, chewing slowly and

watching the profile of the reader with his unwavering steel-blue eyes.

The reading was twice punctuated by telephone messages, but the

Assistant Commissioner apparently possessed the Napoleonic faculty of

doing two things at once, for his gaze travelled uninterruptedly along

the lines of the report throughout the time that he issued telephonic

instructions.

When he had arrived at the final page of Coombes’ neat, schoolboy

writing, he did not look up for a minute or more, continuing to rest

his head in the palm of his hand. Then:

“So far you have not succeeded in establishing the identity of the

missing man, Kazmah?” he said.

“Not so far, sir,” replied Kerry, enunciating the words with

characteristic swift precision, each syllable distinct as the rap of a

typewriter. “Inspector Whiteleaf, of Vine Street, has questioned all

constables in the Piccadilly area, and we have seen members of the

staffs of many shops and offices in the neighborhood, but no one is

familiar with the appearance of the missing man.”

“Ah—now, the Egyptian servant?”

Inspector Kerry moved his shoulders restlessly.

“Rashîd is his name. Many of the people in the neighborhood knew him by

sight, and at five o’clock this morning one of my assistants had the

good luck to find out, from an Arab coffee-house keeper named Abdulla,

where Rashîd lived. He paid a visit to the place—it’s off the West

India Dock Road—half an hour later. But Rashîd had gone. I regret to

report that all traces of him have been lost.”

“Ah—considering this circumstance side by side with the facts that no

scrap of evidence has come to light in the Kazmah premises and that the

late Sir Lucien’s private books and papers cannot be found, what do you

deduce, Chief Inspector?”

“My report indicates what I deduce, sir! An accomplice of Kazmah’s must

have been in Sir Lucien’s household! Kazmah and Mrs. Irvin can only

have left the premises by going up to the roof and across the leads to

Sir Lucien’s flat in Albemarle Street. I shall charge the man Juan

Mareno.”

“What has he to say?” murmured the Assistant Commissioner, absently

turning over the pages of the notebook. “Ah, yes. ‘Claims to be a

citizen of the United States but has produced no papers. Engaged by Sir

Lucien Pyne in San Francisco. Professes to have no evidence to offer.

Admitted Mrs. Monte Irvin to Sir Lucien’s flat on night of murder. Sir

Lucien and Mrs. Irvin went out together shortly afterwards, and Sir

Lucien ordered him (Mareno) to go for the car to garage in South Audley

Street and drive to club, where Sir Lucien proposed to dine. Mareno

claims to have followed instructions. After waiting near club for an

hour, learned from hall porter that Sir Lucien had not been there that

evening. Drove car back to garage and returned to Albemarle Street

shortly after eight o’clock.’ H’m. Is this confirmed in any way?”

Kerry’s teeth snapped together viciously.

“Up to a point it is, sir. The club porter remembers Mareno inquiring

about Sir Lucien, and the people at the garage testify that he took out

the car and returned it as stated.”

“No one has come forward who actually saw him waiting outside the

club?”

“No one. But unfortunately it was a dark, misty night, and cars waiting

for club members stand in a narrow side turning. Mareno is a surly

brute, and he might have waited an hour without speaking to a soul.

Unless another chauffeur happened to notice and recognize the car

nobody would be any wiser.”

The Assistant Commissioner sighed, glancing up for the first time.

“You don’t think he waited outside the club at all?” he said.

“I don’t, sir!” rapped Kerry.

The Assistant Commissioner rested his head upon his hand again.

“It doesn’t seem to be germane to your case, Chief Inspector, in any

event. There is no question of an alibi. Sir Lucien’s wrist-watch was

broken at seven-fifteen—evidently at the time of his death; and this

man Mareno does not claim to have left the flat until after that hour.”

“I know it, sir,” said Kerry. “He took out the car at half-past seven.

What I want to know is where he went to!”

The Assistant Commissioner glanced rapidly into the speaker’s fierce

eyes.

“From what you have gathered respecting the appearance of Kazmah, does

it seem possible that Mareno may be Kazmah?”

“It does not, sir. Kazmah has been described to me, at first hand and

at second hand. All descriptions tally in one respect: Kazmah has

remarkably large eyes. In Miss Halley’s evidence you will note that she

refers to them as ‘larger than any human eyes I have ever seen.’ Now,

Mareno has eyes like a pig!”

“Then I take it you are charging him as accessory?”

“Exactly, sir. Somebody got Kazmah and Mrs. Irvin away, and it can only

have been Mareno. Sir Lucien had no other resident servant; he was a

man who lived almost entirely at restaurants and clubs. Again, somebody

cleaned up his papers, and it was somebody who knew where to look for

them.”

“Quite so—quite so,” murmured the Assistant Commissioner. “Of course,

we shall learn today something of his affairs from his banker. He must

have banked _somewhere_. But surely, Chief Inspector, there is a safe

or private bureau in his flat?”

“There is, sir,” said Kerry grimly; “a safe. I had it opened at six

o’clock this morning. It had been hastily cleaned out; not a doubt of

it. I expect Sir Lucien carried the keys on his person. You will

remember, sir, that his pockets had been emptied?”

“H’m,” mused the Assistant Commissioner. “This Cubanis Cigarette

Company, Chief Inspector?”

“Dummy goods!” rapped Kerry. “A blind. Just a back entrance to Kazmah’s

office. Premises were leased on behalf of an agent. This agent—a

reputable man of business—paid the rent quarterly. I’ve seen him.”

“And who was his client?” asked the Assistant Commissioner, displaying

a faint trace of interest.

“A certain Mr. Isaacs!”

“Who can be traced?”

“Who can’t be traced!”

“His checks?”

Chief Inspector Kerry smiled, so that his large white teeth gleamed

savagely.

“Mr. Isaacs represented himself as a dealer in Covent Garden who was

leasing the office for a lady friend, and who desired, for domestic

reasons, to cover his tracks. As ready money in large amounts changes

hands in the market, Mr. Isaacs paid ready money to the agent. Beyond

doubt the real source of the ready money was Kazmah’s.”

“But his address?”

“A hotel in Covent Garden.”

“Where he lives?”

“Where he is known to the booking-clerk, a girl who allowed him to have

letters addressed there. A man of smoke, sir, acting on behalf of

someone in the background.”

“Ah! and these Bond Street premises have been occupied by Kazmah for

the past eight years?”

“So I am told. I have yet to see representatives of the landlord. I may

add that Sir Lucien Pyne had lived in Albemarle Street for about the

same time.”

Wearily raising his head:

“The point is certainly significant,” said the Assistant Commissioner.

“Now we come to the drug traffic, Chief Inspector. You have found no

trace of drugs on the premises?”

“Not a grain, sir!”

“In the office of the cigarette firm?”

“No.”

“By the way, was there no staff attached to the latter concern?”

Kerry chewed viciously.

“No business of any kind seems to have been done there,” he replied.

“An office-boy employed by the solicitor on the same floor as Kazmah

has seen a man and also a woman, go up to the third floor on several

occasions, and he seems to think they went to the Cubanis office. But

he’s not sure, and he can give no useful description of the parties,

anyway. Nobody in the building has ever seen the door open before this

morning.”

The Assistant Commissioner sighed yet more wearily.

“Apart from the suspicions of Miss Margaret Halley, you have no sound

basis for supposing that Kazmah dealt in prohibited drugs?” he

inquired.

“The evidence of Miss Halley, the letter left for her by Mrs. Irvin,

and the fact that Mrs. Irvin said, in the presence of Mr. Quentin Gray,

that she had ‘a particular reason’ for seeing Kazmah, point to it

unmistakably, sir. Then, I have seen Mrs. Irvin’s maid. (Mr. Monte

Irvin is still too unwell to be interrogated.) The girl was very

frightened, but she admitted outright that she had been in the habit of

going regularly to Kazmah for certain perfumes. She wouldn’t admit that

she knew the flasks contained cocaine or veronal, but she did admit

that her mistress had been addicted to the drug habit for several

years. It began when she was on the stage.”

“Ah, yes,” murmured the Assistant Commissioner; “she was Rita Dresden,

was she not—_The Maid of the Masque?_ A very pretty and talented

actress. A pity—a great pity. So the girl, characteristically, is

trying to save herself?”

“She is,” said Kerry grimly. “But it cuts no ice. There is another

point. After this report was made out, a message reached me from Miss

Halley, as a result of which I visited Mr. Quentin Gray early this

morning.”

“Dear, dear,” sighed the Assistant Commissioner, “your intense zeal and

activity are admirable, Chief Inspector, but appalling. And what did

you learn?”

From an inside pocket Chief Inspector Kerry took out a plain brown

paper packet containing several cigarettes and laid the packet on the

table.

“I got these, sir,” he said grimly. “They were left at Mr. Gray’s some

weeks ago by the late Sir Lucien. They are doped.”

The Assistant Commissioner, his head resting upon his hand, gazed

abstractedly at the packet. “If only you could trace the source of

supply,” he murmured.

“That brings me to my last point, sir. From Mrs. Irvin’s maid I learned

that her mistress was acquainted with a certain Mrs. Sin.”

“Mrs. Sin? Incredible name.”

“She’s a woman reputed to be married to a Chinaman. Inspector

Whiteleaf, of Vine Street, knows her by sight as one of the night-club

birds—a sort of mysterious fungus, sir, flowering in the dark and

fattening on gilded fools. Unless I’m greatly mistaken, Mrs. Sin is the

link between the doped cigarettes and the missing Kazmah.”

“Does anyone know where she lives?”

“Lots of ’em know!” snapped Kerry. “But it’s making them speak.”

“To whom do you more particularly refer, Chief Inspector?”

“To the moneyed asses and the brainless women belonging to a certain

West End set, sir,” said Kerry savagely. “They go in for every

monstrosity from Buenos Ayres, Port Said and Pekin. They get up dances

that would make a wooden horse blush. They eat _hashish_ and they smoke

opium. They inject morphine, and they would have their hair dyed blue

if they heard it was ‘being done.’”

“Ah,” sighed the Assistant Commissioner, “a very delicate and complex

case, Chief Inspector. The agony of mind which Mr. Irvin must be

suffering is too horrible for one to contemplate. An admirable man,

too; honorable and generous. I can conceive no theory to account for

the disappearance of Mrs. Irvin other than that she was a party to the

murder.”

“No, sir,” said Kerry guardedly. “But we have the dope clue to work on.

That the Chinese receive stuff in the East End and that it’s sold in

the West End every constable in the force is well aware. Leman Street

is getting busy, and every shady case in the Piccadilly area will be

beaten up within the next twenty-four hours, too. It’s purely

departmental, sir, from now onwards, and merely a question of time.

Therefore I don’t doubt the issue.”

Kerry paused, cleared his throat, and produced a foolscap envelope

which he laid upon the table before the Assistant Commissioner.

“With very deep regret, sir,” he said, “after a long and agreeable

association with the Criminal Investigation Department, I have to

tender you this.”

The Assistant Commissioner took up the envelope and stared at it

vaguely.

“Ah, yes, Chief Inspector,” he murmured. “Perhaps I fail entirely to

follow you; I am somewhat over-worked, as you know. What does this

envelope contain?”

“My resignation, sir,” replied Kerry.

CHAPTER XXIV.

TO INTRODUCE 719

Some moments of silence followed. Sounds of traffic from the Embankment

penetrated dimly to the room of the Assistant Commissioner; ringing of

tram bells and that vague sustained noise which is created by the

whirring of countless wheels along hard pavements. Finally:

“You have selected a curious moment to retire, Chief Inspector,” said

the Assistant Commissioner. “Your prospects were never better. No doubt

you have considered the question of your pension?”

“I know what I’m giving up, sir,” replied Kerry.

The Assistant Commissioner slowly revolved in his chair and gazed sadly

at the speaker. Chief Inspector Kerry met his glance with that

fearless, unflinching stare which lent him so formidable an appearance.

“You might care to favor me with some explanation which I can lay

before the Chief Commissioner?”

Kerry snapped his white teeth together viciously.

“May I take it, sir, that you accept my resignation?”

“Certainly not. I will place it before the responsible authority. I can

do no more.”

“Without disrespect, sir, I want to speak to you as man to man. As a

private citizen I could do it. As your subordinate I can’t.”

The Assistant Commissioner sighed, stroking his neatly brushed hair

with one large hand.

“Equally without disrespect, Chief Inspector,” he murmured, “it is news

for me to learn that you have ever refrained from speaking your mind

either in my presence or in the presence of any man.”

Kerry smiled, unable wholly to conceal a sense of gratified vanity.

“Well, sir,” he said, “you have my resignation before you, and I’m

prepared to abide by the consequences. What I want to say is this: I’m

a man that has worked hard all his life to earn the respect and the

trust of his employers. I am supposed to be Chief Inspector of this

department, and as Chief Inspector I’ll kow-tow to nothing on two legs

once I’ve been put in charge of a case. I work right in the sunshine.

There’s no grafting about me. I draw my salary every week, and any man

that says I earn sixpence in the dark is at liberty to walk right in

here and deposit his funeral expenses. If I’m supposed to be under a

cloud—there’s my reply. But I demand a public inquiry.”

At ever increasing speed, succinctly, viciously he rapped out the

words. His red face grew more red, and his steel-blue eyes more fierce.

The Assistant Commissioner exhibited bewilderment. As the high tones

ceased:

“Really, Chief Inspector,” he said, “you pain and surprise me. I do not

profess to be ignorant of the cause of your—annoyance. But perhaps if I

acquaint you with the facts of my own position in the matter you will

be open to reconsider your decision.”

Kerry cleared his throat loudly.

“I won’t work in the dark, sir,” he declared truculently. “I’d rather

be a pavement artist and my own master than Chief Inspector with an

unknown spy following me about.”

“Quite so—quite so.” The Assistant Commissioner was wonderfully

patient. “Very well, Chief Inspector. It cannot enhance my personal

dignity to admit the fact, but I’m nearly as much in the dark as

yourself.”

“What’s that, sir?” Kerry sat bolt upright, staring at the speaker.

“At a late hour last night the Secretary of State communicated in

person with the Chief Commissioner—at the latter’s town residence. He

instructed him to offer every facility to a newly appointed agent of

the Home office who was empowered to conduct an official inquiry into

the drug traffic. As a result Vine Street was advised that the Home

office investigator would proceed at once to Kazmah’s premises, and

from thence wherever available clues might lead him. For some reason

which has not yet been explained to me, this investigator chooses to

preserve a strict anonymity.”

Traces of irritation became perceptible in the weary voice. Kerry

staring, in silence, the Assistant Commissioner continued:

“I have been advised that this nameless agent is in a position to

establish his bona fides at any time, as he bears a number of these

cards. You see, Chief Inspector, I am frank with you.”

From a table drawer the Assistant Commissioner took a visiting-card,

which he handed to Kerry. The latter stared at it as one stares at a

rare specimen. It was the card of Lord Wrexborough, His Majesty’s

Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, and in the

cramped caligraphy of his lordship it bore a brief note, initialled,

thus:

[Illustration]

Some moments of silence followed; then:

“Seven-one-nine,” said Kerry in a high, strained voice. “Why

seven-one-nine? And why all this hocus-pocus? Am I to understand, sir,

that not only myself but all the Criminal Investigation Department is

under a cloud?”

The Assistant Commissioner stroked his hair.

“You are to understand, Chief Inspector, that for the first time

throughout my period of office I find myself out of touch with the

Chief Commissioner. It is not departmental for me to say so, but I

believe the Chief Commissioner finds himself similarly out of touch

with the Secretary of State. Apparently very powerful influences are at

work, and the line of conduct taken up by the Home office suggests to

my mind that collusion between the receivers and distributors of drugs

and the police is suspected by someone. That being so, possibly out of

a sense of fairness to all officially concerned, the committee which I

understand has been appointed to inquire into the traffic has decided

to treat us all alike, from myself down to the rawest constable. It’s

highly irritating and preposterous, of course, but I cannot disguise

from you or from myself that we are on trial, Chief Inspector!”

Kerry stood up and slowly moved his square shoulders in the manner of

an athlete about to attempt a feat of weight-lifting. From the

Assistant Commissioner’s table he took the envelope which contained his

resignation, and tore it into several portions. These he deposited in a

waste-paper basket.

“That’s that!” he said. “I am very deeply indebted to you, sir. I know

now what to tell the Press.”

The Assistant Commissioner glanced up.

“Not a word about 719,” he said, “of course, you understand this?”

“If we don’t exist as far as 719 is concerned, sir,” said Kerry in his

most snappy tones, “719 means nothing to me!”

“Quite so—quite so. Of course, I may be wrong in the motives which I

ascribe to this Whitehall agent, but misunderstanding is certain to

arise out of a system of such deliberate mystification, which can only

be compared to that employed by the Russian police under the Tsars.”

Half an hour later Chief Inspector Kerry came out of New Scotland Yard,

and, walking down on to the Embankment, boarded a Norwood tramcar. The

weather remained damp and gloomy, but upon the red face of Chief

Inspector Kerry, as he mounted to the upper deck of the car, rested an

expression which might have been described as one of cheery truculence.

Where other passengers, coat collars upturned, gazed gloomily from the

windows at the yellow murk overhanging the river, Kerry looked briskly

about him, smiling pleasurably.

He was homeward bound, and when he presently alighted and went swinging

along Spenser Road towards his house, he was still smiling. He regarded

the case as having developed into a competition between himself and the

man appointed by Whitehall. And it was just such a position,

disconcerting to one of less aggressive temperament, which stimulated

Chief Inspector Kerry and put him in high good humor.

Mrs. Kerry, arrayed in a serviceable rain-coat, and wearing a plain

felt hat, was standing by the dining-room door as Kerry entered. She

had a basket on her arm. “I was waiting for ye, Dan,” she said simply.

He kissed her affectionately, put his arm about her waist, and the two

entered the cosy little room. By no ordinary human means was it

possible that Mary Kerry should have known that her husband would come

home at that time, but he was so used to her prescience in this respect

that he offered no comment. She “kenned” his approach always, and at

times when his life had been in danger—and these were not of infrequent

occurrence—Mary Kerry, if sleeping, had awakened, trembling, though the

scene of peril were a hundred miles away, and if awake had blanched and

known a deadly sudden fear.

“Ye’ll be goin’ to bed?” she asked.

“For three hours, Mary. Don’t fail to rouse me if I oversleep.”

“Is it clear to ye yet?”

“Nearly clear. The dark thing you saw behind it all, Mary, was dope!

Kazmah’s is a secret drug-syndicate. They’ve appointed a Home office

agent, and he’s working independently of us, but...”

His teeth came together with a snap.

“Oh, Dan,” said his wife, “it’s a race? Drugs? A Home office agent?

Dan, they think the Force is in it?”

“They do!” rapped Kerry. “I’m for Leman Street in three hours. If

there’s double-dealing behind it, then the mugs are in the East End,

and it’s folly, not knavery, I’m looking for. It’s a race, Mary, and

the credit of the Service is at stake! No, my dear, I’ll have a snack

when I wake. You’re going shopping?”

“I am, Dan. I’d ha’ started, but I wanted to see ye when ye came hame.

If ye’ve only three hours go straight up the now. I’ll ha’ something

hot a’ ready when ye waken.”

Ten minutes later Kerry was in bed, his short clay pipe between his

teeth, and _The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius_ in his hand. Such was

his customary sleeping-draught, and it had never been known to fail.

Half a pipe of Irish twist and three pages of the sad imperial author

invariably plunged Chief Inspector Kerry into healthy slumber.

CHAPTER XXV.

NIGHT-LIFE OF SOHO

It was close upon midnight when Detective-Sergeant Coombes appeared in

a certain narrow West End thoroughfare, which was lined with taxicabs

and private cars. He wore a dark overcoat and a tweed cap, and although

his chin was buried in the genial folds of a woollen comforter, and his

cap was pulled down over his eyes, his sly smile could easily be

detected even in the dim light afforded by the car lamps. He seemed to

have business of a mysterious nature among the cabmen; for with each of

them in turn he conducted a brief conversation, passing unobtrusively

from cab to cab, and making certain entries in a notebook. Finally he

disappeared. No one actually saw him go, and no one had actually seen

him arrive. At one moment, however, he was there; in the next he was

gone.

Five minutes later Chief Inspector Kerry entered the street. His dark

overcoat and white silk muffler concealed a spruce dress suit, a fact

betrayed by black, braided trousers, unusually tight-fitting, and boots

which almost glittered. He carried the silver-headed malacca cane, and

had retained his narrow-brimmed bowler at its customary jaunty angle.

Passing the lines of waiting vehicles, he walked into the entrance of a

popular night-club which faced the narrow street. On a lounge

immediately inside the doorway a heated young man was sitting fanning

his dancing partner and gazing into her weakly pretty face in vacuous

adoration.

Kerry paused for a moment, staring at the pair. The man returned his

stare, looking him up and down in a manner meant to be contemptuous.

Kerry’s fierce, intolerant gaze became transferred to the face and then

the figure of the woman. He tilted his hat further forward and turned

aside. The woman’s glance followed him, to the marked disgust of her

companion.

“Oh,” she whispered, “what a delightfully savage man! He looks

positively uncivilized. I have no doubt he drags women about by their

hair. I _do_ hope he’s a member!”

Mollie Gretna spoke loudly enough for Kerry to hear her, but unmoved by

her admiration he stepped up to the reception office. He was in high

good humor. He had spent the afternoon agreeably, interviewing certain

officials charged with policing the East End of London, and had

succeeded, to quote his own language, “in getting a gale up.” Despite

the coldness of the weather, he had left two inspectors and a

speechlessly indignant superintendent bathed in perspiration.

“Are you a member, sir?” inquired the girl behind the desk.

Kerry smiled genially. A newsboy thrust open the swing-door, yelling:

“Bond Street murder! A fresh _de_velopment. Late speshul!”

“Oh!” cried Mollie Gretna to her companion, “get me a paper. Be quick!

I am so excited!”

Kerry took up a pen, and in large bold hand-writing inscribed the

following across two pages of the visitors’ book:

“Chief Inspector Kerry. Criminal Investigation Department.”

He laid a card on the open book, and, thrusting his cane under his arm,

walked to the head of the stairs.

“Cloak-room on the right, sir,” said an attendant.

Kerry paused, glancing over his shoulder and chewing audibly. Then he

settled his hat more firmly upon his red head and descended the stairs.

The attendant went to inspect the visitors’ book, but Mollie Gretna was

at the desk before him, and:

“Oh, Bill!” she cried to her annoyed cavalier, “it’s Inspector

Kerry—who is in charge of poor Lucy’s murder! Oh, Bill! this is lovely!

Something is going to happen! Do come down!”

Followed by the obedient but reluctant “Bill,” Mollie ran downstairs,

and almost into the arms of a tall dark girl, who, carrying a purple

opera cloak, was coming up.

“You’re not going yet, Dickey?” said Mollie, throwing her arm around

the other’s waist.

“Ssh!” whispered “Dickey.” “Inspector Kerry is here! You don’t want to

be called as a witness at nasty inquests and things, do you?”

“Good heavens, my dear, no! But why should I be?”

“Why should any of us? But don’t you see they are looking for the

people who used to go to Kazmah’s? It’s in the paper tonight. We shall

all be served with _subpoenas_. I’m off!”

Escaping from Mollie’s embrace, the tall girl ran up the stairs,

kissing her hand to Bill as she passed. Mollie hesitated, looking all

about the crowded room for Chief Inspector Kerry. Presently she saw

him, standing nearly opposite the stairway, his intolerant blue eyes

turning right and left, so that the fierce glance seemed to miss

nothing and no one in the room. Hands thrust in his overcoat pockets

and his cane held under his arm, he inspected the place and its

occupants as a very aggressive country cousin might inspect the

monkey-house at the Zoo. To Mollie’s intense disappointment he

persistently avoided looking in her direction.

Although a popular dance was on the point of commencing, several

visitors had suddenly determined to leave. Kerry pretended to be

ignorant of the sensation which his appearance had created, passing

slowly along the room and submitting group after group to deliberate

scrutiny; but as news flies through an Eastern bazaar the name of the

celebrated detective, whose association with London’s latest crime was

mentioned by every evening paper in the kingdom, sped now on magic

wings, so that there was a muted _charivari_ out of which, in every key

from bass to soprano, arose ever and anon the words “Chief Inspector

Kerry.”

“It’s perfectly ridiculous but characteristically English,” drawled one

young man, standing beside Mollie Gretna, “to send out a bally

red-headed policeman in preposterous glad-rags to look for a clever

criminal. Kerry is well known to all the crooks, and nobody could

mistake him. Damn silly—damn silly!”

As “damn silly” Kerry’s open scrutiny of the members and visitors must

have appeared to others, but it was a deliberate policy very popular

with the Chief Inspector, and termed by him “beating.” Possessed of an

undisguisable personality, Kerry had found a way of employing his

natural physical peculiarities to his professional advantage. Where

other investigators worked in the dark, secretly, Red Kerry sought the

limelight—at the right time. That every hour lost in getting on the

track of the mysterious Kazmah was a point gained by the equally

mysterious man from Whitehall he felt assured, and although the

elaborate but hidden mechanism of New Scotland Yard was at work seeking

out the patrons of the Bond Street drug-shop, Kerry was indisposed to

await the result.

He had been in the night club only about ten minutes, but during those

ten minutes fully a dozen people had more or less hurriedly departed.

Because of the arrangements already made by Sergeant Coombes, the

addresses of many of these departing visitors would be in Kerry’s

possession ere the night was much older. And why should they have fled,

incontinent, if not for the reason that they feared to become involved

in the Kazmah affair? All the cabmen had been warned, and those

fugitives who had private cars would be followed.

It was a curious scene which Kerry surveyed, a scene to have interested

philosopher and politician alike. For here were representatives of

every stratum of society, although some of those standing for the lower

strata were suitably disguised. The peerage was well represented, so

was Judah; there were women entitled to wear coronets dancing with men

entitled to wear the broad arrow, and men whose forefathers had signed

Magna Charta dancing with chorus girls from the revues and musical

comedies.

Waiting until the dance was fully in progress, Inspector Kerry walked

slowly around the room in the direction of the stair. Parties seated at

tables were treated each to an intolerant stare, alcoves were

inspected, and more than one waiter meeting the gaze of the steely

eyes, felt a prickling of conscience and recalled past peccadilloes.

Bill had claimed Mollie Gretna for the dance, but:

“No, Bill,” she had replied, watching Kerry as if enthralled; “I don’t

want to dance. I am watching Chief Inspector Kerry.”

“That’s evident,” complained the young man. “Perhaps you would like to

spend the rest of the night in Bow Street?”

“Oh,” whispered Mollie, “I should love it! I have never been arrested,

but if ever I am I hope it will be by Chief Inspector Kerry. I am

positive he would haul me away in handcuffs!”

When Kerry came to the foot of the stairs, Mollie quite deliberately

got in his way, murmured an apology, and gave him a sidelong gaze

through lowered lashes, which was more eloquent than any thesis. He

smiled with fierce geniality, looked her up and down, and proceeded to

mount the stairs, with never a backward glance.

His genius for criminal investigation possessed definite limitations.

He could not perhaps have been expected in tactics so completely

opposed to those which he had anticipated to recognize the presence of

a valuable witness. Student of human nature though undoubtedly he was,

he had not solved the mystery of that outstanding exception which seems

to be involved in every rule.

Thus, a fellow with a low forehead and a weakly receding chin, Kerry

classified as a dullard, a witling, unaware that if the brow were but

low enough and the chin virtually absent altogether he might stand in

the presence of a second Daniel. Physiognomy is a subtle science, and

the exceptions to its rules are often of a sensational character. In

the same way Kerry looked for evasion, and, where possible, flight, on

the part of one possessing a guilty conscience. Mollie Gretna was a

phenomenal exception to a rule otherwise sound. And even one familiar

with criminal psychology might be forgiven for failing to detect guilt

in a woman anxious to make the acquaintance of a prominent member of

the Criminal Investigation Department.

Pausing for a moment in the entrance of the club, and chewing

reflectively, Kerry swung open the door and walked out into the street.

He had one more cover to “beat,” and he set off briskly, plunging into

the mazes of Soho crossing Wardour Street into old Compton Street, and

proceeding thence in the direction of Shaftesbury Avenue. Turning to

the right on entering the narrow thoroughfare for which he was bound,

he stopped and whistled softly. He stood in the entrance to a court;

and from further up the court came an answering whistle.

Kerry came out of the court again, and proceeded some twenty paces

along the street to a restaurant. The windows showed no light, but the

door remained open, and Kerry entered without hesitation, crossed a

darkened room and found himself in a passage where a man was seated in

a little apartment like that of a stage-door keeper. He stood up, on

hearing Kerry’s tread, peering out at the newcomer.

“The restaurant is closed, sir.”

“Tell me a better one,” rapped Kerry. “I want to go upstairs.”

“Your card, sir.”

Kerry revealed his teeth in a savage smile and tossed his card on to

the desk before the concierge. He passed on, mounting the stairs at the

end of the passage. Dimly a bell rang; and on the first landing Kerry

met a heavily built foreign gentleman, who bowed.

“My dear Chief Inspector,” he said gutturally, “what is this, please? I

trust nothing is wrong, eh?”

“Nothing,” replied Kerry. “I just want to look round.”

“A few friends,” explained the suave alien, rubbing his hands together

and still bowing, “remain playing dominoes with me.”

“Very good,” rapped Kerry. “Well, if you think we have given them time

to hide the ‘wheel’ we’ll go in. Oh, don’t explain. I’m not worrying

about sticklebacks tonight. I’m out for salmon.”

He opened a door on the left of the landing and entered a large room

which offered evidence of having been hastily evacuated by a

considerable company. A red and white figured cloth of a type much used

in Continental cafés had been spread upon a long table, and three

foreigners, two men and an elderly woman, were bending over a row of

dominoes set upon one corner of the table. Apparently the men were

playing and the woman was watching. But there was a dense cloud of

cigar smoke in the room, and mingled with its pungency were sweeter

scents. A number of empty champagne bottles stood upon a sideboard and

an elegant silk theatre-bag lay on a chair.

“H’m,” said Kerry, glaring fiercely from the bottles to the players,

who covertly were watching him. “How you two smarts can tell a domino

from a door-knocker after cracking a dozen magnums gets me guessing.”

He took up the scented bag and gravely handed it to the old woman.

“You have mislaid your bag, madam,” he said. “But, fortunately, I

noticed it as I came in.”

He turned the glance of his fierce eyes upon the man who had met him on

the landing, and who had followed him into the room.

“Third floor, von Hindenburg,” he rapped. “Don’t argue. Lead the way.”

For one dangerous moment the man’s brow lowered and his heavy face grew

blackly menacing. He exchanged a swift look with his friends seated at

the disguised roulette table. Kerry’s jaw muscles protruded enormously.

“Give me another answer like that,” he said in a tone of cold ferocity,

“and I’ll kick you from here to Paradise.”

“No offense—no offense,” muttered the man, quailing before the savagery

of the formidable Chief Inspector. “You come this way, please. Some

ladies call upon me this evening, and I do not want to frighten them.”

“No,” said Kerry, “you wouldn’t, naturally.” He stood aside as a door

at the further end of the room was opened. “After you, my friend. I

said ‘lead the way.’”

They mounted to the third floor of the restaurant. The room which they

had just quitted was used as an auxiliary dining and supper-room before

midnight, as Kerry knew. After midnight the centre table was unmasked,

and from thence onward to dawn, sometimes, was surrounded by roulette

players. The third floor he had never visited, but he had a shrewd idea

that it was not entirely reserved for the private use of the

proprietor.

A babel of voices died away as the two men walked into a room rather

smaller than that below and furnished with little tables, café fashion.

At one end was a grand piano and a platform before which a velvet

curtain was draped. Some twenty people, men and women, were in the

place, standing looking towards the entrance. Most of the men and all

the women but one were in evening dress; but despite this common armor

of respectability, they did not all belong to respectable society.

Two of the women Kerry recognized as bearers of titles, and one was

familiar to him as a screen-beauty. The others were unclassifiable, but

all were fashionably dressed with the exception of a masculine-looking

lady who had apparently come straight off a golf course, and who later

was proved to be a well-known advocate of woman’s rights. The men all

belonged to familiar types. Some of them were Jews.

Kerry, his feet widely apart and his hands thrust in his overcoat

pockets, stood staring at face after face and chewing slowly. The

proprietor glanced apologetically at his patrons and shrugged. Silence

fell upon the company. Then:

“I am a police officer,” said Kerry sharply. “You will file out past

me, and I want a card from each of you. Those who have no cards will

write name and address here.”

He drew a long envelope and a pencil from a pocket of his dinner

jacket. Laying the envelope and pencil on one of the little tables:

“Quick march!” he snapped. “You, sir!” shooting out his forefinger in

the direction of a tall, fair young man, “step out!”

Glancing helplessly about him, the young man obeyed, and approaching

Kerry:

“I say, officer,” he whispered nervously, “can’t you manage to keep my

name out of it? I mean to say, my people will kick up the deuce.

Anything up to a tenner....”

The whisper faded away. Kerry’s expression had grown positively

ferocious.

“Put your card on the table,” he said tersely, “and get out while my

hands stay in my pockets!”

Hurriedly the noble youth (he was the elder son of an earl) complied,

and departed. Then, one by one, the rest of the company filed past the

Chief Inspector. He challenged no one until a Jew smilingly laid a card

on the table bearing the legend: “Mr. John Jones, Lincoln’s Inn

Fields.”

“Hi!” rapped Kerry, grasping the man’s arm. “One moment, Mr. ‘Jones’!

The card I want is in the other case. D’you take me for a mug? That

‘Jones’ trick was tried on Noah by the blue-faced baboon!”

His perception of character was wonderful. At some of the cards he did

not even glance; and upon the women he wasted no time at all. He took

it for granted that they would all give false names, but since each of

them would be followed it did not matter. When at last the room was

emptied, he turned to the scowling proprietor, and:

“That’s that!” he said. “I’ve had no instructions about your

establishment, my friend, and as I’ve seen nothing improper going on

I’m making no charge, at the moment. I don’t want to know what sort of

show takes place on your platform, and I don’t want to know anything

about you that I don’t know already. You’re a Swiss subject and a dark

horse.”

He gathered up the cards from the table, glancing at them carelessly.

He did not expect to gain much from his possession of these names and

addresses. It was among the women that he counted upon finding patrons

of Kazmah and Company. But as he was about to drop the cards into his

overcoat pocket, one of them, which bore a written note, attracted his

attention.

At this card he stared like a man amazed; his face grew more and more

red, and:

“Hell!” he said—“Hell! which of ’em was it?”

The card contained the following:—

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE MOODS OF MOLLIE

Early the following morning Margaret Halley called upon Mollie Gretna.

Mollie’s personality did not attract Margaret. The two had nothing in

common, but Margaret was well aware of the nature of the tie which had

bound Rita Irvin to this empty and decadent representative of English

aristocracy. Mollie Gretna was entitled to append the words “The

Honorable” to her name, but not only did she refrain from doing so but

she even preferred to be known as “Gretna”—the style of one of the

family estates.

This pseudonym she had adopted shortly after her divorce, when she had

attempted to take up a stage career. But although the experience had

proved disastrous, she had retained the _nom de guerre_, and during the

past four years had several times appeared at war charity

garden-parties as a classical dancer—to the great delight of the guests

and greater disgust of her family. Her maternal uncle, head of her

house, said to be the most blasé member of the British peerage and

known as “the noble tortoise,” was generally considered to have

pronounced the final verdict upon his golden-haired niece when he

declared “she is almost amusing.”

Mollie received her visitor with extravagant expressions of welcome.

“My dear Miss Halley,” she cried, “how perfectly sweet of you to come

to see me! of course, I can guess what you have called about. Look! I

have every paper published this morning in London! Every one! Oh! poor,

darling little Rita! What _can_ have become of her!”

Tears glistened upon her carefully made-up lashes, and so deep did her

grief seem to be that one would never have suspected that she had spent

the greater part of the night playing bridge at a “mixed” club in Dover

Street, and from thence had proceeded to a military “breakfast-dance.”

“It is indeed a ghastly tragedy,” said Margaret. “It seems incredible

that she cannot be traced.”

“Absolutely incredible!” declared Mollie, opening a large box of

cigarettes. “Will you have one, dear?”

“No, thanks. By the way, they are not from Buenos Ayres, I suppose?”

Mollie, cigarette in hand, stared, round-eyed, and:

“Oh, my dear Miss Halley!” she cried, “what an idea! Such a funny thing

to suggest.”

Margaret smiled coolly.

“Poor Sir Lucien used to smoke cigarettes of that kind,” she explained,

“and I thought perhaps you smoked them, too.”

Mollie shook her head and lighted the cigarette.

“He gave me one once, and it made me feel quite sick,” she declared.

Margaret glanced at the speaker, and knew immediately that Mollie had

determined to deny all knowledge of the drug coterie. Because there is

no problem of psychology harder than that offered by a perverted mind,

Margaret was misled in ascribing this secrecy to a desire to avoid

becoming involved in a scandal. Therefore:

“Do you quite realize, Miss Gretna,” she said quietly, “that every hour

wasted now in tracing Rita may mean, must mean, an hour of agony for

her?”

“Oh, don’t! please don’t!” cried Mollie, clasping her hands. “I cannot

bear to think of it.”

“God knows in whose hands she is. Then there is poor Mr. Irvin. He is

utterly prostrated. One shudders to contemplate his torture as the

hours and the days go by and no news comes of Rita.”

“Oh, my dear! you are making me cry!” exclaimed Mollie. “If only I

could do something to help....”

Margaret was studying her closely, and now for the first time she

detected sincere emotion in Mollie’s voice—and unforced tears in her

eyes. Hope was reborn.

“Perhaps you can,” she continued, speaking gently. “You knew all Rita’s

friends and all Sir Lucien’s. You must have met the woman called Mrs.

Sin?”

“Mrs. Sin,” whispered Mollie, staring in a frightened way so that the

pupils of her eyes slowly enlarged. “What about Mrs. Sin?”

“Well, you see, they seem to think that through Mrs. Sin they will be

able to trace Kazmah; and wherever Kazmah is one would expect to find

poor Rita.”

Mollie lowered her head for a moment, then glanced quickly at the

speaker, and quickly away again.

“Please let me explain just what I mean,” continued Margaret. “It seems

to be impossible to find anybody in London who will admit having known

Mrs. Sin or Kazmah. They are all afraid of being involved in the case,

of course. Now, if you can help, don’t hesitate for that reason. A

special commission has been appointed by Lord Wrexborough to deal with

the case, and their agent is working quite independently of the police.

Anything which you care to tell him will be treated as strictly

confidential; but think what it may mean to Rita.”

Mollie clasped her hands about her right knee and rocked to and fro in

her chair.

“No one knows who Kazmah is,” she said.

“But a number of people seem to know Mrs. Sin. I am sure you must have

met her?”

“If I say that I know her, shall I be called as a witness?”

“Certainly not. I can assure you of that.”

Mollie continued to rock to and fro.

“But if I were to tell the police I should have to go to court, I

suppose?”

“I suppose so,” replied Margaret. “I am afraid I am dreadfully ignorant

of such matters. It might depend upon whether you spoke to a high

official or to a subordinate one; an ordinary policeman for instance.

But the Home office agent has nothing whatever to do with Scotland

Yard.”

Mollie stood up in order to reach an ash-tray, and:

“I really don’t think I have anything to say, Miss Halley,” she

declared. “I have certainly met Mrs. Sin, but I know nothing whatever

about her, except that I believe she is a Jewess.”

Margaret sighed, looking up wistfully into Mollie’s face. “Are you

quite sure?” she pleaded. “Oh, Miss Gretna, if you know

anything—anything—don’t hide it now. It may mean so much.”

“Oh, I quite understand that,” cried Mollie. “My heart simply aches and

aches when I think of poor, sweet little Rita. But—really I don’t think

I can be of the least tiny bit of use.”

Their glances met, and Margaret read hostility in the shallow eyes.

Mollie, who had been wavering, now for some reason had become confirmed

in her original determination to remain silent. Margaret stood up.

“It is no good, then,” she said. “We must hope that Rita will be traced

by the police. Good-bye, Miss Gretna. I am so sorry you cannot help.”

“And so am I!” declared Mollie. “It is perfectly sweet of you to take

such an interest, and I feel a positive _worm_. But what can I do?”

As Margaret was stepping into her little runabout car, which awaited

her at the door, a theory presented itself to account for Mollie’s

sudden hostility. It had developed, apparently, as a result of

Margaret’s reference to the Home office inquiry. Of course! Mollie

would naturally be antagonistic to a commission appointed to suppress

the drug traffic.

Convinced that this was the correct explanation, Margaret drove away,

reflecting bitterly that she had been guilty of a strategical error

which it was now too late to rectify.

In common with others, Kerry among them, who had come in contact with

that perverted intelligence, she misjudged Mollie’s motives. In the

first place, the latter had no wish to avoid publicity, and in the

second place—although she sometimes wondered vaguely what she should do

when her stock of drugs became exhausted—Mollie was prompted by no

particular animosity toward the Home office inquiry. She had merely

perceived a suitable opportunity to make the acquaintance of the fierce

red Chief Inspector, and at the same time to secure notoriety for

herself.

Ere Margaret’s car had progressed a hundred yards from the door, Mollie

was at the telephone.

“City 400, please,” she said.

An interval elapsed, then:

“Is that the Commissioner’s office, New Scotland Yard?” she asked.

A voice replied that it was.

“Could you put me through to Chief Inspector Kerry?”

“What name?” inquired the voice.

Mollie hesitated for three seconds, and then gave her family name.

“Very well, madam,” said the voice respectfully. “Please hold on, and I

will enquire if the Chief Inspector is here.”

Mollie’s heart was beating rapidly with pleasurable excitement, and she

was as confused as a maiden at her first rendezvous. Then:

“Hello,” said the voice.

“Yes?”

“I am sorry, madam. But Chief Inspector Kerry is off duty.”

“Oh, dear!” sighed Mollie, “what a pity. Can you tell me where I could

find him?”

“I am afraid not, madam. It is against the rules to give private

addresses of members of any department.”

“Oh, very well.” She sighed again. “Thank you.”

She replaced the receiver and stood biting her finger thoughtfully. She

was making a mental inventory of her many admirers and wondering which

of them could help her. Suddenly she came to a decision on the point.

Taking up the receiver:

“Victoria 8440, please,” she said.

Still biting one finger she waited, until:

“Foreign office,” announced a voice.

“Please put me through to Mr. Archie Boden-Shaw,” she said.

Ere long that official’s secretary was inquiring her name, and a moment

later:

“Is that you, Archie?” said Mollie. “Yes! Mollie speaking. No, please

listen, Archie! You can get to know everything at the Foreign office,

and I want you to find out for me the private address of Chief

Inspector Kerry, who is in charge of the Bond Street murder case. Don’t

be silly! I’ve asked Scotland Yard, but they won’t tell me. _You_ can

find out.... It doesn’t matter why I want to know.... Just ring me up

and tell me. I _must_ know in half an hour. Yes, I shall be seeing you

tonight. Good-bye....”

Less than half an hour later, the obedient Archie rang up, and Mollie,

all excitement, wrote the following address in a dainty scented

notebook which she carried in her handbag.

CHIEF INSPECTOR KERRY,

67 Spenser Road, Brixton.

CHAPTER XXVII.

CROWN EVIDENCE

The appearance of the violet-enamelled motor brougham upholstered in

cream, and driven by a chauffeur in a violet and cream livery, created

some slight sensation in Spenser Road, S.E. Mollie Gretna’s conspicuous

car was familiar enough to residents in the West End of London, but to

lower middle-class suburbia it came as something of a shock. More than

one window curtain moved suspiciously, suggesting a hidden but watchful

presence, when the glittering vehicle stopped before the gate of number

67; and the lady at number 68 seized an evidently rare opportunity to

come out and polish her letter-box.

She was rewarded by an unobstructed view of the smartest woman in

London (thus spake society paragraphers) and of the most expensive set

of furs in Europe, also of a perfectly gowned slim figure. Of Mollie’s

disdainful face, with its slightly uptilted nose, she had no more than

a glimpse.

A neat maid, evidently Scotch, admitted the dazzling visitor to number

67; and Spenser Road waited and wondered. It was something to do with

the Bond Street murder! Small girls appeared from doorways suddenly

opened and darted off to advise less-watchful neighbors.

Kerry, who had been at work until close upon dawn in the mysterious

underworld of Soho was sleeping, but Mrs. Kerry received Mollie in a

formal little drawing-room, which, unlike the cosy, homely dining-room,

possessed that frigid atmosphere which belongs to uninhabited

apartments. In a rather handsome cabinet were a number of trophies

associated with the detective’s successful cases. The cabinet itself

was a present from a Regent Street firm for whom Kerry had recovered

valuable property.

Mary Kerry, dressed in a plain blouse and skirt, exhibited no trace of

nervousness in the presence of her aristocratic and fashionable caller.

Indeed, Mollie afterwards declared that “she was quite a ladylike

person. But rather tin tabernacley, my dear.”

“Did ye wish to see Chief Inspector Kerry parteecularly?” asked Mary,

watching her visitor with calm, observant eyes.

“Oh, most particularly!” cried Mollie, in a flutter of excitement. “Of

course I don’t know _what_ you must think of me for calling at such a

preposterous hour, but there are some things that simply can’t wait.”

“Aye,” murmured Mrs. Kerry. “’Twill be yon Bond Street affair?”

“Oh, yes, it is, Mrs. Kerry. Doesn’t the very name of Bond Street turn

your blood cold? I am simply shivering with fear!”

“As the wife of a Chief Inspector I am maybe more used to tragedies

than yoursel’, madam. But it surely is a sair grim business. My husband

is resting now. He was hard at work a’ the night. Nae doubt ye’ll be

wishin’ tee see him privately?”

“Oh, if you please. I am so sorry to disturb him. I can imagine that he

must be literally exhausted after spending a whole night among dreadful

people.”

Mary Kerry stood up.

“If ye’ll excuse me for a moment I’ll awaken him,” she said. “Our

household is sma’.”

“Oh, of course! I quite understand, Mrs. Kerry! So sorry. But so good

of you.”

“Might I offer ye a glass o’ sherry an’ a biscuit?”

“I simply couldn’t _dream_ of troubling you! Please don’t suggest such

a thing. I feel covered with guilt already. Many thanks nevertheless.”

Mary Kerry withdrew, leaving Mollie alone. As soon as the door closed

Mollie stood up and began to inspect the trophies in the cabinet. She

was far too restless and excited to remain sitting down. She looked at

the presentation clock on the mantelpiece and puzzled over the

signatures engraved upon a large silver dish which commemorated the joy

displayed by the Criminal Investigation Department upon the occasion of

Kerry’s promotion to the post of Chief Inspector.

The door opened and Kerry came in. He had arisen and completed his

toilet in several seconds less than five minutes. But his spotlessly

neat attire would have survived inspection by the most lynx-eyed

martinet in the Brigade of Guards. As he smiled at his visitor with

fierce geniality, Mollie blushed like a young girl.

Chief Inspector Kerry was a much bigger man than she had believed him

to be. The impression left upon her memory by his brief appearance at

the night club had been that of a small, dapper figure. Now, as he

stood in the little drawing-room, she saw that he was not much if

anything below the average height of Englishmen, and that he possessed

wonderfully broad shoulders. In fact, Kerry was deceptive. His compact

neatness and the smallness of his feet and hands, together with those

swift, lithe movements which commonly belong to men of light physique,

curiously combined to deceive the beholder, but masked eleven stones

(*note: 1 stone = 14 pounds) of bone and muscle.

“Very good of you to offer information, miss,” he said. “I’m willing to

admit that I can do with it.”

He opened a bureau and took out a writing-block and a fountain pen.

Then he turned and stared hard at Mollie. She quickly lowered her eyes.

“Excuse me,” said Kerry, “but didn’t I see you somewhere last night?”

“Yes,” she said. “I was sitting just inside the door at—”

“Right! I remember,” interrupted Kerry. He continued to stare. “Before

you say any more, miss, I have to remind you that I am a police

officer, and that you may be called upon to swear to the truth of any

information you may give me.”

“Oh, of course! I know.”

“You know? Very well, then; we can get on. Who gave you my address?”

At the question, so abruptly asked, Mollie felt herself blushing again.

It was delightful to know that she could still blush. “Oh—I... that is,

I asked Scotland Yard ”

She bestowed a swift, half-veiled glance at her interrogator, but he

offered her no help, and:

“They wouldn’t tell me,” she continued. “So—I had to find out. You see,

I heard you were trying to get information which I thought perhaps I

could give.”

“So you went to the trouble to find my private address rather than to

the nearest police station,” said Kerry. “Might I ask you from whom you

heard that I wanted this information?”

“Well—it’s in the papers, isn’t it?”

“It is certainly. But it occurred to me that someone... connected might

have told you as well.”

“Actually, someone did: Miss Margaret Halley.”

“Good!” rapped Kerry. “Now we’re coming to it. She told you to come to

me?”

“Oh, no!” cried Mollie—“she didn’t. She told me to tell her so that she

could tell the Home office.”

“Eh?” said Kerry, “eh?” He bent forward, staring fiercely. “Please tell

me exactly what Miss Halley wanted to know.”

The intensity of his gaze Mollie found very perturbing, but:

“She wanted me to tell her where Mrs. Sin lived,” she replied.

Kerry experienced a quickening of the pulse. In the failure of the

C.I.D. to trace the abode of the notorious Mrs. Sin he had suspected

double-dealing. He counted it unbelievable that a figure so conspicuous

in certain circles could evade official quest even for forty-eight

hours. K Division’s explanation, too, that there were no less than

eighty Chinamen resident in and about Limehouse whose names either

began or ended with Sin, he looked upon as a paltry evasion. That very

morning he had awakened from a species of nightmare wherein 719 had

affected the arrest of Kazmah and Mrs. Sin and had rescued Mrs. Irvin

from the clutches of the former. Now—here was hope. 719 would seem to

be as hopelessly in the dark as everybody else.

“You refused?” he rapped.

“Of course I did, Inspector,” said Mollie, with a timid, tender glance.

“I thought you were the proper person to tell.”

“Then you know?” asked Kerry, unable to conceal his eagerness.

“Yes,” sighed Mollie. “Unfortunately—I know. Oh Inspector, how can I

explain it to you?”

“Don’t trouble, miss. Just give me the address and I’ll ask no

questions!”

His keenness was thrilling, infectious. As a result of the night’s

“beating” he had a list of some twenty names whose owners might have

been patrons of Kazmah and some of whom might know Mrs. Sin. But he had

learned from bitter experience how difficult it was to induce such

people to give useful evidence. There was practically no means of

forcing them to speak if they chose, from selfish motives, to be

silent. They could be forced to appear in court, but anything elicited

in public was worse than useless. Furthermore, Kerry could not afford

to wait. Mollie replied excitedly:

“Oh, Inspector, I know you will think me simply an appalling person

when I tell you; but I have been to Mrs. Sin’s house—‘The House of a

Hundred Raptures’ she calls it—”

“Yes, yes! But—the address?”

“However can I tell you the address, Inspector? I could drive you

there, but I haven’t the very haziest idea of the name of the horrible

street! One drives along dreadful roads where there are stalls and Jews

for quite an interminable time, and then over a sort of canal, and then

round to the right all among ships and horrid Chinamen. Then, there is

a doorway in a little court, and Mrs. Sin’s husband sits inside a

smelly room with a positively ferocious raven who shrieks about legs

and policemen! Oh! Can I ever forget it!”

“One moment, miss, one moment,” said Kerry, keeping an iron control

upon himself. “What is the name of Mrs. Sin’s husband?”

“Oh, let me think! I can always remember it by recalling the croak of

the raven.” She raised one hand to her brow, posing reflectively, and

began to murmur:

“Sin Sin Ah... Sin Sin Jar... Sin Sin—Oh! I have it! Sin Sin _Wa!_”

“Good!” rapped Kerry, and made a note on the block. “Sin Sin _Wa_, and

he has a pet raven, you say, who talks?”

“Who positively talks like some horrid old woman!” cried Mollie. “He

has only one eye.”

“The raven?”

“The raven, yes—and also the Chinaman.”

“What!”

“Oh! it’s a nightmare to behold them together!” declared Mollie,

clasping her hands and bending forward.

She was gaining courage, and now looked almost boldly into the fierce

eyes of the Chief Inspector.

“Describe the house,” he said succinctly. “Take your time and use your

own words.”

Thereupon Mollie launched into a description of Sin Sin Wa’s

opium-house. Kerry, his eyes fixed upon her face, listened silently.

Then:

“These little rooms are really next door?” he asked.

“I suppose so, Inspector. We always went through the back of a

cupboard!”

“Can you give me names of others who used this place?”

“Well”—Mollie hesitated—“poor Rita, of course and Sir Lucien. Then,

Cyrus Kilfane used to go.”

“Kilfane? The American actor?”

“Yes.”

“H’m. He’s back in America, Sir Lucien is dead, and Mrs. Irvin is

missing. Nobody else?”

Mollie shook her head.

“Who first took you there?”

“Cyrus Kilfane.”

“Not Sir Lucien?”

“Oh, no. But both of them had been before.”

“What was Kazmah’s connection with Mrs. Sin and her husband?”

“I have no idea, Inspector. Kazmah used to supply cocaine and veronal

and trional and heroin, but those who wanted to smoke opium he sent to

Mrs. Sin.”

“What! he gave them her address?”

“No, no! He gave her _their_ address.”

“I see. She called?”

“Yes. Oh, Inspector”—Mollie bent farther forward—“I can see in your

eyes that you think I am fabulously wicked! Shall I be arrested?”

Kerry coughed drily and stood up.

“Probably not, miss. But you may be required to give evidence.”

“Oh, actually?” cried Mollie, also standing up and approaching nearer.

“Yes. Shall you object?”

Mollie looked into his eyes.

“Not if I can be of the slightest assistance to _you_, Inspector.”

A theory to explain why this social butterfly had sought him out as a

recipient of her compromising confidences presented itself to Kerry’s

mind. He was a modest man, having neither time nor inclination for

gallantries, and this was the first occasion throughout his

professional career upon which he had obtained valuable evidence on the

strength of his personal attractions. He doubted the accuracy of his

deduction. But, Mollie at that moment lowering her lashes and then

rapidly raising them again, Kerry was compelled to accept his own

astonishing theory.

“And she is the daughter of a peer!” he reflected. “No wonder it has

been hard to get evidence.”

He glanced rapidly in the direction of the door. There were several

details which were by no means clear, but he decided to act upon the

information already given and to get rid of his visitor without delay.

Where some of the most dangerous criminals in Europe and America had

failed, Mollie Gretna had succeeded in making Red Kerry nervous.

“I am much indebted to you, miss,” he said, and opened the door.

“Oh, it has been delightful to confess to you, Inspector!” declared

Mollie. “I will give you my card, and I shall expect you to come to me

for any further information you may want. If I have to be brought to

court, _you_ will tell me, won’t you?”

“Rely upon me, miss,” replied Kerry shortly.

He escorted Mollie to her brougham, observed by no less than six

discreetly hidden neighbors. And as the brougham was driven off she

waved her hand to him! Kerry felt a hot flush spreading over his red

countenance, for the veiled onlookers had not escaped his attention. As

he re-entered the house:

“Yon’s a bad woman,” said his wife, emerging from the dining-room.

“I believe you may be right, Mary,” replied Kerry confusedly.

“I kenned it when fairst I set een upon her painted face. I kenned it

the now when she lookit sideways at ye. If yon’s a grand lady, she’s a

woman o’ puir repute. The Lord gi’e us grace.”

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE GILDED JOSS

London was fog-bound. The threat of the past week had been no empty

one. Towards the hour of each wintry sunset had come the yellow racks,

hastening dusk and driving folks more speedily homeward to their

firesides. The dull reports of fog-signals had become a part of the

metropolitan bombilation, but hitherto the choking mist had not secured

a strangle-hold.

Now, however, it had triumphed, casting its thick net over the city as

if eager to stifle the pulsing life of the new Babylon. In the

neighborhood of the Docks its density was extraordinary, and the

purlieus of Limehouse became mere mysterious gullies of smoke

impossible to navigate unless one were very familiar with their

intricacies and dangers.

Chief Inspector Kerry, wearing a cardigan under his oilskins, tapped

the pavement with the point of his malacca like a blind man. No glimmer

of light could he perceive. He could not even see his companion.

“Hell!” he snapped irritably, as his foot touched a brick wall, “where

the devil are you, constable?”

“Here beside you, sir,” answered P.C. Bryce, of K Division, his guide.

“Which side?”

“Here, sir.”

The constable grasped Kerry’s arm.

“But we’ve walked slap into a damn brick wall!”

“Keep the wall on your left, sir, and it’s all clear ahead.”

“Clear be damned!” said Kerry. “Are we nearly there?”

“About a dozen paces and we shall see the lamp—if it’s been lighted.”

“And if not we shall stroll into the river, I suppose?”

“No danger of that. Even if the lamp’s out, we shall strike the iron

pillar.”

“I don’t doubt it,” said Kerry grimly.

They proceeded at a slow pace. Dull reports and a vague clangor were

audible. These sounds were so deadened by the clammy mist that they

might have proceeded from some gnome’s workshop deep in the bowels of

the earth. The blows of a pile-driver at work on the Surrey shore

suggested to Kerry’s mind the phantom crew of Hendrick Hudson at their

game of ninepins in the Katskill Mountains. Suddenly:

“Is that you, Bryce?” he asked.

“I’m here, sir,” replied the voice of the constable from beside him.

“H’m, then there’s someone else about.” He raised his voice. “Hi,

there! have you lost your way?”

Kerry stood still, listening. But no one answered to his call.

“I’ll swear there was someone just behind us, Bryce!”

“There was, sir. I saw someone, too. A Chinese resident, probably. Here

we are!”