Dope

CONTENTS

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:

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.