Dope by Sax Rohmer (page 3)

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 dahabiyeh, 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 fiance’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 Audleystreet 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 habitue; the habitue 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. 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 tonight.”

“No smokee,” murmured the Chinaman. “Velly good stuff.”

“Yes, the stuff is all right, Sin.”

“Number one proper,” crooned Sin Sin Wa, and relapsed into smiling silence.

“Number one p’lice,” croaked the raven sleepily “Smartest–” He even attempted the castanets imitation, but was overcome by drowsiness.

For a while Sir Lucien stood watching the singular pair and smiling in his ironical fashion. The motive which had prompted him to leave the neighboring house and to seek the companionship of Sin Sin Wa was so obscure and belonged so peculiarly to the superdelicacies of chivalry, that already he was laughing at himself. But, nevertheless, in this house and not in its secret annex of a Hundred Raptures he designed to spend the night. Presently:

“Hon’lable p’lice patrol come ‘long plenty soon,” murmured Sin Sin Wa.

“Indeed?” said Sir Lucien, glancing at his wristwatch. “The door is open above.”

Sin Sin Wa raised one yellow forefinger, without moving either hand from the knee upon which it rested, and shook it slightly to and fro.

“Allee lightee,” he murmured. “No bhobbery. Allee peaceful fellers.”

“Will they want to come in?”

“Wantchee dlink,” replied Sin Sin Wa.

“Oh, I see. If I go out into the passage it will be all right?”

“Allee lightee.”

Even as he softly crooned the words came a heavy squelch of rubbers upon the wet pavement outside, followed by a rapping on the door. Sin Sin Wa glanced aside at Sir Lucien, and the latter immediately withdrew, partly closing the door. The Chinaman shuffled across and admitted two constables. The raven, remaining perched upon his shoulder, shrieked, “Smartest leg in Buenos Ayres,” and, fully awakened, rattled invisible castanets.

The police strode into the stuffy little room without ceremony, a pair of burly fellows, fresh-complexioned, and genial as men are wont to be who have reached a welcome resting-place on a damp and cheerless night. They stood by the stove, warming their hands; and one of them stooped, took up the little poker, and stirred the embers to a brighter glow.

“Been havin’ a pipe, Sin?” he asked, winking at his companion. “I can smell something like opium!”

“No smokee opium,” murmured Sin Sin Wa complacently. “Smokee Woodbine.”

“Ho, ho!” laughed the other constable. “I don’t think.”

“You likee tly one piecee pipee one time?” inquired the Chinaman. “Gotchee fliend makee smokee.”

The man who had poked the fire slapped his companion on the back.

“Now’s your chance, Jim!” he cried. “You always said you’d like to have a cut at it.”

“H’m!” muttered the other. “A ‘double’ o’ that fifteen over-proof Jamaica of yours, Sin, would hit me in a tender spot tonight.”

“Lum?” murmured Sin Sin blandly. “No hate got.”

He resumed his seat on the tea-chest, and the raven muttered sleepily, “Sin Sin–Sin.”

“H’m!” repeated the constable.

He raised the skirt of his heavy top-coat, and from his trouser-pocket drew out a leather purse. The eye of Sin Sin Wa remained fixed upon a distant corner of the room. From the purse the constable took a shilling, ringing it loudly upon the table.

“Double rum, miss, please!” he said, facetiously. “There’s no treason allowed nowadays, so my pal’s–“

“I stood yours last night Jim, anyway!” cried the other, grinning. “Go on, stump up!”

Jim rang a second shilling on the table.

“Two double rums!” he called.

Sin Sin Wa reached a long arm into the little cupboard beside him and withdrew a bottle and a glass. Leaning forward he placed bottle and glass on the table, and adroitly swept the coins into his yellow palm.

“Number one p’lice chop,” croaked the raven.

“You’re right, old bird!” said Jim, pouring out a stiff peg of the spirit and disposing of it at a draught. “We should freeze to death on this blasted riverside beat if it wasn’t for Sin Sin.”

He measured out a second portion for his companion, and the latter drank the raw spirit off as though it had been ale, replaced the glass on the table, and having adjusted his belt and lantern in that characteristic way which belongs exclusively to members of the Metropolitan Police Force, turned and departed.

“Good night, Sin,” he said, opening the door.

“So-long,” murmured the Chinaman.

“Good night, old bird,” cried Jim, following his colleague.

“So-long.”

The door closed, and Sin Sin Wa, shuffling across, rebolted it. As Sir Lucien came out from his hiding-place Sin Sin Wa returned to his seat on the tea-chest, first putting the glass, unwashed, and the rum bottle back in the cupboard.

To the ordinary observer the Chinaman presents an inscrutable mystery. His seemingly unemotional character and his racial inability to express his thoughts intelligibly in any European tongue stamp him as a creature apart, and one whom many are prone erroneously to classify very low in the human scale and not far above the ape. Sir Lucien usually spoke to Sin Sin Wa in English, and the other replied in that weird jargon known as “pidgin.” But the silly Sin Wa who murmured gibberish and the Sin Sin Wa who could converse upon many and curious subjects in his own language were two different beings–as Sir Lucien was aware. Now, as the one-eyed Chinaman resumed his seat and the one- eyed raven sank into slumber, Pyne suddenly spoke in Chinese, a tongue which he understood as it is understood by few Englishmen; that strange, sibilant speech which is alien from all Western conceptions of oral intercourse as the Chinese institutions and ideals are alien from those of the rest of the civilized world.

“So you make a profit on your rum, Sin Sin Wa,” he said ironically, “at the same time that you keep in the good graces of the police?”

Sin Sin Wa’s expression underwent a subtle change at the sound of his native language. He moved his hands and became slightly animated.

“A great people of the West, most honorable sir,” he replied in the pure mandarin dialect, “claim credit for having said that ‘business is business.’ Yet he who thus expressed himself was a Chinaman.”

“You surprise me.”

“The wise man must often find occasion for surprise most honorable sir.”

Sir Lucien lighted a cigarette.

“I sometimes wonder, Sin Sin Wa,” he said slowly, “what your aim in life can be. Your father was neither a ship’s carpenter nor a shopkeeper. This I know. Your age I do not know and cannot guess, but you are no longer young. You covet wealth. For what purpose, Sin Sin Wa?”

Standing behind the Chinaman, Sir Lucien’s dark face, since he made no effort to hide his feelings, revealed the fact that he attached to this seemingly abstract discussion a greater importance than his tone of voice might have led one to suppose. Sin Sin Wa remained silent for some time, then:

“Most honorable sir,” he replied, “when I have smoked the opium, before my eyes–for in dreams I have two–a certain picture arises. It is that of a farm in the province of Ho-Nan. Beyond the farm stretch paddy-fields as far as one can see. Men and women and boys and girls move about the farm, happy in their labors, and far, far away dwell the mountain gods, who send the great Yellow River sweeping down through the valleys where the poppy is in bloom. It is to possess that farm, most honorable sir, and those paddy-fields that I covet wealth.”

“And in spite of the opium which you consume, you have never lost sight of this ideal?”

“Never.”

“But–your wife?”

Sin Sin Wa performed a curious shrugging movement, peculiarly racial.

“A man may not always have the same wife,” he replied cryptically. “The honorable wife who now attends to my requirements, laboring unselfishly in my miserable house and scorning the love of other men as she has always done–and as an honorable and upright woman is expected to do–may one day be gathered to her ancestors. A man never knows. Or she may leave me. I am not a good husband. It may be that some little maiden of Ho-Nan, mild-eyed like the musk-deer and modest and tender, will consent to minister to my old age. Who knows?”

Sir Lucien blew a thick cloud of tobacco smoke into the room, and:

“She will never love you, Sin Sin Wa,” he said, almost sadly. “She will come to your house only to cheat you.”

Sin Sin Wa repeated the eloquent shrug.

“We have a saying in Ho-Nan, most honorable sir,” he answered, “and it is this: ‘He who has tasted the poppy-cup has nothing to ask of love.’ She will cook for me, this little one, and stroke my brow when I am weary, and light my pipe. My eye will rest upon her with pleasure. It is all I ask.”

There came a soft rapping on the outer door–three raps, a pause, and then two raps. The raven opened his beady eye.

“Sin Sin Wa,” he croaked, “number one p’lice chop, lo!”

Sin Sin Wa glanced aside at Sir Lucien.

“The traffic. A consignment of opium,” he said. “Sam Tuk calls.”

Sir Lucien consulted his watch, and:

“I should like to go with you, Sin Sin Wa,” he said. “Would it be safe to leave the house–with the upper door unlocked?”

Sin Sin Wa glanced at him again.

“All are sleeping, most honorable sir?”

“All.”

“I will lock the room above and the outer door. It is safe.”

He raised a yellow hand, and the raven stepped sedately from his shoulder on to his wrist.

“Come, Tling-a-Ling,” crooned Sin Sin Wa, “you go to bed, my little black friend, and one day you, too, shall see the paddy-fields of Ho-Nan.”

Opening the useful cupboard, he stooped, and in hopped the raven. Sin Sin Wa closed the cupboard, and stepped out into the passage.

“I will bring you a coat and a cap and scarf,” he said. “Your magnificent apparel would be out of place among the low pigs who wait in my other disgusting cellar to rob me. Forgive my improper absence for one moment, most honorable sir.”

CHAPTER XIX

THE TRAFFIC

Sir Lucien came out into the alley wearing a greasy cloth cap pulled down over his eyes and an old overall, the collar turned up about a red woollen muffler which enveloped the lower part of his face. The odor of the outfit was disgusting, but this man’s double life had brought him so frequently in contact with all forms of uncleanness, including that of the Far East, compared with which the dirt of the West is hygienic, that he suffered it without complaint.

A Chinese “boy” of indeterminable age, wearing a slop-shop suit and a cap, was waiting outside the door, and when Sin Sin Wa appeared, carefully locking up, he muttered something rapidly in his own sibilant language.

Sin Sin Wa made no reply. To his indoor attire he had added a pea-jacket and a bowler hat; and the oddly assorted trio set off westward, following the bank of the Thames in the direction of Limehouse Basin. The narrow, ill-lighted streets were quite deserted, but from the river and the riverside arose that ceaseless jangle of industry which belongs to the great port of London. On the Surrey shore whistles shrieked, and endless moving chains sent up their monstrous clangor into the night. Human voices sometimes rose above the din of machinery.

In silence the three pursued their way, crossing inlets and circling around basins dimly divined, turning to the right into a lane flanked by high, eyeless walls, and again to the left, finally to emerge nearly opposite a dilapidated gateway giving access to a small wharf, on the rickety gates bills were posted announcing, “This Wharf to Let.” The annexed building appeared to be a mere shell. To the right again they turned, and once more to the left, halting before a two-story brick house which had apparently been converted into a barber’s shop. In one of the grimy windows were some loose packets of cigarettes, a soapmaker’s advertisement, and a card:

SAM TUK
BARBER

Opening the door with a key which he carried, the boy admitted Sir Lucien and Sin Sin Wa to the dimly-lighted interior of a room the pretensions of which to be regarded as a shaving saloon were supported by the presence of two chairs, a filthy towel, and a broken mug. Sin Sin Wa shuffled across to another door, and, followed by Sir Lucien, descended a stone stair to a little cellar apparently intended for storing coal. A tin lamp stood upon the bottom step.

Removing the lamp from the step, Sin Sin Wa set it on the cellar floor, which was black with coal dust, then closed and bolted the door. A heap of nondescript litter lay piled in a corner of the cellar. This Sin Sin Wa disturbed sufficiently to reveal a movable slab in the roughly paved floor. It was so ingeniously concealed by coal dust that one who had sought it unaided must have experienced great difficulty in detecting it. Furthermore, it could only be raised in the following manner:

A piece of strong iron wire, which lay among the other litter, was inserted in a narrow slot, apparently a crack in the stone. About an inch of the end of the wire being bent outward to form a right angle, when the seemingly useless piece of scrap-iron had been thrust through the slab and turned, it formed a handle by means of which the trap could be raised.

Again Sin Sin Wa took up the lamp, placing it at the brink of the opening revealed. A pair of wooden steps rested below, and Sir Lucien, who evidently was no stranger to the establishment, descended awkwardly, since there was barely room for a big man to pass. He found himself in the mouth of a low passage, unpaved and shored up with rough timbers in the manner of a mine-working. Sin Sin Wa followed with the lamp, drawing the slab down into its place behind him.

Stooping forward and bending his knees, Sir Lucien made his way along the passage, the Chinaman following. It was of considerable length, and terminated before a strong door bearing a massive lock. Sin Sin Wa reached over the stooping figure of Sir Lucien and unfastened the lock. The two emerged in a kind of dug-out. Part of it had evidently been in existence before the ingenious Sin Sin Wa had exercised his skill upon it, and was of solid brickwork and stone-paved; palpably a storage vault. But it had been altered to suit the Chinaman’s purpose, and one end–that in which the passage came out–was timbered. It contained a long counter and many shelves; also a large oil-stove and a number of pots, pans, and queer-looking jars. On the counter stood a ship’s lantern. The shelves were laden with packages and bottles. Behind the counter sat a venerable and perfectly bald Chinaman. The only trace of hair upon his countenance grew on the shrunken upper lip –mere wisps of white down. His skin was shrivelled like that of a preserved fig, and he wore big horn-rimmed spectacles. He never once exhibited the slightest evidence of life, and his head and face, and the horn-rimmed spectacles, might quite easily have passed for those of an unwrapped mummy. This was Sam Tuk.

Bending over a box upon which rested a canvas-bound package was a burly seaman engaged in unknotting the twine with which the canvas was kept in place. As Sin Sin Wa and Sir Lucien came in he looked up, revealing a red-bearded, ugly face, very puffy under the eyes.

“Wotcher, Sin Sin!” he said gruffly. “Who’s your long pal?”

“Friend,” murmured Sin Sin Wa complacently. “You gotchee pukka stuff thisee time, George?”

“I allus brings the pukka stuff!” roared the seaman, ceasing to fumble with the knots and glaring at Sin Sin Wa. “Wotcher mean–pukka stuff?”

“Gotchee no use for bran,” murmured Sin Sin Wa. “Gotchee no use for tin-tack. Gotchee no use for glue.”

“Bran!” roared the man, his glance and pose very menacing. “Tin-tacks and glue! Who the flamin’ ‘ell ever tried to sell you glue?”

“Me only wantchee lemindee you,” said Sin Sin Wa. “No pidgin.”

“George” glared for a moment, breathing heavily; then he stooped and resumed his task, Sin Sin Wa and Sir Lucien watching him in silence. A sound of lapping water was faintly audible.

Opening the canvas wrappings, the man began to take out and place upon the counter a number of reddish balls of “leaf” opium, varying in weight from about eight ounces to a pound or more.

“H’m!” murmured Sin Sin Wa. “Smyrna stuff.”

From a pocket of his pea-jacket he drew a long bodkin, and taking up one of the largest balls he thrust the bodkin in and then withdrew it, the steel stained a coffee color. Sin Sin Wa smelled and tasted the substance adhering to the bodkin, weighed the ball reflectively in his yellow palm, and then set it aside. He took up a second, whereupon:

“‘Alf a mo’, guvnor!” cried the seaman furiously. “D’you think I’m going to wait ‘ere while you prods about in all the blasted lot? It’s damn near high tide–I shan’t get out. ‘Alf time! Savvy? Shove it on the scales!”

Sin Sin Wa shook his head.

“Too muchee slick. Too muchee bhobbery,” he murmured. “Sin Sin Wa gotchee sabby what him catchee buy or no pidgin.”

“What’s the game?” inquired George menacingly. “Don’t you know a cake o’ Smyrna when you smells it?”

“No sabby lead chop till ploddem withee dipper,” explained the Chinaman, imperturbably.

“Lead!” shouted the man. “There ain’t no bloody lead in ’em!”

“H’m,” murmured Sin Sin Wa smilingly. “So fashion, eh? All velly proper.”

He calmly inserted the bodkin in the second cake; seemed to meet with some obstruction, and laid the ball down upon the counter. From beneath his jacket he took out a clasp-knife attached to a steel chain. Undeterred by a savage roar from the purveyor, he cut the sticky mass in half, and digging his long nails into one of the halves, brought out two lead shots. He directed a glance of his beady eye upon the man.

“Bloody liar,” he murmured sweetly. “Lobber.”

“Who’s a robber?” shouted George, his face flushing darkly, and apparently not resenting the earlier innuendo; “Who’s a robber?”

“One sarcee Smyrna feller packee stuff so fashion,” murmured Sin Sin Wa. “Thief-feller lobbee poor sailorman.”

George jerked his peaked cap from his head, revealing a tangle of unkempt red hair. He scratched his skull with savage vigor.

“Blimey!” he said pathetically. “‘Ere’s a go! I been done brown, guv’nor.”

“Lough luck,” murmured Sin Sin Wa, and resumed his examination of the cakes of opium.

The man watched him now in silence, only broken by exclamations of “Blimey” and “Flaming hell” when more shot was discovered. The tests concluded:

“Gotchee some more?” asked Sin Sin Wa.

From the canvas wrapping George took out and tossed on the counter a square packet wrapped in grease-paper.

“H’m,” murmured Sin Sin Wa, “Patna. Where you catchee?”

“Off of a lascar,” growled the man.

The cake of Indian opium was submitted to the same careful scrutiny as that which the balls of Turkish had already undergone, but the Patna opium proved to be unadulterated. Reaching over the counter Sin Sin Wa produced a pair of scales, and, watched keenly by George, weighed the leaf and then the cake.

“Ten-six Smyrna; one ‘leben Patna,” muttered Sin Sin Wa. “You catchee eighty jimmies.”

“Eh?” roared George. “Eighty quid! Eighty quid! Flamin’ blind o’ Riley! D’you think I’m up the pole? Eighty quid? You’re barmy!”

“Eighty-ten,” murmured Sin Sin Wa. “Eighty jimmies opium; ten bob lead.”

“I give more’n that for it!” cried the seaman. “An’ I damn near hit a police boat comin’ in, too!”

Sir Lucien spoke a few words rapidly in Chinese. Sin Sin Wa performed his curious oriental shrug, and taking a fat leather wallet from his hip-pocket, counted out the sum of eighty-five pounds upon the counter.

“You catchee eighty-five,” he murmured. “Too muchee price.”

The man grabbed the money and pocketed it without a word of acknowledgment. He turned and strode along the room, his heavy, iron-clamped boots ringing on the paved floor.

“Fetch a grim, Sin Sin,” he cried. “I’ll never get out if I don’t jump to it.”

Sin Sin Wa took the lantern from the counter and followed. Opening a door at the further end of the place, he set the lantern at the head of three descending wooden steps discovered. With the opening of the door the sound of lapping water had grown perceptibly louder. George clattered down the steps, which led to a second but much stouter door. Sin Sin Wa followed, nearly closing the first door, so that only a faint streak of light crept down to them.

The second door was opened, and the clangor of the Surrey shore suddenly proclaimed itself. Cold, damp air touched them, and the faint light of the lantern above cast their shadows over unctuous gliding water, which lapped the step upon which they stood. Slimy shapes uprose dim and ghostly from its darkly moving surface.

A boat was swinging from a ring beside the door, and into it George tumbled. He unhitched the lashings, and strongly thrust the boat out upon the water. Coming to the first of the dim shapes, he grasped it and thereby propelled the skiff to another beyond. These indistinct shapes were the piles supporting the structure of a wharf.

“Good night, guv’nor!” he cried hoarsely

“So-long,” muttered Sin Sin Wa.

He waited until the boat was swallowed in the deeper shadows, then reclosed the water-gate and ascended to the room where Sir Lucien awaited. Such was the receiving office of Sin Sin Wa. While the wharf remained untenanted it was not likely to be discovered by the authorities, for even at low tide the river-door was invisible from passing craft. Prospective lessees who had taken the trouble to inquire about the rental had learned that it was so high as to be prohibitive.

Sin Sin Wa paid fair prices and paid cash. This was no more than a commercial necessity. For those who have opium, cocaine, veronal, or heroin to sell can always find a ready market in London and elsewhere. But one sufficiently curious and clever enough to have solved the riddle of the vacant wharf would have discovered that the mysterious owner who showed himself so loath to accept reasonable offers for the property could well afford to be thus independent. Those who control “the traffic” control El Dorado–a city of gold which, unlike the fabled Manoa, actually exists and yields its riches to the unscrupulous adventurer.

Smiling his mirthless, eternal smile, Sin Sin Wa placed the newly purchased stock upon a shelf immediately behind Sam Tuk; and Sam Tuk exhibited the first evidence of animation which had escaped him throughout the progress of the “deal.” He slowly nodded his hairless head.

CHAPTER XX

KAZMAH’S METHODS

Rita Dresden married Monte Irvin in the spring and bade farewell to the stage. The goal long held in view was attained at last. But another farewell which at one time she had contemplated eagerly no longer appeared desirable or even possible. To cocamania had been added a tolerance for opium, and at the last party given by Cyrus Kilfane she had learned that she could smoke nearly as much opium as the American habitue.

The altered attitude of Sir Lucien surprised and annoyed her. He, who had first introduced her to the spirit of the coca leaf and to the goddess of the poppy, seemed suddenly to have determined to convince her of the folly of these communions. He only succeeded in losing her confidence. She twice visited the “House of a Hundred Raptures” with Mollie Gretna, and once with Mollie and Kilfane, unknown to Sir Lucien.

Urgent affairs of some kind necessitated his leaving England a few weeks before the date fixed for Rita’s wedding, and as Kilfane had already returned to America, Rita recognized with a certain dismay that she would be left to her own resources–handicapped by the presence of a watchful husband. This subtle change in her view of Monte Irvin she was incapable of appreciating, for Rita was no psychologist. But the effect of the drug habit was pointedly illustrated by the fact that in a period of little more than six months, from regarding Monte Irvin as a rock of refuge–a chance of salvation–she had come to regard him in the light of an obstacle to her indulgence. Not that her respect had diminished. She really loved at last, and so well that the idea of discovery by this man whose wholesomeness was the trait of character which most potently attracted her, was too appalling to be contemplated. The chance of discovery would be enhanced, she recognized, by the absence of her friends and accomplices.

Of course she was acquainted with many other devotees. In fact, she met so many of them that she had grown reconciled to her habits, believing them to be common to all “smart” people–a part of the Bohemian life. The truth of the matter was that she had become a prominent member of a coterie closely knit and associated by a bond of mutual vice–a kind of masonry whereof Kazmah of Bond Street was Grand Master and Mrs. Sin Grand Mistress.

The relations existing between Kazmah and his clients were of a most peculiar nature, too, and must have piqued the curiosity of anyone but a drug-slave. Having seen him once, in his oracular cave, Rita had been accepted as one of the initiated. Thereafter she had had no occasion to interview the strange, immobile Egyptian, nor had she experienced any desire to do so. The method of obtaining drugs was a simple one. She had merely to present herself at the establishment in Bond Street and to purchase either a flask of perfume or a box of sweetmeats. There were several varieties of perfume, and each corresponded to a particular drug. The sweetmeats corresponded to morphine. Rashid, the attendant, knew all Kazmah’s clients, and with the box or flask he gave them a quantity of the required drug. This scheme was precautionary. For if a visitor should chance to be challenged on leaving the place, there was the legitimate purchase to show in evidence of the purpose of the visit.

No conversation was necessary, merely the selection of a scent and the exchange of a sum of money. Rashid retired to wrap up the purchase, and with it a second and smaller package was slipped into the customer’s hand. That the prices charged were excessive–nay, ridiculous–did not concern Rita, for, in common with the rest of her kind, she was careless of expenditure.

Opium, alone, Kazmah did not sell. He sold morphine, tincture of opium, and other preparations; but those who sought the solace of the pipe were compelled to deal with Mrs. Sin. She would arrange parties, or would prepare the “Hundred Raptures” in Limehouse for visitors; but, except in the form of opiated cigarettes, she could rarely be induced to part with any of the precious gum. Thus she cleverly kept a firm hold upon the devotees of the poppy.

Drug-takers form a kind of brotherhood, and outside the charmed circle they are secretive as members of the Mafia, the Camorra, or the Catouse-Menegant.

In this secrecy, which, indeed, is a recognized symptom of drug mania, lay Kazmah’s security. Rita experienced no desire to peer behind the veil which, literally and metaphorically, he had placed between himself and the world. At first she had been vaguely curious, and had questioned Sir Lucien and others, but nobody seemed to know the real identity of Kazmah, and nobody seemed to care provided that he continued to supply drugs. They all led secret, veiled lives, these slaves of the laboratory, and that Kazmah should do likewise did not surprise them. He had excellent reasons.

During this early stage of faint curiosity she had suggested to Sir Lucien that for Kazmah to conduct a dream-reading business seemed to be to add to the likelihood of police interference.

The baronet had smiled sardonically.

“It is an additional safeguard,” he had assured her “It corresponds to the method of a notorious Paris assassin who was very generally regarded by the police as a cunning pickpocket. Kazmah’s business of ‘dreamreading’ does not actually come within the Act. He is clever enough for that. Remember, he does not profess to tell fortunes. It also enables him to balk idle curiosity.”

At the time of her marriage Rita was hopelessly in the toils, and had been really panic-stricken at the prospect–once so golden–of a protracted sojourn abroad. The war, which rendered travel impossible, she regarded rather in the light of a heaven-sent boon. Irvin, though personally favoring a quiet ceremony, recognized that Rita cherished a desire to quit theatreland in a chariot of fire, and accordingly the wedding was on a scale of magnificence which outshone that of any other celebrated during the season. Even the lugubrious Mr. Esden, who gave his daughter away, was seen to smile twice. Mrs. Esden moved in a rarified atmosphere of gratified ambition and parental pride, which no doubt closely resembled that which the angels breathe.

It was during the early days of her married life, and while Sir Lucien was still abroad, that Rita began to experience difficulty in obtaining the drugs which she required. She had lost touch to a certain extent with her former associates; but she had retained her maid, Nina, and the girl regularly went to Kazmah’s and returned with the little flasks of perfume. When an accredited representative was sent upon such a mission, Kazmah dispatched the drugs disguised in a scent flask; but on each successive occasion that Nina went to him the prices increased, and finally became so exorbitant that even Rita grew astonished and dismayed.

She mentioned the matter to another habitue, a lady of title addicted to the use of the hypodermic syringe, and learned that she (Rita) was being charged nearly twice as much as her friend.

“I should bring the man to his senses, dear,” said her ladyship. “I know a doctor who will be only too glad to supply you. When I say a doctor, he is no longer recognized by the B.M.A., but he’s none the less clever and kind for all that.”

To the clever and kind medical man Rita repaired on the following day, bearing a written introduction from her friend. The discredited physician supplied her for a short time, charging only moderate fees. Then, suddenly, this second source of supply was closed. The man declared that he was being watched by the police, and that he dared not continue to supply her with cocaine and veronal. His shifty eyes gave the lie to his words, but he was firm in his resolution, whatever may have led him to it, and Rita was driven back to Kazmah. His charges had become more exorbitant than ever, but her need was imperative. Nevertheless, she endeavored to find another drug dealer, and after a time was again successful.

At a certain supper club she was introduced to a suave little man, quite palpably an uninterned alien, who smilingly offered to provide her with any drug to be found in the British Pharmacopeia, at most moderate charges. With this little German-Jew villain she made a pact, reflecting that, provided that his wares were of good quality, she had triumphed over Kazmah.

The craving for chandu seized her sometimes and refused to be exorcised by morphia, laudanum, or any other form of opium; but she had not dared to spend a night at the “House of a Hundred Raptures” since her marriage. Her new German friend volunteered to supply the necessary gum, outfit, and to provide an apartment where she might safely indulge in smoking. She declined–at first. But finally, on Mollie Gretna’s return from France, where she had been acting as a nurse, Rita and Mollie accepted the suave alien’s invitation to spend an evening in his private opium divan.

Many thousands of careers were wrecked by the war, and to the war and the consequent absence of her husband Rita undoubtedly owed her relapse into opium-smoking. That she would have continued secretly to employ cocaine, veronal, and possibly morphine was probable enough; but the constant society of Monte Irvin must have made it extremely difficult for her to indulge the craving for chandu. She began to regret the gaiety of her old life. Loneliness and monotony plunged her into a state of suicidal depression, and she grasped eagerly at every promise of excitement.

It was at about this time that she met Margaret Halley, and between the two, so contrary in disposition, a close friendship arose. The girl doctor ere long discovered Rita’s secret, of course, and the discovery was hastened by an event which occurred shortly after they had become acquainted.

The suave alien gentleman disappeared.

That was the entire story in five words–or all of the story that Rita ever learned. His apartments were labelled “To Let,” and the night clubs knew him no more. Rita for a time was deprived of drugs, and the nervous collapse which resulted revealed to Margaret Halley’s trained perceptions the truth respecting her friend.

Kazmah’s terms proved to be more outrageous than ever, but Rita found herself again compelled to resort to the Egyptian. She went personally to the rooms in old Bond Street and arranged with Rashid to see Kazmah on the following day, Friday, for Kazmah only received visitors by appointment. As it chanced, Sir Lucien Pyne returned to England on Thursday night and called upon Rita at Prince’s Gate. She welcomed him as a friend in need, unfolding the pitiful story, to the truth of which her nervous condition bore eloquent testimony.

Sir Lucien began to pace up and down the charming little room in which Rita had received him. She watched him, haggard-eyed. Presently:

“Leave Kazmah to me,” he said. “If you visit him he will merely shield himself behind the mystical business, or assure you that he is making no profit on his sales. Kilfane had similar trouble with him.”

“Then you will see him?” asked Rita.

“I will make a point of interviewing him in the morning. Meanwhile, if you will send Nina around to Albemarle Street in about an hour I will see what can be done.”

“Oh, Lucy,” whispered Rita, “what a pal you are.”

Sir Lucien smiled in his cold fashion.

“I try to be,” he said enigmatically; “but I don’t always succeed.” He turned to her. “Have you ever thought of giving up this doping?” he asked. “Have you ever realized that with increasing tolerance the quantities must increase as well, and that a day is sure to come when–“

Rita repressed a nervous shudder.

“You are trying to frighten me,” she replied. “You have tried before; I don’t know why. But it’s no good, Lucy. You know I cannot give it up.”

“You can try.”

“I don’t want to try!” she cried irritably. “It will be time enough when Monte is back again, and we can really ‘live.’ This wretched existence, with everything restricted and rationed, and all one’s friends in Flanders or Mesopotamia or somewhere, drives me mad! I tell you I should die, Lucy, if I tried to do without it now.”

The hollow presence of reform contemplated in a hazy future did not deceive Sir Lucien. He suppressed a sigh, and changed the topic of conversation.

CHAPTER XXI

THE CIGARETTES FROM BUENOS AYRES

Sir Lucien’s intervention proved successful. Kazmah’s charges became more modest, and Rita no longer found it necessary to deprive herself of hats and dresses in order to obtain drugs. But, nevertheless, these were not the halcyon days of old. She was now surrounded by spies. It was necessary to resort to all kinds of subterfuge in order to cover her expenditures at the establishment in old Bond Street. Her husband never questioned her outlay, but on the other hand it was expedient to be armed against the possibility of his doing so, and Rita’s debts were accumulating formidably.

Then there was Margaret Halley to consider. Rita had never hitherto given her confidence to anyone who was not addicted to the same practices as herself, and she frequently experienced embarrassment beneath the grave scrutiny of Margaret’s watchful eyes. In another this attitude of gentle disapproval would have been irritating, but Rita loved and admired Margaret, and suffered accordingly.

As for Sir Lucien, she had ceased to understand him. An impalpable barrier seemed to have arisen between them. The inner man had became inaccessible. Her mind was not subtle enough to grasp the real explanation of this change in her old lover. Being based upon wrong premises, her inferences were necessarily wide of the truth, and she believed that Sir Lucien was jealous of Margaret’s cousin, Quentin Gray.

Gray met Rita at Margaret Halley’s flat shortly after he had returned home from service in the East, and he immediately conceived a violent infatuation for this pretty friend of his cousin’s. In this respect his conduct was in no way peculiar. Few men were proof against the seductive Mrs. Monte Irvin, not because she designedly encouraged admiration, but because she was one of those fortunately rare characters who inspire it without conscious effort. Her appeal to men was sweetly feminine and quite lacking in that self-assertive and masculine “take me or leave me” attitude which characterizes some of the beauties of today. There was nothing abstract about her delicate loveliness, yet her charm was not wholly physical. Many women disliked her.

At dance, theatre, and concert Quentin Gray played the doting cavalier; and Rita, who was used to at least one such adoring attendant, accepted his homage without demur. Monte Irvin returned to civil life, but Rita showed no disposition to dispense with her new admirer. Both Gray and Sir Lucien had become frequent visitors at Prince’s Gate, and Irvin, who understood his wife’s character up to a point, made them his friends.

Shortly after Monte Irvin’s return Sir Lucien taxed Rita again with her increasing subjection to drugs. She was in a particularly gay humor, as the supplies from Kazmah had been regular, and she laughingly fenced with him when he reminded her of her declared intention to reform when her husband should return.

“You are really as bad as Margaret,” she declared. “There is nothing the matter with me. You talk of ‘curing’ me as though I were ill. Physician, heal thyself.”

The sardonic smile momentarily showed upon Pyne’s face, and:

“I know when and where to pull up, Rita,” he said. “A woman never knows this. If I were deprived of opium tomorrow I could get along without it.”

“I have given up opium,” replied Rita. “It’s too much trouble, and the last time Mollie and I went–“

She paused, glancing quickly at Sir Lucien.

“Go on,” he said grimly. “I know you have been to Sin Sin Wa’s. What happened the last time?”

“Well,” continued Rita hurriedly, “Monte seemed to be vaguely suspicious. Besides, Mrs. Sin charged me most preposterously. I really cannot afford it, Lucy.”

“I am glad you cannot. But what I was about to say was this: Suppose you were to be deprived, not of ‘chard’, but of cocaine and veronal, do you know what would happen to you?”

“Oh!” whispered Rita, “why will you persist in trying to frighten me! I am not going to be deprived of them.”

“I persist, dear, because I want you to try, gradually, to depend less upon drugs, so that if the worst should happen you would have a chance.”

Rita stood up and faced him, biting her lip.

“Lucy,” she said, “do you mean that Kazmah–“

“I mean that anything might happen, Rita. After all, we do possess a police service in London, and one day there might be an accident. Kazmah has certain influence, but it may be withdrawn. Rita, won’t you try?”

She was watching him closely, and now the pupils of her beautiful eyes became dilated.

“You know something,” she said slowly, “which you are keeping from me.”

He laughed and turned aside.

“I know that I am compelled to leave England again, Rita, for a time; and I should be a happier man if I knew that you were not so utterly dependent upon Kazmah.”

“Oh, Lucy, are you going away again?”

“I must. But I shall not be absent long, I hope.”

Rita sank down upon the settee from which she had risen, and was silent for some time; then:

“I will try, Lucy,” she promised. “I will go to Margaret Halley, as she is always asking me to do.”

“Good girl,” said Pyne quietly. “It is just a question of making the effort, Rita. You will succeed, with Margaret’s help.”

A short time later Sir Lucien left England, but throughout the last week that he remained in London Rita spent a great part of every day in his company. She had latterly begun to experience an odd kind of remorse for her treatment of the inscrutably reserved baronet. His earlier intentions she had not forgotten, but she had long ago forgiven them, and now she often felt sorry for this man whom she had deliberately used as a stepping-stone to fortune.

Gray was quite unable to conceal his jealousy. He seemed to think that he had a proprietary right to Mrs. Monte Irvin’s society, and during the week preceding Sir Lucien’s departure Gray came perilously near to making himself ridiculous on more than one occasion.

One night, on leaving a theatre, Rita suggested to Pyne that they should proceed to a supper club for an hour. “It will be like old