Dope

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.

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.

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....

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.

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.

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.”

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?”

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.

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!”

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:

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

For a habitual opium-smoker to abstain when the fumes of chandu actually reach his nostrils is a feat of will-power difficult adequately to appraise. An ordinary tobacco smoker cannot remain for long among those who are enjoying the fragrant weed without catching the infection and beginning to smoke also. Twice to redouble the lure of my lady Nicotine would be but loosely to estimate the seductiveness of the Spirit of the Poppy; yet Sir Lucien Pyne smoked one pipe with Mrs. Sin, and perceiving her to be already in a state of dreamy abstraction, loaded a second, but in his own case with a fragment of cigarette stump which smouldered in a tray upon the table. His was that rare type of character whose possessor remains master of his vices.

Following the fourth pipe—Pyne, after the second, had ceased to trouble to repeat his feat of legerdemain, “The sleep” claimed Mrs. Sin. Her languorous eyes closed, and her face assumed that rapt expression of Buddha-like beatitude which Rita had observed at Kilfane’s flat. According to some scientific works on the subject, sleep is not invariably induced in the case of Europeans by the use of chandu. Loosely, this is true. But this type of European never becomes an habitué; the habitué always sleeps. That dream-world to which opium alone holds the key becomes the real world “for the delights of which the smoker gladly resigns all mundane interests.” The exiled Chinaman returns again to the sampan of his boyhood, floating joyously on the waters of some willow-lined canal; the Malay hears once more the mystic whispering in the mangrove swamps, or scents the fragrance of nutmeg and cinnamon in the far-off golden Chersonese. Mrs. Sin doubtless lived anew the triumphs of earlier days in Buenos Ayres, when she had been La Belle Lola, the greatly beloved, and before she had met and married Sin Sin Wa. Chandu gives much, but claims all, and he who would open the poppy-gates must close the door of ambition and bid farewell to manhood.

Sir Lucien stood looking at the woman, and although one pipe had affected him but slightly, his imagination momentarily ran riot and a pageant of his life swept before him, so that his jaw grew hard and grim and he clenched his hands convulsively. An unbroken stillness prevailed in the opium-house of Sin Sin Wa.

Recovering from his fit of abstraction, Pyne, casting a final keen glance at the sleeper, walked out of the room. He looked along the carpeted corridor in the direction of the cubicles, paused, and then opened the heavy door masking the recess behind the cupboard. Next opening the false back of the cupboard, he passed through to the lumber-room beyond, and partly closed the second door.

He descended the stair and went along the passage; but ere he reached the door of the room on the ground floor:

“Hello! hello! Sin Sin! Sin Sin Wa!” croaked the raven. “Number one p’lice chop, lo!” The note of a police whistle followed, rendered with uncanny fidelity.

Pyne entered the room. It presented the same aspect as when he had left it. The ship’s lantern stood upon the table, and Sin Sin Wa sat upon the tea-chest, the great black bird perched on his shoulder. The fire in the stove had burned lower, and its downcast glow revealed less mercilessly the dirty condition of the floor. Otherwise no one, nothing, seemed to have been disturbed. Pyne leaned against the doorpost, taking out and lighting a cigarette. The eye of Sin Sin Wa glanced sideways at him.

“Well, Sin Sin,” said Sir Lucien, dropping a match and extinguishing it under his foot, “you see I am not smoking chandu tonight.”

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

“Yes, the stuff is all right, Sin.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Will they want to come in?”

“Wantchee dlink,” replied Sin Sin Wa.

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

“Allee lightee.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“H’m!” repeated the constable.

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

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

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

Jim rang a second shilling on the table.

“Two double rums!” he called.

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

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

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

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

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

“So-long,” murmured the Chinaman.

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

“So-long.”

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

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

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

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

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

“You surprise me.”

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

Sir Lucien lighted a cigarette.

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

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

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

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

“Never.”

“But—your wife?”

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

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

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

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

Sin Sin Wa repeated the eloquent shrug.

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

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

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

Sin Sin Wa glanced aside at Sir Lucien.

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

Sir Lucien consulted his watch, and:

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

Sin Sin Wa glanced at him again.

“All are sleeping, most honorable sir?”

“All.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SAM TÛK
BARBER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sin Sin Wa shook his head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Gotchee some more?” asked Sin Sin Wa.

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

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

“Off of a lascar,” growled the man.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“So-long,” muttered Sin Sin Wa.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The baronet had smiled sardonically.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The suave alien gentleman disappeared.

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

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

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

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

“Then you will see him?” asked Rita.

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

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

Sir Lucien smiled in his cold fashion.

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

Rita repressed a nervous shudder.

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

“You can try.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She paused, glancing quickly at Sir Lucien.

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

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

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

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

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

Rita stood up and faced him, biting her lip.

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

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

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

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

He laughed and turned aside.

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

“Oh, Lucy, are you going away again?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But your husband is expecting you,” protested Sir Lucien.

“Let’s ring him up and ask him to join us. He won’t, but he cannot very well object then.”

As a result they presently found themselves descending a broad carpeted stairway. From the rooms below arose the strains of an American melody. Dancing was in progress, or, rather, one of those orgiastic ceremonies which passed for dancing during this pagan period. Just by the foot of the stairs they paused and surveyed the scene.

“Why,” said Rita, “there is Quentin—glaring insanely, silly boy.”

“Do you see whom he is with?” asked Sir Lucien.

“Mollie Gretna.”

“But I mean the woman sitting down.”

Rita stood on tiptoe, trying to obtain a view, and suddenly:

“Oh!” she exclaimed, “Mrs. Sin!”

The dance at that moment concluding, they crossed the floor and joined the party. Mrs. Sin greeted them with one of her rapid, mirthless smiles. She was wearing a gown noticeable, but not for quantity, even in that semi-draped assembly. Mollie Gretna giggled rapturously. But Gray’s swiftly changing color betrayed a mood which he tried in vain to conceal by his manner. Having exchanged a few words with the new arrivals, he evidently realized that he could not trust himself to remain longer, and:

“Now I must be off,” he said awkwardly. “I have an appointment—important business. Good night, everybody.”

He turned away and hurried from the room. Rita flushed slightly and exchanged a glance with Sir Lucien. Mrs. Sin, who had been watching the three intently, did not fail to perceive this glance. Mollie Gretna characteristically said a silly thing.

“Oh!” she cried. “I wonder whatever is the matter with him! He looks as though he had gone mad!”

“It is perhaps his heart,” said Mrs. Sin harshly, and she raised her bold dark eyes to Sir Lucien’s face.

“Oh, please don’t talk about hearts,” cried Rita, willfully misunderstanding. “Monte has a weak heart, and it frightens me.”

“So?” murmured Mrs. Sin. “Poor fellow.”