Dope, Sax Rohmer [good books to read for adults txt] 📗

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 divorcee, 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 7 1/2d. a grain. I saw him about it yesterday afternoon, pointing out to the brown guy that as the wholesale price is roughly 2 1/4d., 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 Rashid?”

“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 attache 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 suede 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