Dope, Sax Rohmer [good books to read for adults txt] 📗
- Author: Sax Rohmer
Book online «Dope, Sax Rohmer [good books to read for adults txt] 📗». Author Sax Rohmer
A babel of voices died away as the two men walked into a room rather smaller than that below and furnished with little tables, cafe fashion. At one end was a grand piano and a platform before which a velvet curtain was draped. Some twenty people, men and women, were in the place, standing looking towards the entrance. Most of the men and all the women but one were in evening dress; but despite this common armor of respectability, they did not all belong to respectable society.
Two of the women Kerry recognized as bearers of titles, and one was familiar to him as a screen-beauty. The others were unclassifiable, but all were fashionably dressed with the exception of a masculine-looking lady who had apparently come straight off a golf course, and who later was proved to be a well-known advocate of woman's rights. The men all belonged to familiar types. Some of them were Jews.
Kerry, his feet widely apart and his hands thrust in his overcoat pockets, stood staring at face after face and chewing slowly. The proprietor glanced apologetically at his patrons and shrugged. Silence fell upon the company. Then:
“I am a police officer,” said Kerry sharply. “You will file out past me, and I want a card from each of you. Those who have no cards will write name and address here.”
He drew a long envelope and a pencil from a pocket of his dinner jacket. Laying the envelope and pencil on one of the little tables:
“Quick march!” he snapped. “You, sir!” shooting out his forefinger in the direction of a tall, fair young man, “step out!”
Glancing helplessly about him, the young man obeyed, and approaching Kerry:
“I say, officer,” he whispered nervously, “can't you manage to keep my name out of it? I mean to say, my people will kick up the deuce. Anything up to a tenner....”
The whisper faded away. Kerry's expression had grown positively ferocious.
“Put your card on the table,” he said tersely, “and get out while my hands stay in my pockets!”
Hurriedly the noble youth (he was the elder son of an earl) complied, and departed. Then, one by one, the rest of the company filed past the Chief Inspector. He challenged no one until a Jew smilingly laid a card on the table bearing the legend: “Mr. John Jones, Lincoln's Inn Fields.”
“Hi!” rapped Kerry, grasping the man's arm. “One moment, Mr. 'Jones'! The card I want is in the other case. D'you take me for a mug? That 'Jones' trick was tried on Noah by the blue-faced baboon!”
His perception of character was wonderful. At some of the cards he did not even glance; and upon the women he wasted no time at all. He took it for granted that they would all give false names, but since each of them would be followed it did not matter. When at last the room was emptied, he turned to the scowling proprietor, and:
“That's that!” he said. “I've had no instructions about your establishment, my friend, and as I've seen nothing improper going on I'm making no charge, at the moment. I don't want to know what sort of show takes place on your platform, and I don't want to know anything about you that I don't know already. You're a Swiss subject and a dark horse.”
He gathered up the cards from the table, glancing at them carelessly. He did not expect to gain much from his possession of these names and addresses. It was among the women that he counted upon finding patrons of Kazmah and Company. But as he was about to drop the cards into his overcoat pocket, one of them, which bore a written note, attracted his attention.
At this card he stared like a man amazed; his face grew more and more red, and:
“Hell!” he said—“Hell! which of 'em was it?”
The card contained the following:—
Lord Wrexborough Great Cumberland Place, V. 1 “To introduce 719. W.”CHAPTER XXVI. THE MOODS OF MOLLIE Early the following morning Margaret Halley called upon Mollie Gretna.
Mollie's personality did not attract Margaret. The two had nothing in common, but Margaret was well aware of the nature of the tie which had bound Rita Irvin to this empty and decadent representative of English aristocracy. Mollie Gretna was entitled to append the words “The Honorable” to her name, but not only did she refrain from doing so but she even preferred to be known as “Gretna”—the style of one of the family estates.
This pseudonym she had adopted shortly after her divorce, when she had attempted to take up a stage career. But although the experience had proved disastrous, she had retained the nom de guerre, and during the past four years had several times appeared at war charity garden-parties as a classical dancer—to the great delight of the guests and greater disgust of her family. Her maternal uncle, head of her house, said to be the most blase member of the British peerage and known as “the noble tortoise,” was generally considered to have pronounced the final verdict upon his golden-haired niece when he declared “she is almost amusing.”
Mollie received her visitor with extravagant expressions of welcome.
“My dear Miss Halley,” she cried, “how perfectly sweet of you to come to see me! of course, I can guess what you have called about. Look! I have every paper published this morning in London! Every one! Oh! poor, darling little Rita! What can have become of her!”
Tears glistened upon her carefully made-up lashes, and so deep did her grief seem to be that one would never have suspected that she had spent the greater part of the night playing bridge at a “mixed” club in Dover Street, and from thence had proceeded to a military “breakfast-dance.”
“It is indeed a ghastly tragedy,” said Margaret. “It seems incredible that she cannot be traced.”
“Absolutely incredible!” declared Mollie, opening a large box of cigarettes. “Will you have one, dear?”
“No, thanks. By the way, they are not from Buenos Ayres, I suppose?”
Mollie, cigarette in hand, stared, round-eyed, and:
“Oh, my dear Miss Halley!” she cried, “what an idea! Such a funny thing to suggest.”
Margaret smiled coolly.
“Poor Sir Lucien used to smoke cigarettes of that kind,” she explained, “and I thought perhaps you smoked them, too.”
Mollie shook her head and lighted the cigarette.
“He gave me one once, and it made me feel quite sick,” she declared.
Margaret glanced at the speaker, and knew immediately that Mollie had determined to deny all knowledge of the drug coterie. Because there is no problem of psychology harder than that offered by a perverted mind,
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