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

In a top back room of the end house in the street which also boasted the residence of Sin Sin Wa, Seton Pasha and Chief Inspector Kerry sat one on either side of a dirty deal table. Seton smoked and Kerry chewed. A smoky oil-lamp burned upon the table, and two notebooks lay beside it.

“It is certainly odd,” Seton was saying, “that you failed to break my neck. But I have made it a practice since taking up my residence here to wear a cap heavily padded. I apprehend sandbags and pieces of loaded tubing.”

“The tube is not made,” declared Kerry, “which can do the job. You're harder to kill than a Chinese-Jew.”

“Your own escape is almost equally remarkable,” added Seton. “I rarely miss at such short range. But you had nearly broken my wrist with that kick.”

“I'm sorry,” said Kerry. “You should always bang a door wide open suddenly before you enter into a suspected room. Anybody standing behind usually stops it with his head.”

“I am indebted for the hint, Chief Inspector. We all have something to learn.”

“Well, sir, we've laid our cards on the table, and you'll admit we've both got a lot to learn before we see daylight. I'll be obliged if you'll put me wise to your game. I take it you began work on the very night of the murder?”

“I did. By a pure accident—the finding of an opiated cigarette in Mr. Gray's rooms—I perceived that the business which had led to my recall from the East was involved in the Bond Street mystery. Frankly, Chief Inspector, I doubted at that time if it were possible for you and me to work together. I decided to work alone. A beard which I had worn in the East, for purposes of disguise, I shaved off; and because the skin was whiter where the hair had grown than elsewhere, I found it necessary after shaving to powder my face heavily. This accounts for the description given to you of a man with a pale face. Even now the coloring is irregular, as you may notice.

“Deciding to work anonymously, I went post haste to Lord Wrexhorough and made certain arrangements whereby I became known to the responsible authorities as 719. The explanation of these figures is a simple one. My name is Greville Seton. G is the seventh letter in the alphabet, and S the nineteenth; hence—'seven-nineteen.'

“The increase of the drug traffic and the failure of the police to cope with it had led to the institution of a Home office inquiry, you see. It was suspected that the traffic was in the hands of orientals, and in looking about for a confidential agent to make certain inquiries my name cropped up. I was at that time employed by the Foreign office, but Lord Wrexborough borrowed me.” Seton smiled at his own expression. “Every facility was offered to me, as you know. And that my investigations led me to the same conclusion as your own, my presence as lessee of this room, in the person of John Smiles, seaman, sufficiently demonstrates.”

“H'm,” said Kerry, “and I take it your investigations have also led you to the conclusion that our hands are clean?”

Seton Pasha fixed his cool regard upon the speaker.

“Personally, I never doubted this, Chief Inspector,” he declared. “I believed, and I still believe, that the people who traffic in drugs are clever enough to keep in the good books of the local police. It is a case of clever camouflage, rather than corruption.”

“Ah,” snapped Kerry. “I was waiting to hear you mention it. So long as we know. I'm not a man that stands for being pointed at. I've got a boy at a good public school, but if ever he said he was ashamed of his father, the day he said it would be a day he'd never forget!”

Seton Pasha smiled grimly and changed the topic.

“Let us see,” he said, “if we are any nearer to the heart of the mystery of Kazmah. You were at the Regent Street bank today, I understand, at which the late Sir Lucien Pyne had an account?”

“I was,” replied Kerry. “Next to his theatrical enterprises his chief source of income seems to have been a certain Jose Santos Company, of Buenos Ayres. We've traced Kazmah's account, too. But no one at the bank has ever seen him. The missing Rashid always paid in. Checks were signed 'Mohammed el-Kazmah,' in which name the account had been opened. From the amount standing to his credit there it's evident that the proceeds of the dope business went elsewhere.”

“Where do you think they went?” asked Seton quietly, watching Kerry.

“Well,” rapped Kerry, “I think the same as you. I've got two eyes and I can see out of both of them.”

“And you think?”

“I think they went to the Jose Santos Company, of Buenos Ayres!”

“Right!” cried Seton. “I feel sure of it. We may never know how it was all arranged or who was concerned, but I am convinced that Mr. Isaacs, lessee of the Cubanis Cigarette Company offices, Mr. Jacobs (my landlord!), Mohammed el-Kazmah—whoever he may be—the untraceable Mrs. Sin Sin Wa, and another, were all shareholders of the Jose Santos company.”

“I'm with you. By 'another' you mean?”

“Sir Lucien! It's horrible, but I'm afraid it's true.”

They became silent for a while. Kerry chewed and Seton smoked. Then:

“The significance of the fact that Sir Lucien's study window was no more than forty paces across the leads from a well-oiled window of the Cubanis Company will not have escaped you,” said Seton. “I performed the journey just ahead of you, I believe. Then Sir Lucien had lived in Buenos Ayres; that was before he came into the title, and at a time, I am told, when he was not overburdened with wealth. His man, Mareno, is indisputably some kind of a South American, and he can give no satisfactory account of his movements on the night of the murder.

“That we have to deal with a powerful drug syndicate there can be no doubt. The late Sir Lucien may not have been a director, but I feel sure he was financially interested. Kazmah's was the distributing office, and the importer—”

“Was Sin Sin Wa!” cried Kerry, his eyes gleaming savagely. “He's as clever and cunning as all the rest of Chinatown put together. Somewhere not a hundred miles from this spot where we are now there's a store of stuff big enough to dope all Europe!”

“And there's something else,” said Seton quietly, knocking a cone of grey ash from his cheroot on to the dirty floor. “Kazmah is hiding there in all probability, if he hasn't got clear away—and Mrs. Monte Irvin is being held a prisoner!”

“If they haven't—”

“For Irvin's sake I hope not, Chief Inspector. There are two very curious points in the case—apart from the mystery which surrounds the man Kazmah: the fact