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

the early hours of the morning, and their parting had been one of mutual despair which neither had sought to disguise.

It was a coincidence which a student of human nature might have regarded as significant, that whereas Kerry had taken his troubles home to his wife, Seton Pasha had sought inspiration from Margaret Halley; and whereas the guidance of Mary Kerry had led the Chief Inspector to hurry in quest of Rita Irvin's spaniel, the result of Seton's interview with Margaret had been an equally hurried journey to the big jail.

Unhappily Seton had failed to elicit the slightest information from the saturnine Mareno. Unmoved alike by promises or threats, he had coolly adhered to his original evidence.

So, while the authorities worked feverishly and all England reading of the arrest of Mareno inquired indignantly, “But who is Kazmah, and where is Mrs. Monte Irvin?” Sin Sin Wa placidly pursued his arrangements for immediate departure to the paddyfields of Ho-Nan, and sometimes in the weird crooning voice with which he addressed the raven he would sing a monotonous chant dealing with the valley of the Yellow River where the opium-poppy grows. Hidden in the cunning vault, the search had passed above him; and watchful on a quay on the Surrey shore whereto his dinghy was fastened, George Martin awaited the signal which should tell him that Kazmah and Company were ready to leave. Any time after dark he expected to see the waving lantern and to collect his last payment from the traffic.

At the very hour that Kerry was hastening to Prince's Gate, Sin Sin Wa sat before the stove in the drug cache, the green-eyed joss upon his knee. With a fragment of chamois leather he lovingly polished the leering idol, crooning softly to himself and smiling his mirthless smile. Perched upon his shoulder the raven studied this operation with apparent interest, his solitary eye glittering bead-like. Upon the opposite side of the stove sat the ancient Sam Tuk and at intervals of five minutes or more he would slowly nod his hairless head.

The sliding door which concealed the inner room was partly open, and from the opening there shone forth a dim red light, cast by the paper-shaded lamp which illuminated the place. The coarse voice of the Cuban-Jewess rose and fell in a ceaseless half-muttered soliloquy, indescribably unpleasant but to which Sin Sin Wa was evidently indifferent.

Propped up amid cushions on the divan which once had formed part of the furniture of the House of a Hundred Raptures, Mrs. Sin was smoking opium. The long bamboo pipe had fallen from her listless fingers, and her dark eyes were partly glazed. Buddha-like immobility was claiming her, but it had not yet effaced that expression of murderous malice with which the smoker contemplated the unconscious woman who lay upon the bed at the other end of the room.

As the moments passed the eyes of Mrs. Sin grew more and more glazed. Her harsh voice became softened, and presently: “Ah!” she whispered; “so you wait to smoke with me?”

Immobile she sat propped up amid the cushions, and only her full lips moved.

“Two pipes are nothing to Cy,” she murmured. “He smokes five. But you are not going to smoke?”

Again she paused, then:

“Ah, my Lucy. You smoke with me?” she whispered coaxingly.

Chandu had opened the poppy gates. Mrs. Sin was conversing with her dead lover.

“Something has changed you,” she sighed. “You are different—lately. You have lots of money now. Your investments have been good. You want to become—respectable, eh?”

Slightly—ever so slightly—the red lips curled upwards. No sound of life came from the woman lying white and still in the bed. But through the partly open door crept snatches of Sin Sin Wa's crooning melody.

“Yet once,” she murmured, “yet once I seemed beautiful to you, Lucy. For La Belle Lola you forgot that English pride.” She laughed softly. “You forgot Sin Sin Wa. If there had been no Lola you would never have escaped from Buenos Ayres with your life, my Lucy. You forgot that English pride, and did not ask me where I got them from—the ten thousand dollars to buy your 'honor' back.”

She became silent, as if listening to the dead man's reply. Finally:

“No—I do not reproach you, my dear,” she whispered. “You have paid me back a thousand fold, and Sin Sin Wa, the old fox, grows rich and fat. Today we hold the traffic in our hands, Lucy. The old fox cares only for his money. Before it is too late let us go—you and I. Do you remember Havana, and the two months of heaven we spent there? Oh, let us go back to Havana, Lucy. Kazmah has made us rich. Let Kazmah die.... You smoke with me?”

Again she became silent, then:

“Very likely,” she murmured; “very likely 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.”

She paused momentarily, then muttered something rapidly in Spanish, followed by a short, guttural phrase in Chinese.

“Why do you bring her to the house?” she whispered hoarsely. “And you brought her to Kazmah's. Ah! I see. Now everybody says you are changed. Yes. She is a charming friend.”

The Buddha-like face became suddenly contorted, and as suddenly grew placid again.

“I know! I know!” Mrs. Sin muttered 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 voice died away to an almost inaudible whisper: “I don't believe you. 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?”

She ceased speaking abruptly, and abruptly resumed again:

“And I do as you wish—I do as you wish. How can I keep her from it except by making the price so high that she cannot afford to buy it? I tell you I do it. I bargain for the pink and white boy, Quentin, because I want her to be indebted to him—because I want her to be so sorry for him that she lets him take her away from you! Why should you respect her—”

Silence fell upon the drugged speaker. Sin Sin Wa could be heard crooning softly about the Yellow River and the mountain gods who sent it sweeping down through the valleys where the opium-poppy grows.

“Go, Juan,” hissed Mrs. Sin. “I say—go!”

Her voice changed eerily to a deep, mocking bass; and Rita Irvin lying, a pallid wraith of her once lovely self, upon the untidy bed, stirred slightly—her lashes quivering. Her eyes opened and stared straightly upward at the low, dirty ceiling, horror growing in their shadowy depths.