Sax Rohmer

“ Into the darkened inner chamber Sin Sin Wa had dragged him, and there Kerry had lain ever since, listening to the various sounds of the place, to the coarse voice, often raised in anger, of the Cuban-Jewess, to the crooning tones of the imperturbable Chinaman. The incessant moaning of the woman on the bed sometimes became mingled with another sound more remote, which Kerry for long failed to identify; but ultimately he concluded it to be occasioned by the tide flowing under the wharf. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Why had Sin Sin Wa forced his wife to betray herself? To clear Mareno? To clear Mrs. Irvin—or to save his own skin?
It was a frightful puzzle for Kerry. Then—where was Kazmah? That Mrs. Irvin, probably in a drugged condition, lay somewhere in that mysterious inner room Kerry felt fairly sure. His maltreated skull was humming like a bee-hive and aching intensely, but the man was tough as men are made, and he could not only think clearly, but was capable of swift and dangerous action. ”

“ As he smiled at his visitor with fierce geniality, Mollie blushed like a young girl.
Chief Inspector Kerry was a much bigger man than she had believed him to be. The impression left upon her memory by his brief appearance at the night club had been that of a small, dapper figure. Now, as he stood in the little drawing-room, she saw that he was not much if anything below the average height of Englishmen, and that he possessed wonderfully broad shoulders. In fact, Kerry was deceptive. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ Finally:
“He dare not refuse you!” she cried. “Ring him up and insist upon him seeing me tonight!”
“I will see him, Rita.”
She turned to him, wild-eyed.
“You shall not! You shall not!” she said. “I am going to speak to that man face to face, and if he is human he must listen to me. Oh! I have realized the hold he has upon me, Lucy! I know what it means, this disappearance of all the others who used to sell what Kazmah sells. If I am to suffer, he shall not escape! I swear it. Either he listens to me tonight or I go straight to the police!” ”

“ The clamor of an ironworks on the Millwall shore burst loudly upon their ears, and away astern the lights of the Surrey Dock shone out once more. Hugging the bank they pursued a southerly course, and from Limehouse Reach crept down to Greenwich Reach.
Fog closed in upon them, a curtain obscuring both light and sound. When the breeze came again it had gathered force, and it drove the mist before it in wreathing banks, and brought to their ears a dull lowing and to their nostrils a farmyard odor from the cattle pens. ”

“ For those long, slim hands of the color of old ivory were cold, rigid, lifeless—the hands of a corpse! Thus the pageant began, and it continued as hereafter, memory and delusion taking the stage in turn.
Complete darkness came.
Rita uttered a wild cry of horror and loathing, shrinking back from the thing which sat in the ebony chair. She felt that consciousness was slipping from her; felt herself falling, and shrieked to know herself helpless and alone with Kazmah. She groped for support, but found none; and, moaning, she sank down, and was unconscious of her fall. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ The raven was silent, because, imprisoned in his wicker cage, he had been placed in some dark spot below the counter. Very dimly from time to time a steam siren might be heard upon the river, and once the thudding of a screw-propeller told of the passage of a large vessel along Limehouse Reach.
In the eyes of Mrs. Sin Kerry had read menace, and for all their dark beauty they had reminded him of the eyes of a cornered rat. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 fixed a gaze of pathetic inquiry upon her face.
“Of course not!” she cried. “How ridiculous it would be.”
“Yes,” he murmured, “it would be ridiculous.”
Margaret stood up.
“I am quite relieved now that I have done what I conceived to be my duty, Mr. Irvin,” she said. “And, bad as the truth may be, it is better than doubt, after all. You must look after yourself, you know. When Rita comes back we shall have a big task before us to wean her from her old habits.” She met his glance frankly. “But we shall succeed.”
“How you cheer me,” whispered Monte Irvin emotionally. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Doubtless (Kerry mused savagely) the appointments of the opium-house had been smuggled into that magically hidden cache which now concealed the conjurer Sin Sin Wa as well as the other members of the Kazmah company. How any man of flesh and blood could have escaped from a six-roomed house surrounded by detectives surpassed Kerry’s powers of imagination. How any apartment large enough to contain a mouse, much less half a dozen human beings, could exist anywhere within the area covered by the search-party he failed to understand, nor was he prepared to admit it humanly possible. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”