Dope

by Sax Rohmer

  CHAPTER XVI. LIMEHOUSE

  It was on the following Tuesday evening that Mrs. Sin came to thetheatre, accompanied by Mollie Gretna. Rita instructed that she shouldbe shown up to the dressing-room. The personality of this singularwoman interested her keenly. Mrs. Sin was well known in certain Bohemianquarters, but was always spoken of as one speaks of a pet vice. Notto know Mrs. Sin was to be outside the magic circle which embraced theexclusively smart people who practiced the latest absurdities.

  The so-called artistic temperament is compounded of great strength andgreat weakness; its virtues are whiter than those of ordinary people andits vices blacker. For such a personality Mrs. Sin embodied the idea ofsecret pleasure. Her bold good looks repelled Rita, but the knowledge inher dark eyes was alluring.

  "I arrange for you for Saturday night," she said. "Cy Kilfane is comingwith Mollie, and you bring--"

  "Oh," replied Rita hesitatingly, "I am sorry you have gone to so muchtrouble."

  "No trouble, my dear," Mrs. Sin assured her. "Just a little matter ofbusiness, and you can pay the bill when it suits you."

  "I am frightfully excited!" cried Mollie Gretna. "It is so nice of youto have asked me to join your party. Of course Cy goes practically everyweek, but I have always wanted another girl to go with. Oh, I shallbe in a perfectly delicious panic when I find myself all among funnyChinamen and things! I think there is something so magnificentlywicked-looking about a pigtail--and the very name of Limehouse thrillsme to the soul!"

  That fixity of purpose which had enabled Rita to avoid the cunningsnares set for her feet and to snatch triumph from the very cauldron ofshame without burning her fingers availed her not at all in dealing withMrs. Sin. The image of Monte receded before this appeal to the secretpleasure-loving woman, of insatiable curiosity, primitive and unmoral,who dwells, according to a modern cynic philosopher, within everydaughter of Eve touched by the fire of genius.

  She accepted the arrangement for Saturday, and before her visitors hadleft the dressing-room her mind was busy with plausible deceits tocover the sojourn in Chinatown. Something of Mollie Gretna's foolishenthusiasm had communicated itself to Rita.

  Later in the evening Sir Lucien called, and on hearing of the schemegrew silent. Rita glancing at his reflection in the mirror, detected ablack and angry look upon his face. She turned to him.

  "Why, Lucy," she said, "don't you want me to go?"

  He smiled in his sardonic fashion.

  "Your wishes are mine, Rita," he replied.

  She was watching him closely.

  "But you don't seem keen," she persisted. "Are you angry with me?"

  "Angry?"

  "We are still friends, aren't we?"

  "Of course. Do you doubt my friendship?"

  Rita's maid came in to assist her in changing for the third act, andPyne went out of the room. But, in spite of his assurances, Rita couldnot forget that fierce, almost savage expression which had appeared uponhis face when she had told him of Mrs. Sin's visit.

  Later she taxed him on the point, but he suffered her inquiry withimperturbable sangfroid, and she found herself no wiser respecting thecause of his annoyance. Painful twinges of conscience came during theensuing days, when she found herself in her fiance's company, but shenever once seriously contemplated dropping the acquaintance of Mrs. Sin.

  She thought, vaguely, as she had many times thought before, of cuttingadrift from the entire clique, but there was no return of that sincereemotional desire to reform which she had experienced on the day thatMonte Irvin had taken her hand, in blind trust, and had asked her to behis wife. Had she analyzed, or been capable of analyzing, her intentionswith regard to the future, she would have learned that daily theyinclined more and more towards compromise. The drug habit was sappingwill and weakening morale, insidiously, imperceptibly. She was caught ina current of that "sacred river" seen in an opium-trance by Coleridge,and which ran--

  "Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea."

  Pyne's big car was at the stage-door on the fateful Saturday night, forRita had brought her dressing-case to the theatre, and having called forKilfane and Mollie Gretna they were to proceed direct to Limehouse.

  Rita, as she entered the car, noticed that Juan Mareno, Sir Lucien'sman, and not the chauffeur with whom she was acquainted, sat at thewheel. As they drove off:

  "Why is Mareno driving tonight, Lucy?" she asked.

  Sir Lucien glanced aside at her.

  "He is in my confidence," he replied. "Fraser is not."

  "Oh, I see. You don't want Fraser to know about the Limehouse journey?"

  "Naturally I don't. He would talk to all the men at the garage, and fromSouth Audley Street the tit-bit of scandal would percolate through everystratum of society."

  Rita was silent for a few moments, then:

  "Were you thinking about Monte?" she asked diffidently.

  Pyne laughed.

  "He would scarcely approve, would he?"

  "No," replied Rita. "Was that why you were angry when I told you I wasgoing?"

  "This 'anger,' to which you constantly revert, had no existence outsideyour own imagination, Rita. But" he hesitated--"you will have toconsider your position, dear, now that you are the future Mrs. Monte."Rita felt her cheeks flush, and she did not reply immediately.

  "I don't understand you, Lucy," she declared at last. "How odd you are."

  "Am I? Well, never mind. We will talk about my eccentricity later. Hereis Cyrus."

  Kilfane was standing in the entrance to the stage door of the theatre atwhich he was playing. As the car drew up he lifted two leather grips onto the step, and Mareno, descending, took charge of them.

  "Come along, Mollie," said Kilfane, looking back.

  Miss Gretna, very excited, ran out and got into the car beside Rita.Pyne lowered two of the collapsible seats for Kilfane and himself, andthe party set out for Limehouse.

  "Oh!" cried the fair-haired Mollie, grasping Rita's hand, "my heartbegan palpitating with excitement the moment I woke up this morning! Howcalm you are, dear."

  "I am only calm outside," laughed Rita.

  The joie de vivre and apparently unimpaired vitality, of this woman, forwhom (if half that which rumor whispered were true) vice had no secrets,astonished Rita. Her physical resources were unusual, no doubt, becausethe demand made upon them by her mental activities was slight.

  As the car sped along the Strand, where theatre-goers might still beseen making for tube, omnibus, and tramcar, and entered Fleet Street,where the car and taxicab traffic was less, a mutual silence fell uponthe party. Two at least of the travellers were watching the lightedwindows of the great newspaper offices with a vague sense of foreboding,and thinking how, bound upon a secret purpose, they were passing alongthe avenue of publicity. It is well that man lacks prescience. NeitherRita nor Sir Lucien could divine that a day was shortly to come when thehidden presses which throbbed about them that night should be busy withthe story of the murder of one and disappearance of the other.

  Around St. Paul's Churchyard whirled the car, its engine runningstrongly and almost noiselessly. The great bell of St. Paul's boomed outthe half-hour.

  "Oh!" cried Mollie Gretna, "how that made me jump! What a beautifullygloomy sound!"

  Kilfane murmured some inaudible reply, but neither Pyne nor Rita spoke.

  Cornhill and Leadenhall Street, along which presently their route lay,offered a prospect of lamp-lighted emptiness, but at Aldgate they foundthemselves amid East End throngs which afforded a marked contrast tothose crowding theatreland; and from thence through Whitechapel and theseemingly endless Commercial Road it was a different world into whichthey had penetrated.

  Rita hitherto had never seen the East End on a Saturday night, and thespectacle afforded by these busy marts, lighted by naphtha flames, inwhose smoky glare Jews and Jewesses, Poles, Swedes, Easterns, dagoes,and halfcastes moved feverishly, was a fascinating one. She thought howutterly alien they were, the men and women of a world u
nknown to thatsociety upon whose borders she dwelled; she wondered how they lived,where they lived, why they lived. The wet pavements were crowded withnondescript humanity, the night was filled with the unmusical voices ofHebrew hucksters, and the air laden with the smoky odor of their lamps.Tramcars and motorbuses were packed unwholesomely with these children ofshadowland drawn together from the seven seas by the magnet of London.

  She glanced at Pyne, but he was seemingly lost in abstraction, andKilfane appeared to be asleep. Mollie Gretna was staring eagerly outon the opposite side of the car at a group of three dago sailors, whomMareno had nearly run down, but she turned at that moment and caughtRita's glance.

  "Don't you simply love it!" she cried. "Some of those men were reallyhandsome, dear. If they would only wash I am sure I could adore them!"

  "Even such charms as yours can be bought at too high a price," drawledSir Lucien. "They would gladly do murder for you, but never wash."

  Crossing Limehouse Canal, the car swung to the right into West IndiaDock Road. The uproar of the commercial thoroughfare was left farbehind. Dark, narrow streets and sinister-looking alleys lay right andleft of them, and into one of the narrowest and least inviting of allMareno turned the car.

  In the dimly-lighted doorway of a corner house the figure of a Chinamanshowed as a motionless silhouette.

  "Oh!" sighed Mollie Gretna rapturously, "a Chinaman! I begin to feeldeliciously sinful!"

  The car came to a standstill.

  "We get out here and walk," said Sir Lucien. "It would not be wise todrive further. Mareno will deliver our baggage by hand presently."

  "But we shall all be murdered," cried Mollie, "murdered in cold blood! Iam dreadfully frightened!"

  "Something of the kind is quite likely," drawled Sir Lucien, "if youdraw attention to our presence in the neighborhood so deliberately.Walk ahead, Kilfane, with Mollie. Rita and I will follow at a discreetdistance. Leave the door ajar."

  Temporarily subdued by Pyne's icy manner, Miss Gretna became silent, andwent on ahead with Cyrus Kilfane, who had preserved an almost unbrokensilence throughout the journey. Rita and Sir Lucien followed slowly.

  "What a creepy neighborhood," whispered Rita. "Look! Someone is standingin that doorway over there, watching us."

  "Take no notice," he replied. "A cat could not pass along this streetunobserved by the Chinese, but they will not interfere with us providedwe do not interfere with them."

  Kilfane had turned to the right into a narrow court, at the entranceto which stood an iron pillar. As he and his companion passed under thelamp in a rusty bracket which projected from the wall, they vanishedinto a place of shadows. There was a ceaseless chorus of distantmachinery, and above it rose the grinding and rattling solo of a steamwinch. Once a siren hooted apparently quite near them, and lookingupward at a tangled, indeterminable mass which overhung the street atthis point, Rita suddenly recognized it for a ship's bow-sprit.

  "Why," she said, "we are right on the bank of the river!"

  "Not quite," answered Pyne. "We are skirting a dock basin. We are nearlyat our destination."

  Passing in turn under the lamp, they entered the narrow court, and froma doorway immediately on the left a faint light shone out upon the wetpavement. Pyne pushed the door fully open and held it for Rita to enter.As she did so:

  "Hello! hello!" croaked a harsh voice. "Number one p'lice chop, lo! SinSin Wa!"

  The uncanny cracked voice proceeded to give an excellent imitation of apolice whistle, and concluded with that of the clicking of castanets.

  "Shut the door, Lucy," came the murmurous tones of Kilfane from thegloom of the stuffy little room, in the centre of which stood a stovewherefrom had proceeded the dim light shining out upon the pavement."Light up, Sin Sin."

  "Sin Sin Wa! Sin Sin Wa!" shrieked the voice, and again came therattling of imaginary castanets. "Smartest leg in Buenos Ayres--BuenosAyres--p'lice chop--p'lice chop, lo!"

  "Oh," whispered Mollie Gretna, in the darkness, "I believe I am going toscream!"

  Pyne closed the door, and a dimly discernible figure on the oppositeside of the room stooped and opened a little cupboard in which was alighted ship's lantern. The lantern being lifted out and set upon arough table near the stove, it became possible to view the apartment andits occupants.

  It was a small, low-ceiled place, having two doors, one opening upon thestreet and the other upon a narrow, uncarpeted passage. The window wasboarded up. The ceiling had once been whitewashed and a few limp,dark fragments of paper still adhering to the walls proved that someforgotten decorator had exercised his art upon them in the past. A pieceof well-worn matting lay upon the floor, and there were two chairs, atable, and a number of empty tea-chests in the room.

  Upon one of the tea-chests placed beside the cupboard which hadcontained the lantern a Chinaman was seated. His skin was of so lighta yellow color as to approximate to dirty white, and his face waspock-marked from neck to crown. He wore long, snake-like moustaches,which hung down below his chin. They grew from the extreme outer edgesof his upper lip, the centre of which, usually the most hirsute, washairless as the lip of an infant. He possessed the longest and thickestpigtail which could possibly grow upon a human scalp, and his left eyewas permanently closed, so that a smile which adorned his extraordinarycountenance seemed to lack the sympathy of his surviving eye, which,oblique, beady, held no mirth in its glittering depths.

  The garments of the one-eyed Chinaman, who sat complacently smiling atthe visitors, consisted of a loose blouse, blue trousers tucked intogrey socks, and a pair of those native, thick-soled slippers whichsuggest to a Western critic the acme of discomfort. A raven, black asa bird of ebony, perched upon the Chinaman's shoulder, head a-tilt,surveying the newcomers with a beady, glittering left eye whichstrangely resembled the beady, glittering right eye of the Chinaman.For, singular, uncanny circumstance, this was a one-eyed raven which satupon the shoulder of his one-eyed master!

  Mollie Gretna uttered a stifled cry. "Oh!" she whispered. "I knew I wasgoing to scream!"

  The eye of Sin Sin Wa turned momentarily in her direction, but otherwisehe did not stir a muscle.

  "Are you ready for us, Sin?" asked Sir Lucien.

  "All ready. Lola hate gotchee topside loom ready," replied the Chinamanin a soft, crooning voice.

  "Go ahead, Kilfane," directed Sir Lucien.

  He glanced at Rita, who was standing very near him, surveying the evillittle room and its owner with ill-concealed disgust.

  "This is merely the foyer, Rita," he said, smiling slightly. "The stateapartments are upstairs and in the adjoining house."

  "Oh," she murmured--and no more.

  Kilfane and Mollie Gretna were passing through the inner doorway, andMollie turned.

  "Isn't it loathsomely delightful?" she cried.

  "Smartest leg in Buenos Ayres!" shrieked the raven. "Sin Sin, Sin Sin!"

  Uttering a frightened exclamation, Mollie disappeared along the passage.Sir Lucien indicated to Rita that she was to follow; and he, passingthrough last of the party, closed the door behind him.

  Sin Sin Wa never moved, and the raven, settling down upon the Chinaman'sshoulder, closed his serviceable eye.