by Sax Rohmer
“Any visitors?”
“No.”
“Has he been out?”
“No.”
“Got the ladder?”
“Yes.”
“All quiet in the neighborhood?”
“All quiet.”
“Good.”
The street in which this conversation took place was one running roughly parallel with that in which the house of Sin Sin Wa was situated. A detailed search of the Chinaman’s premises had failed to bring to light any scrap of evidence to show that opium had ever been smoked there. Of the door described by Mollie Gretna, and said to communicate with the adjoining establishment, not a trace could be found. But the fact that such a door had existed did not rest solely upon Mollie’s testimony. From one of the “beat-ups” interviewed that day, Kerry had succeeded in extracting confirmatory evidence.
Inquiries conducted in the neighborhood of Poplar had brought to light the fact that four of the houses in this particular street, including that occupied by Sin Sin Wa and that adjoining it, belonged to a certain Mr. Jacobs, said to reside abroad. Mr. Jacob’s rents were collected by an estate agent, and sent to an address in San Francisco. For some reason not evident to this man of business, Mr. Jacobs demanded a rental for the house next to Sin Sin Wa’s, which was out of all proportion to the value of the property. Hence it had remained vacant for a number of years. The windows were broken and boarded up, as was the door.
Kerry realized that the circumstance of the landlord of “The House of a Hundred Raptures” being named Jacobs, and the lessee of the Cubanis Cigarette Company’s premises in old Bond Street being named Isaacs, might be no more than a coincidence. Nevertheless it was odd. He had determined to explore the place without unduly advertising his intentions.
Two modes of entrance presented themselves. There was a trap on the roof, but in order to reach it access would have to be obtained to one of the other houses in the row, which also possessed a roof-trap; or there were four windows overlooking a little back yard, two upstairs and two down.
By means of a short ladder which Coombes had brought for the purpose Kerry climbed on to the wall and dropped into the yard.
“The jemmy!” he said softly.
Coombes, also mounting, dropped the required implement. Kerry caught it deftly, and in a very few minutes had wrenched away the rough planking nailed over one of the lower windows, without making very much noise.
“Shall I come down?” inquired Coombes in muffled tones from the top of the wall.
“No,” rapped Kerry. “Hide the ladder again. If I want help I’ll whistle. Catch!”
He tossed the jemmy up to Coombes, and Coombes succeeded in catching it. Then Kerry raised the glass-less sash of the window and stepped into a little room, which he surveyed by the light of his electric torch. It was filthy and littered with rubbish, but showed no sign of having been occupied for a long time. The ceiling was nearly black, and so were the walls. He went out into a narrow passage similar to that in the house of Sin Sin Wa and leading to a stair.
Walking quietly, he began to ascend. Mollie Gretna’s description of the opium-house had been most detailed and lurid, and he was prepared for some extravagant scene.
He found three bare, dirty rooms, having all the windows boarded up.
“Hell!” he said succinctly.
Resting his torch upon a dust-coated ledge of the room, which presumably was situated in the front of the house, he deposited a cud of chewing-gum in the empty grate and lovingly selected a fresh piece from the packet which he always carried. Once more chewing he returned to the narrow passage, which he knew must be that in which the secret doorway had opened.
It was uncarpeted and dirty, and the walls were covered with faded filthy paper, the original color and design of which were quite lost. There was not the slightest evidence that a door had ever existed in any part of the wall. Following a detailed examination Kerry returned his magnifying glass to the washleather bag and the bag to his waistcoat pocket.
“H’m,” he said, thinking aloud, “Sin Sin Wa may have only one eye, but it’s a good eye.”
He raised his glance to the blackened ceiling of the passage, and saw that the trap giving access to the roof was situated immediately above him. He directed the ray of the torch upon it. In the next moment he had snapped off the light and was creeping silently towards the door of the front room.
The trap had moved slightly!
Gaining the doorway, Kerry stood just inside the room and waited. He became conscious of a kind of joyous excitement, which claimed him at such moments; an eagerness and a lust of action. But he stood perfectly still, listening and waiting.
There came a faint creaking sound, and a new damp chilliness was added to the stale atmosphere of the passage. Someone had quietly raised the trap.
Cutting through the blackness like a scimitar shone a ray of light from above, widening as it descended and ending in a white patch on the floor. It was moved to and fro. Then it disappeared. Another vague creaking sound followed — that caused by a man’s weight being imposed upon a wooden framework.
Finally came a thud on the bare boards of the floor.
Complete silence ensued. Kerry waited, muscles tense and brain alert. He even suspended the chewing operation. A dull, padding sound reached his ears.
From the quality of the thud which had told of the intruder’s drop from the trap to the floor, Kerry had deduced that he wore rubber-soled shoes. Now, the sound which he could hear was that of the stranger’s furtive footsteps. He was approaching the doorway in which Kerry was standing.
Just behind the open door Kerry waited. And unheralded by any further sound to tell of his approach, the intruder suddenly shone a ray of light right into the room. He was on the threshold; only the door concealed him from Kerry, and concealed Kerry from the new-comer.
The disc of light cast into the dirty room grew smaller. The man with the torch was entering. A hand which grasped a magazine pistol appeared beyond the edge of the door, and Kerry’s period of inactivity came to an end. Leaning back he adroitly kicked the weapon from the hand of the man who held it!
There was a smothered cry of pain, and the pistol fell clattering on the floor. The light went out, too. As it vanished Kerry leapt from his hiding-place. Snapping on the light of his own pocket lamp, he ran out into the passage.
Crack! came the report of a pistol.
Kerry dropped flat on the floor. He had not counted on the intruder being armed with two pistols! His pocket lamp, still alight, fell beside him, and he lay in a curiously rigid attitude on his side, one knee drawn up and his arm thrown across his face.
Carefully avoiding the path of light cast by the fallen torch, the unseen stranger approached silently. Pistol in hand, he bent, nearer and nearer, striving to see the face of the prostrate man. Kerry lay deathly still. The other dropped on one knee and bent closely over him....
Swiftly as a lash Kerry’s arm was whipped around the man’s neck, and helpless he pitched over on to his head! Uttering a dull groan, he lay heavy and still across Kerry’s body.
“Flames!” muttered the Chief Inspector, extricating himself; “I didn’t mean to break his neck.”
He took up the electric torch, and shone it upon the face of the man on the floor. It was a dirty, unshaven face, unevenly tanned, as though the man had worn a beard until quite recently and had come from a hot climate. He was attired in a manner which suggested that he might be a ship’s fireman save that he wore canvas shoes having rubber soles.
Kerry stood watching him for some moments. Then he groped behind him with one foot until he found the pistol, the second pistol which the man had dropped as he pitched on his skull. Kerry picked it up, and resting the electric torch upon the crown of his neat bowler hat — which lay upon the floor — he stooped, pistol in hand, and searched the pockets of the prostrate man, who had begun to breathe stertorously. In the breast pocket he found a leather wallet of good quality; and at this
he stared, a curious expression coming into his fierce eyes. He opened it, and found Treasury notes, some official-looking papers, and a number of cards. Upon one of these cards be directed the light, and this is what he read:
Lord Wrexborough
Great Cumberland Place, V. 1
“To introduce 719. W.”
“God’s truth!” gasped Kerry. “It’s the man from Whitehall!”
The stertorous breathing ceased, and a very dirty hand was thrust up to him.
“I’m glad you spoke, Chief Inspector Kerry,” drawled a vaguely familiar voice. “I was just about to kick you in the back of the neck!”
Kerry dropped the wallet and grasped the proffered hand. “719” stood up, smiling grimly. Footsteps were clattering on the stairs. Coombes had heard the shot.
“Sir,” said Kerry, “if ever you need a testimonial to your efficiency at this game, my address is Sixty-seven Spenser Road, Brixton. We’ve met before.”
“We have, Chief Inspector,” was the reply. “We met at Kazmah’s, and later at a certain gambling den in Soho.”
The pseudo fireman dragged a big cigar-case from his hip-pocket.
“I’m known as Seton Pasha. Can I offer you a cheroot?”
CHAPTER XXXI. THE STORY OF 719
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 that Mareno, palpably an accomplice, stayed to face the music, and the fact that Sin Sin Wa likewise has made no effort to escape. Do you see what it means? They are covering the big man — Kazmah. Once he and Mrs. Irvin are out of the w
ay, we can prove nothing against Mareno and Sin Sin Wa! And the most we could do for Mrs. Sin would be to convict her of selling opium.”
“To do even that we should have to take a witness to court,” said Kerry gloomily; “and all the satisfaction we’d get would be to see her charged ten pounds!”
Silence fell between them again. It was that kind of sympathetic silence which is only possible where harmony exists; and, indeed, of all the things strange and bizarre which characterized the inquiry, this sudden amity between Kerry and Seton Pasha was not the least remarkable. It represented the fruit of a mutual respect.
There was something about the lean, unshaven face of Seton Pasha, and something, too, in his bright grey eyes which, allowing for difference of coloring, might have reminded a close observer of Kerry’s fierce countenance. The tokens of iron determination and utter indifference to danger were perceptible in both. And although Seton was dark and turning slightly grey, while Kerry was as red as a man well could be, that they possessed several common traits of character was a fact which the dissimilarity of their complexions wholly failed to conceal. But while Seton Pasha hid the grimness of his nature beneath a sort of humorous reserve, the dangerous side of Kerry was displayed in his open truculence.
Seated there in that Limehouse attic, a smoky lamp burning on the table between them, and one gripping the stump of a cheroot between his teeth, while the other chewed steadily, they presented a combination which none but a fool would have lightly challenged.
“Sin Sin Wa is cunning,” said Seton suddenly. “He is a very clever man. Watch him as closely as you like, he will never lead you to the ‘store.’ In the character of John Smiles I had some conversation with him this morning, and I formed the same opinion as yourself. He is waiting for something; and he is certain of his ground. I have a premonition, Chief Inspector, that whoever else may fall into the net, Sin Sin Wa will slip out. We have one big chance.”
“What’s that?” rapped Kerry.
“The dope syndicate can only have got control of ‘the traffic’ in one way — by paying big prices and buying out competitors. If they cease to carry on for even a week they lose their control. The people who bring the stuff over from Japan, South America, India, Holland, and so forth will sell somewhere else if they can’t sell to Kazmah and Company. Therefore we want to watch the ships from likely ports, or, better still, get among the men who do the smuggling. There must be resorts along the riverside used by people of that class. We might pick up information there.”
