Dope

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"You notice how quiet it is?" asked Mrs. Sin.

"Yes," replied Rita. "It is extraordinarily quiet."

"This an empty house--'To let,'" explained Mrs. Sin. "We watch it stay
so. Sin the landlord, see? Windows all boarded up and everything
padded. No sound outside, no sound inside. Sin call it the 'House of a
Hundred Raptures,' after the one he have in Buenos Ayres."

The voice of Cyrus Kilfane came, querulous, from a neighboring room.

"Lola, my dear, I am almost ready."

"Ho!" Mrs. Sin uttered a deep-toned laugh. "He is a glutton for
chandu! I am coming, Cy."

She turned and went out. Sir Lucien paused for a moment, permitting
her to pass, and:

"Good night, Rita," he said in a low voice. "Happy dreams!"

He moved away.

"Lucy!" called Rita softly.

"Yes?"

"Is it--is it really safe here?"

Pyne glanced over his shoulder towards the retreating figure of Mrs.
Sin, then:

"I shall be awake," he replied. "I would rather you had not come, but
since you are here you must go through with it." He glanced again
along the narrow passage created by the presence of the partitions,
and spoke in a voice lower yet. "You have never really trusted me,
Rita. You were wise. But you can trust me now. Good night, dear."

He walked out of the room and along the carpeted corridor to a little
apartment at the back of the house, furnished comfortably but in
execrably bad taste. A cheerful fire was burning in the grate, the
flue of which had been ingeniously diverted by Sin Sin Wa so that the
smoke issued from a chimney of the adjoining premises. On the
mantelshelf, which was garishly draped, were a number of photographs
of Mrs. Sin in Spanish dancing costume.

Pyne seated himself in an armchair and lighted a cigarette. Except for
the ticking of a clock the room was silent as a padded cell. Upon a
little Moorish table beside a deep, low settee lay a complete opium-
smoking outfit.

Lolling back in the chair and crossing his legs, Sir Lucien became
lost in abstraction, and he was thus seated when, some ten minutes
later, Mrs. Sin came in.

"Ah!" she said, her harsh voice softened to a whisper. "I wondered. So
you wait to smoke with me?" Pyne slowly turned his head, staring at
her as she stood in the doorway, one hand resting on her hip and her
shapely figure boldly outlined by the kimono.

"No," he replied. "I don't want to smoke. Are they all provided for?"

Mrs. Sin shook her head.

"Not Cy," she said. "Two pipes are nothing to him. He will need two
more--perhaps three. But you are not going to smoke?"

"Not tonight, Lola."

She frowned, and was about to speak, when:

"Lola, my dear," came a distant, querulous murmur. "Give me another
pipe."

Sin tossed her head, turned, and went out again. Sir Lucien lighted
another cigarette. When finally the woman came back, Cyrus Kilfane had
presumably attained the opium-smoker's paradise, for Lola closed the
door and seated herself upon the arm of Sir Lucien's chair. She bent
down, resting her dusky cheek against his.

"You smoke with me?" she whispered coaxingly.

"No, Lola, not tonight," he said, patting her jewel-laden hand and
looking aside into the dark eyes which were watching him intently.

Mrs. Sin became silent for a few moments.

"Something has changed in you," she said at last. "You are different--
lately."

"Indeed!" drawled Sir Lucien. "Possibly you are right. Others have
said the same thing."

"You have lots of money now. Your investments have been good. You want
to become respectable, eh?"

Pyne smiled sardonically.

"Respectability is a question of appearance," he replied. "The change
to which you refer would seem to go deeper."

"Very likely," murmured Mrs. Sin. "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."

Sir Lucien listened imperturbably.

"She is certainly nervous," he admitted coolly. "I may add that I am
sorry I brought her here."

"Oh," said Mrs. Sin, her voice rising half a note. "Then why do you
bring her to the House?"

"She made the arrangement herself, and I took the easier path. I am
considering your interests as much as my own, Lola. She is about to
marry Monte Irvin, and if his suspicions were aroused he is quite
capable of digging down to the 'Hundred Raptures.'"

"You brought her to Kazmah's."

"She was not at that time engaged to Irvin."

"Ah, I see. And now everybody says you are changed. Yes, she is a
charming friend."

Pyne looked up into the half-veiled dark eyes.

"She never has been and never can be any more to me, Lola," he said.

At those words, designed to placate, the fire which smouldered in
Lola's breast burst into sudden flame. She leapt to her feet,
confronting Sir Lucien.

"I know! I know!" she cried 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!"

Eyes blazing and hands clenched, she stood before him, a woman mad
with jealousy, not of a successful rival but of a respected one. She
quivered with passion, and Pyne, perceiving his mistake too late, only
preserved his wonted composure by dint of a great effort. He grasped
Lola and drew her down on to the arm of the chair by sheer force, for
she resisted savagely. His ready wit had been at work, and:

"What a little spitfire you are," he said, firmly grasping her arms,
which felt rigid to the touch. "Surely you can understand? Rita amused
me, at first. Then, when I found she was going to marry Monte Irvin I
didn't bother about her any more. In fact, because I like and admire
Irvin, I tried to keep her away from the dope. We don't want trouble
with a man of that type, who has all sorts of influence. Besides,
Monte Irvin is a good fellow."

Gradually, as he spoke, the rigid arms relaxed and the lithe body
ceased to quiver. Finally, Lola sank back against his shoulder,
sighing.

"I don't believe you," she whispered. "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?"

For a moment Pyne hesitated, then:

"Very well," he said. "Go and lie down. I will roast the chandu."

CHAPTER XVIII

THE DREAM OF SIN SIN WA

For a habitual opium-smoker to abstain when the fumes of chandu
actually reach his nostrils is a feat of will-power difficult
adequately to appraise. An ordinary tobacco smoker cannot remain for
long among those who are enjoying the fragrant weed without catching
the infection and beginning to smoke also. Twice to redouble the lure
of my lady Nicotine would be but loosely to estimate the seductiveness
of the Spirit of the Poppy; yet Sir Lucien Pyne smoked one pipe with
Mrs. Sin, and perceiving her to be already in a state of dreamy
abstraction, loaded a second, but in his own case with a fragment of
cigarette stump which smouldered in a tray upon the table. His was
that rare type of character whose possessor remains master of his
vices.

Following the fourth pipe--Pyne, after the second, had ceased to
trouble to repeat his feat of legerdemain, "The sleep" claimed Mrs.
Sin. Her languorous eyes closed, and her face assumed that rapt
expression of Buddha-like beatitude which Rita had observed at
Kilfane's flat. According to some scientific works on the subject,
sleep is not invariably induced in the case of Europeans by the use of
chandu. Loosely, this is true. But this type of European never becomes
an habitue; the habitue always sleeps. That dream-world to which opium
alone holds the key becomes the real world "for the delights of which
the smoker gladly resigns all mundane interests." The exiled Chinaman
returns again to the sampan of his boyhood, floating joyously on the
waters of some willow-lined canal; the Malay hears once more the
mystic whispering in the mangrove swamps, or scents the fragrance of
nutmeg and cinnamon in the far-off golden Chersonese. 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. 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. An unbroken stillness
prevailed in the opium-house of Sin Sin Wa.

Recovering from his fit of abstraction, Pyne, casting a final keen
glance at the sleeper, walked out of the room. He looked along the
carpeted corridor in the direction of the cubicles, paused, and then
opened the heavy door masking the recess behind the cupboard. Next
opening the false back of the cupboard, he passed through to the
lumber-room beyond, and partly closed the second door.

He descended the stair and went along the passage; but ere he reached
the door of the room on the ground floor:

"Hello! hello! Sin Sin! Sin Sin Wa!" croaked the raven. "Number one
p'lice chop, lo!" The note of a police whistle followed, rendered with
uncanny fidelity.

Pyne entered the room. It presented the same aspect as when he had
left it. The ship's lantern stood upon the table, and Sin Sin Wa sat
upon the tea-chest, the great black bird perched on his shoulder. The
fire in the stove had burned lower, and its downcast glow revealed
less mercilessly the dirty condition of the floor. Otherwise no one,
nothing, seemed to have been disturbed. Pyne leaned against the
doorpost, taking out and lighting a cigarette. The eye of Sin Sin Wa
glanced sideways at him.

"Well, Sin Sin," said Sir Lucien, dropping a match and extinguishing
it under his foot, "you see I am not smoking tonight."

"No smokee," murmured the Chinaman. "Velly good stuff."

"Yes, the stuff is all right, Sin."

"Number one proper," crooned Sin Sin Wa, and relapsed into smiling
silence.

"Number one p'lice," croaked the raven sleepily. "Smartest--" He even
attempted the castanets imitation, but was overcome by drowsiness.

For a while Sir Lucien stood watching the singular pair and smiling in
his ironical fashion. The motive which had prompted him to leave the
neighboring house and to seek the companionship of Sin Sin Wa was so
obscure and belonged so peculiarly to the superdelicacies of chivalry,
that already he was laughing at himself. But, nevertheless, in this
house and not in its secret annex of a Hundred Raptures he designed to
spend the night. Presently:

"Hon'lable p'lice patrol come 'long plenty soon," murmured Sin Sin Wa.

"Indeed?" said Sir Lucien, glancing at his wristwatch. "The door is
open above."

Sin Sin Wa raised one yellow forefinger, without moving either hand
from the knee upon which it rested, and shook it slightly to and fro.

"Allee lightee," he murmured. "No bhobbery. Allee peaceful fellers."

"Will they want to come in?"

"Wantchee dlink," replied Sin Sin Wa.

"Oh, I see. If I go out into the passage it will be all right?"

"Allee lightee."

Even as he softly crooned the words came a heavy squelch of rubbers
upon the wet pavement outside, followed by a rapping on the door. Sin
Sin Wa glanced aside at Sir Lucien, and the latter immediately
withdrew, partly closing the door. The Chinaman shuffled across and
admitted two constables. The raven, remaining perched upon his
shoulder, shrieked, "Smartest leg in Buenos Ayres," and, fully
awakened, rattled invisible castanets.

The police strode into the stuffy little room without ceremony, a pair
of burly fellows, fresh-complexioned, and genial as men are wont to be
who have reached a welcome resting-place on a damp and cheerless
night. They stood by the stove, warming their hands; and one of them
stooped, took up the little poker, and stirred the embers to a
brighter glow.

"Been havin' a pipe, Sin?" he asked, winking at his companion. "I can
smell something like opium!"

"No smokee opium," murmured Sin Sin Wa complacently. "Smokee
Woodbine."

"Ho, ho!" laughed the other constable. "I don't think."

"You likee tly one piecee pipee one time?" inquired the Chinaman.
"Gotchee fliend makee smokee."

The man who had poked the fire slapped his companion on the back.

"Now's your chance, Jim!" he cried. "You always said you'd like to
have a cut at it."

"H'm!" muttered the other. "A 'double' o' that fifteen over-proof
Jamaica of yours, Sin, would hit me in a tender spot tonight."

"Lum?" murmured Sin Sin blandly. "No hate got."

He resumed his seat on the tea-chest, and the raven muttered sleepily,
"Sin Sin--Sin."

"H'm!" repeated the constable.

He raised the skirt of his heavy top-coat, and from his trouser-pocket
drew out a leather purse. The eye of Sin Sin Wa remained fixed upon a
distant corner of the room. From the purse the constable took a
shilling, ringing it loudly upon the table.

"Double rum, miss, please!" he said, facetiously. "There's no treason
allowed nowadays, so my pal's--"

"I stood yours last night Jim, anyway!" cried the other, grinning. "Go
on, stump up!"

Jim rang a second shilling on the table.

"Two double rums!" he called.

Sin Sin Wa reached a long arm into the little cupboard beside him and
withdrew a bottle and a glass. Leaning forward he placed bottle and
glass on the table, and adroitly swept the coins into his yellow palm.

"Number one p'lice chop," croaked the raven.

"You're right, old bird!" said Jim, pouring out a stiff peg of the
spirit and disposing of it at a draught. "We should freeze to death on
this blasted riverside beat if it wasn't for Sin Sin."

He measured out a second portion for his companion, and the latter
drank the raw spirit off as though it had been ale, replaced the glass
on the table, and having adjusted his belt and lantern in that
characteristic way which belongs exclusively to members of the
Metropolitan Police Force, turned and departed.

"Good night, Sin," he said, opening the door.

"So-long," murmured the Chinaman.

"Good night, old bird," cried Jim, following his colleague.

"So-long."

The door closed, and Sin Sin Wa, shuffling across, rebolted it. As Sir
Lucien came out from his hiding-place Sin Sin Wa returned to his seat
on the tea-chest, first putting the glass, unwashed, and the rum
bottle back in the cupboard.

To the ordinary observer the Chinaman presents an inscrutable mystery.
His seemingly unemotional character and his racial inability to
express his thoughts intelligibly in any European tongue stamp him as
a creature apart, and one whom many are prone erroneously to classify
very low in the human scale and not far above the ape. Sir Lucien
usually spoke to Sin Sin Wa in English, and the other replied in that
weird jargon known as "pidgin." But the silly Sin Wa who murmured
gibberish and the Sin Sin Wa who could converse upon many and curious
subjects in his own language were two different beings--as Sir Lucien
was aware. Now, as the one-eyed Chinaman resumed his seat and the one-
eyed raven sank into slumber, Pyne suddenly spoke in Chinese, a tongue
which he understood as it is understood by few Englishmen; that
strange, sibilant speech which is alien from all Western conceptions
of oral intercourse as the Chinese institutions and ideals are alien
from those of the rest of the civilized world.

"So you make a profit on your rum, Sin Sin Wa," he said ironically,
"at the same time that you keep in the good graces of the police?"

Sin Sin Wa's expression underwent a subtle change at the sound of his
native language. He moved his hands and became slightly animated.

"A great people of the West, most honorable sir," he replied in the
pure mandarin dialect, "claim credit for having said that 'business is
business.' Yet he who thus expressed himself was a Chinaman."

"You surprise me."

"The wise man must often find occasion for surprise most honorable
sir."

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. 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."

"And in spite of the opium which you consume, you have never lost
sight of this ideal?"

"Never."

"But--your wife?"

Sin Sin Wa performed a curious shrugging movement, peculiarly racial.

"A man may not always have the same wife," he replied cryptically.
"The honorable wife who now attends to my requirements, laboring
unselfishly in my miserable house and scorning the love of other men
as she has always done--and as an honorable and upright woman is
expected to do--may one day be gathered to her ancestors. A man never
knows. Or she may leave me. I am not a good husband. It may be that
some little maiden of Ho-Nan, mild-eyed like the musk-deer and modest
and tender, will consent to minister to my old age. Who knows?"

Sir Lucien blew a thick cloud of tobacco smoke into the room, and:

"She will never love you, Sin Sin Wa," he said, almost sadly. "She
will come to your house only to cheat you."

Sin Sin Wa repeated the eloquent shrug.

"We have a saying in Ho-Nan, most honorable sir," he answered, "and it
is this: 'He who has tasted the poppy-cup has nothing to ask of love.'
She will cook for me, this little one, and stroke my brow when I am
weary, and light my pipe. My eye will rest upon her with pleasure. It
is all I ask."

There came a soft rapping on the outer door--three raps, a pause, and
then two raps. The raven opened his beady eye.

"Sin Sin Wa," he croaked, "number one p'lice chop, lo!"

Sin Sin Wa glanced aside at Sir Lucien.

"The traffic. A consignment of opium," he said. "Sam Tuk calls."

Sir Lucien consulted his watch, and:

"I should like to go with you, Sin Sin Wa," he said. "Would it be
safe to leave the house--with the upper door unlocked?"

Sin Sin Wa glanced at him again.

"All are sleeping, most honorable sir?"

"All."

"I will lock the room above and the outer door. It is safe."

He raised a yellow hand, and the raven stepped sedately from his
shoulder on to his wrist.

"Come, Tling-a-Ling," crooned Sin Sin Wa, "you go to bed, my little
black friend, and one day you, too, shall see the paddy-fields of
Ho-Nan."

Opening the useful cupboard, he stooped, and in hopped the raven. Sin
Sin Wa closed the cupboard, and stepped out into the passage.

"I will bring you a coat and a cap and scarf," he said. "Your
magnificent apparel would be out of place among the low pigs who wait
in my other disgusting cellar to rob me. Forgive my improper absence
for one moment, most honorable sir."

CHAPTER XIX

THE TRAFFIC

Sir Lucien came out into the alley wearing a greasy cloth cap pulled
down over his eyes and an old overall, the collar turned up about a
red woollen muffler which enveloped the lower part of his face. The
odor of the outfit was disgusting, but this man's double life had
brought him so frequently in contact with all forms of uncleanness,
including that of the Far East, compared with which the dirt of the
West is hygienic, that he suffered it without complaint.

A Chinese "boy" of indeterminable age, wearing a slop-shop suit and a
cap, was waiting outside the door, and when Sin Sin Wa appeared,
carefully locking up, he muttered something rapidly in his own
sibilant language.

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.

In silence the three pursued their way, crossing inlets and circling
around basins dimly divined, turning to the right into a lane flanked
by high, eyeless walls, and again to the left, finally to emerge
nearly opposite a dilapidated gateway giving access to a small wharf,
on the rickety gates bills were posted announcing, "This Wharf to
Let." The annexed building appeared to be a mere shell. To the right
again they turned, and once more to the left, halting before a
two-story brick house which had apparently been converted into a
barber's shop. In one of the grimy windows were some loose packets of
cigarettes, a soapmaker's advertisement, and a card:

SAM TUK
BARBER

Opening the door with a key which he carried, the boy admitted Sir
Lucien and Sin Sin Wa to the dimly-lighted interior of a room the
pretensions of which to be regarded as a shaving saloon were supported
by the presence of two chairs, a filthy towel, and a broken mug. Sin
Sin Wa shuffled across to another door, and, followed by Sir Lucien,
descended a stone stair to a little cellar apparently intended for
storing coal. A tin lamp stood upon the bottom step.

Removing the lamp from the step, Sin Sin Wa set it on the cellar
floor, which was black with coal dust, then closed and bolted the
door. A heap of nondescript litter lay piled in a corner of the
cellar. This Sin Sin Wa disturbed sufficiently to reveal a movable
slab in the roughly paved floor. It was so ingeniously concealed by
coal dust that one who had sought it unaided must have experienced
great difficulty in detecting it. Furthermore, it could only be raised
in the following manner:

A piece of strong iron wire, which lay among the other litter, was
inserted in a narrow slot, apparently a crack in the stone. About an
inch of the end of the wire being bent outward to form a right angle,
when the seemingly useless piece of scrap-iron had been thrust through
the slab and turned, it formed a handle by means of which the trap
could be raised.

Again Sin Sin Wa took up the lamp, placing it at the brink of the
opening revealed. A pair of wooden steps rested below, and Sir Lucien,
who evidently was no stranger to the establishment, descended
awkwardly, since there was barely room for a big man to pass. He found
himself in the mouth of a low passage, unpaved and shored up with
rough timbers in the manner of a mine-working. Sin Sin Wa followed
with the lamp, drawing the slab down into its place behind him.

Stooping forward and bending his knees, Sir Lucien made his way along
the passage, the Chinaman following. It was of considerable length,
and terminated before a strong door bearing a massive lock. Sin Sin Wa
reached over the stooping figure of Sir Lucien and unfastened the
lock. The two emerged in a kind of dug-out. Part of it had evidently
been in existence before the ingenious Sin Sin Wa had exercised his
skill upon it, and was of solid brickwork and stone-paved; palpably a
storage vault. But it had been altered to suit the Chinaman's purpose,
and one end--that in which the passage came out--was timbered. It
contained a long counter and many shelves; also a large oil-stove and
a number of pots, pans, and queer-looking jars. On the counter stood a
ship's lantern. The shelves were laden with packages and bottles.
Behind the counter sat a venerable and perfectly bald Chinaman. The
only trace of hair upon his countenance grew on the shrunken upper lip
--mere wisps of white down. His skin was shrivelled like that of a
preserved fig, and he wore big horn-rimmed spectacles. He never once
exhibited the slightest evidence of life, and his head and face, and
the horn-rimmed spectacles, might quite easily have passed for those
of an unwrapped mummy. This was Sam Tuk.

Bending over a box upon which rested a canvas-bound package was a
burly seaman engaged in unknotting the twine with which the canvas was
kept in place. As Sin Sin Wa and Sir Lucien came in he looked up,
revealing a red-bearded, ugly face, very puffy under the eyes.

"Wotcher, Sin Sin!" he said gruffly. "Who's your long pal?"

"Friend," murmured Sin Sin Wa complacently. "You gotchee pukka stuff
thisee time, George?"

"I allus brings the pukka stuff!" roared the seaman, ceasing to fumble
with the knots and glaring at Sin Sin Wa. "Wotcher mean--pukka stuff?"

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