Dope by Sax Rohmer (desktop ebook reader txt) 📕

“I love this end one!” cried Mollie. “It has cushions which simply reek of oriental voluptuousness and cruelty. It reminds me of a delicious book I have been reading called Musk, Hashish, and Blood.”

“Hashish!” said Mrs. Sin, and laughed harshly. “One night you shall eat the hashish, and then—”

She snapped her fingers, glancing from Rita to Pyne.

“Oh, really? Is that a promise?” asked Mollie eagerly.

“No, no!” answered Mrs. Sin. “It is a threat!”

Something in the tone of her voice as she uttered the last four words in mock dramatic fashion caused Mollie and Rita to stare at one another questioningly. That suddenly altered tone had awakened an elusive memory, but neither of them could succeed in identifying it.

Mareno, a lean, swarthy fellow, his foreign cast of countenance accentuated by close-cut side-whiskers, deposited Miss Gretna's case in the cubicle which she had selected and, Rita pointing to that adjoining it, he disposed the second case beside the divan and departed silently. As the sound of a closing door reached them:

“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