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Read books online » Fiction » Dope by Sax Rohmer (highly recommended books .txt) 📖

Book online «Dope by Sax Rohmer (highly recommended books .txt) 📖». Author Sax Rohmer



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in too highly strung a condition to observe this fact, or indeed to observe anything.

“Tell me,” he said gently.

And in a torrent of disconnected, barely coherent language, the tortured woman told him of Kazmah's attempt to force her to lure Quentin Gray into the drug coterie. Sir Lucien stood behind her chair, and the icy reserve which habitually rendered his face an impenetrable mask deserted him as the story of Rita's treatment at the hands of the Egyptian of Bond Street was unfolded in all its sordid hideousness. Rita's soft, musical voice, for which of old she had been famous, shook and wavered; her pose, her twitching gestures, all told of a nervous agony bordering on prostration or worse. 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!”

“Be calm, little girl,” whispered Sir Lucien, and he laid his hand upon her shoulder.

But she leapt up, her pupils suddenly dilating and her delicate nostrils twitching in a manner which unmistakably pointed to the impossibility of thwarting her if sanity were to be retained.

“Ring him up, Lucy,” she repeated in a low voice. “He is there. Now that I have someone behind me I see my way at last!”

“There may, nevertheless, be a better way,” said Sir Lucien; but he added quickly: “Very well, dear, I will do as you wish. I have a little cocaine, which I will give you.”

He went out to the telephone, carefully closing the study door.

That he had counted upon the influence of the drug to reduce Rita to a more reasonable frame of mind was undoubtedly the fact, for presently as they proceeded on foot towards old Bond Street he reverted to something like his old ironical manner. But Rita's determination was curiously fixed. Unmoved by every kind of appeal, she proceeded to the appointment which Sir Lucien had made—ignorant of that which Fate held in store for her—and Sir Lucien, also humanly blind, walked on to meet his death.





PART THIRD—THE MAN FROM WHITEHALL





CHAPTER XXIII. CHIEF INSPECTOR KERRY RESIGNS

“Come in,” said the Assistant Commissioner. The door opened and Chief Inspector Kerry entered. His face was as fresh-looking, his attire as spruce and his eyes were as bright, as though he had slept well, enjoyed his bath and partaken of an excellent breakfast. Whereas he had not been to bed during the preceding twenty-four hours, had breakfasted upon biscuits and coffee, and had spent the night and early morning in ceaseless toil. Nevertheless he had found time to visit a hairdressing saloon, for he prided himself upon the nicety of his personal appearance.

He laid his hat, cane and overall upon a chair, and from a pocket of his reefer jacket took out a big notebook.

“Good morning, sir,” he said.

“Good morning, Chief Inspector,” replied the Assistant Commissioner. “Pray be seated. No doubt”—he suppressed a weary sigh—“you have a long report to make. I observe that some of the papers have the news of Sir Lucien Pyne's death.”

Chief Inspector Kerry smiled savagely.

“Twenty pressmen are sitting downstairs,” he said “waiting for particulars. One of them got into my room.” He opened his notebook. “He didn't stay long.”

The Assistant Commissioner gazed wearily at his blotting-pad, striking imaginary chords upon the table-edge with his large widely extended fingers. He cleared his throat.

“Er—Chief Inspector,” he said, “I fully recognize the difficulties which—you follow me? But the Press is the Press. Neither you nor I could hope to battle against such an institution even if we desired to do so. Where active resistance is useless, a little tact—you quite understand?”

“Quite, sir. Rely upon me,” replied Kerry. “But I didn't mean to open my mouth until I had reported to you. Now, sir, here is a precis of evidence, nearly complete, written out clearly by Sergeant Coombes. You would probably prefer to read it?”

“Yes, yes, I will read it. But has Sergeant Coombes been on duty all night?”

“He has, sir, and so have I. Sergeant Coombes went home an hour ago.”

“Ah,” murmured the Assistant Commissioner

He took the notebook from Kerry, and resting his head upon his hand began to read. Kerry sat very upright in his chair, chewing slowly and watching the profile of the reader with his unwavering steel-blue eyes. The reading was twice punctuated by telephone messages, but the Assistant Commissioner apparently possessed the Napoleonic faculty of doing two things at once, for his gaze travelled uninterruptedly along the lines of the report throughout the time that he issued telephonic instructions.

When he had arrived at the final page of Coombes' neat, schoolboy writing, he did not look up for a minute or more, continuing to rest his head in the palm of his hand. Then:

“So far you have not succeeded in establishing the identity of the missing man, Kazmah?” he said.

“Not so far, sir,” replied Kerry, enunciating the words with characteristic swift precision, each syllable distinct as the rap of a typewriter. “Inspector Whiteleaf, of Vine Street, has questioned all constables in the Piccadilly area, and we have seen members of the staffs of many shops and offices in the neighborhood, but no one is familiar with the appearance of the missing man.”

“Ah—now, the Egyptian servant?”

Inspector Kerry moved his shoulders restlessly.

“Rashid is his name. Many of the people in the neighborhood knew him by sight, and at five o'clock this morning one of my assistants had the good luck to find out, from an Arab coffee-house keeper named Abdulla, where Rashid lived. He paid a visit to the place—it's off the West India Dock Road—half an hour later. But Rashid had gone. I regret to report that all traces of him have been lost.”

“Ah—considering this circumstance side by side with the facts that no scrap of evidence has come to light in the Kazmah premises and that the late Sir Lucien's

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