THE STRANGLE-HOLD
Less than a month later Rita was in a state of desperation again.
Kazmah’s prices had soared above anything that he had hitherto
extorted. Her bank account, as usual, was greatly overdrawn, and
creditors of all kinds were beginning to press for payment. Then,
crowning catastrophe, Monte Irvin, for the first time during their
married life, began to take an interest in Rita’s reckless expenditure.
By a combination of adverse circumstances, she, the wife of one of the
wealthiest aldermen of the City of London, awakened to the fact that
literally she had no money.
She pawned as much of her jewellery as she could safely dispose of, and
temporarily silenced the more threatening tradespeople; but Kazmah
declined to give credit, and cheques had never been acceptable at the
establishment in old Bond Street.
Rita feverishly renewed her old quest, seeking in all directions for
some less extortionate purveyor. But none was to be found. The
selfishness and secretiveness of the drug slave made it difficult for
her to learn on what terms others obtained Kazmah’s precious goods; but
although his prices undoubtedly varied, she was convinced that no one
of all his clients was so cruelly victimized as she.
Mollie Gretna endeavored to obtain an extra supply to help Rita, but
Kazmah evidently saw through the device, and the endeavor proved a
failure.
She demanded to see Kazmah, but Rashîd, the Egyptian, blandly assured
her that “the Sheikh-el-Kazmah” was away. She cast discretion to the
winds and wrote to him, protesting that it was utterly impossible for
her to raise so much ready money as he demanded, and begging him to
grant her a small supply or to accept the letter as a promissory note
to be redeemed in three months. No answer was received, but when Rita
again called at old Bond Street, Rashîd proposed one of the few
compromises which the frenzied woman found herself unwilling to accept.
“The Sheikh-el-Kazmah say, my lady, your friend Mr. Gray never come to
him. If you bring him it will be all right.”
Rita found herself stricken dumb by this cool proposal. The degradation
which awaits the drug slave had never been more succinctly expounded to
her. She was to employ Gray’s foolish devotion for the commercial
advantage of Kazmah. Of course Gray might any day become one of the
three wealthiest peers in the realm. She divined the meaning of
Kazmah’s hitherto incomprehensible harshness (or believed that she
did); she saw what was expected of her. “My God!” she whispered. “I
have not come to that yet.”
Rashîd she knew to be incorruptible or powerless, and she turned away,
trembling, and left the place, whose faint perfume of frankincense had
latterly become hateful to her.
She was at this time bordering upon a state of collapse. Insomnia,
which latterly had defied dangerously increased doses of veronal, was
telling upon nerve and brain. Now, her head aching so that she often
wondered how long she could retain sanity, she found herself deprived
not only of cocaine, but also of malourea. Margaret Halley was her last
hope, and to Margaret she hastened on the day before the tragedy which
was destined to bring to light the sinister operations of the Kazmah
group.
Although, perhaps mercifully, she was unaware of the fact,
representatives of Spinker’s Agency had been following her during the
whole of the preceding fortnight. That Rita was in desperate trouble of
some kind her husband had not failed to perceive, and her reticence had
quite naturally led him to a certain conclusion. He had sought to win
her confidence by every conceivable means and had failed. At last had
come doubt—and the hateful interview with Spinker.
As Rita turned in at the doorway below Margaret’s flat, then, Brisley
was lighting a cigarette in the shelter of a porch nearly opposite, and
Gunn was not far away.
Margaret immediately perceived that her friend’s condition was
alarming. But she realized that whatever the cause to which it might be
due, it gave her the opportunity for which she had been waiting. She
wrote a prescription containing one grain of cocaine, but declined
firmly to issue others unless Rita authorized her, in writing, to
undertake a cure of the drug habit.
Rita’s disjointed statements pointed to a conspiracy of some kind on
the part of those who had been supplying her with drugs, but Margaret
knew from experience that to exhibit curiosity in regard to the matter
would be merely to provoke evasions.
A hopeless day and a pain-racked, sleepless night found Kazmah’s
unhappy victim in the mood for any measure, however desperate, which
should promise even temporary relief. Monte Irvin went out very early,
and at about eleven o’clock Rita rang up Kazmah’s, but only to be
informed by Rashîd, who replied, that Kazmah was still away. “This
evening he tell me that he see your friend if he come, my lady.” As if
the Fates sought to test her endurance to the utmost, Quentin Gray
called shortly afterwards and invited her to dine with him and go to a
theatre that evening.
For five age-long seconds Rita hesitated. If no plan offered itself by
nightfall she knew that her last scruple would be conquered. “After
all,” whispered a voice within her brain, “Quentin is a man. Even if I
took him to Kazmah’s and he was in some way induced to try opium, or
even cocaine, he would probably never become addicted to drug-taking.
But I should have done my part—”
“Very well, Quentin,” she heard herself saying aloud. “Will you call
for me?”
But when he had gone Rita sat for more than half an hour, quite still,
her hands clenched and her face a tragic mask. (Gunn, of Spinker’s
Agency, reported telephonically to Monte Irvin in the City that the
Hon. Quentin Gray had called and had remained about twenty-five
minutes; that he had proceeded to the Prince’s Restaurant, and from
there to Mudie’s, where he had booked a box at the Gaiety Theatre.)
Towards the fall of dusk the more dreadful symptoms which attend upon a
sudden cessation of the use of cocaine by a victim of cocainophagia
began to assert themselves again. Rita searched wildly in the lining of
her jewel-case to discover if even a milligram of the drug had by
chance fallen there from the little gold box. But the quest was in
vain.
As a final resort she determined to go to Margaret Halley again.
She hurried to Dover Street, and her last hope was shattered. Margaret
was out, and Janet had no idea when she was likely to return. Rita had
much ado to prevent herself from bursting into tears. She scribbled a
few lines, without quite knowing what she was writing, sealed the paper
in an envelope, and left it on Margaret’s table.
Of returning to Prince’s Gate and dressing for the evening she had only
a hazy impression. The hammer-beats in her head were depriving her of
reasoning power, and she felt cold, numbed, although a big fire blazed
in her room. Then as she sat before her mirror, drearily wondering if
her face really looked as drawn and haggard as the image in the glass,
or if definite delusions were beginning, Nina came in and spoke to her.
Some moments elapsed before Rita could grasp the meaning of the girl’s
words.
“Sir Lucien Pyne has rung up, Madam, and wishes to speak to you.”
Sir Lucien! Sir Lucien had come back? Rita experienced a swift return
of feverish energy. Half dressed as she was, and without pausing to
take a wrap, she ran out to the telephone.
Never had a man’s voice sounded so sweet as that of Sir Lucien when he
spoke across the wires. He was at Albemarle Street, and Rita, wasting
no time in explanations, begged him to await her there. In another ten
minutes she had completed her toilette and had sent Nina to ’phone for
a cab. (One of the minor details of his wife’s behavior which latterly
had aroused Irvin’s distrust was her frequent employment of public
vehicles in preference to either of the cars.)
Quentin Gray she had quite forgotten, until, as she was about to leave:
“Is there any message for Mr. Gray, Madam?” inquired Nina naively.
“Oh!” cried Rita. “Of course! Quick! Give me some paper and a pencil.”
She wrote a hasty note, merely asking Gray to proceed to the
restaurant, where she promised to join him, left it in charge of the
maid, and hurried off to Albemarle Street.
Mareno, the silent, yellow-faced servant who had driven the car on the
night of Rita’s first visit to Limehouse, admitted her. He showed her
immediately into the lofty study, where Sir Lucien awaited.
“Oh, Lucy—Lucy!” she cried, almost before the door had closed behind
Mareno. “I am desperate—desperate!”
Sir Lucien placed a chair for her. His face looked very drawn and grim.
But Rita was 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