traction, 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 pres