tion 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, Rashid 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."

Rashid 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 whateve