im for fully five minutes.

Kerry began to regard the one-eyed Chinaman with a superstitious fear
which he strove in vain to stifle. That any man could have succeeded in
converting a chandu-khan such as that described by Mollie Gretna into a
filthy deserted dwelling such as that visited by Kerry, within the
space of some thirty-six hours, was well nigh incredible. But the Chief
Inspector had deduced (correctly) that the exotic appointments depicted
by Mollie were all of a detachable nature--merely masking the filthiness
beneath; so that at the shortest notice the House of a Hundred Raptures
could be dismantled. The communicating door was a larger proposition,
but that it was one within the compass of Sin Sin Wa its effectual
disappearance sufficiently demonstrated.

Doubtless (Kerry mused savagely) the appointments of the opium-house had
been smuggled into that magically hidden cache which now concealed the
conjurer Sin Sin Wa as well as the other members of the Kazmah company.
How any man of flesh and blood could have escaped from a six-roomed
house surrounded by detectives surpassed Kerry's powers of imagination.
How any apartment large enough to contain a mouse, much less half a
dozen human beings, could exist anywhere within the area covered by the
search-party he failed to understand, nor was he prepared to admit it
humanly possible.

Kerry chartered a taxicab by Brixton Town Hall and directed the man
to drive to Prince's Gate. To the curious glances of certain of his
neighbors who had never before seen the Chief Inspector otherwise than
a model of cleanliness and spruceness he was indifferent. But the manner
in which the taxi-driver looked him up and down penetrated through the
veil of abstraction which hitherto had rendered Kerry impervious to all
external impressions, and:

"Give me another look like that, my lad," he snapped furiously, "and
I'll bash your head through your blasted wind-screen."

A ready retort trembled upon the cabman's tongue, but a glance into the
savage blue eyes reduced him to fearful silence. Kerry entered the cab
and banged the door; and the man drove off positively trembling with
indignation.

Deep in reflection the Chief Inspector was driven westward through the
early morning traffic. Fine rain was falling, and the streets presented
that curiously drab appearance which only London streets can present
in all its dreary perfection. Workers bound Cityward fought for places
inside tr