s question: was Cagliostro a charlatan? However, the point is this:
Owing to alterations taking place in the Boulevard Beaumarchais, some
of the end houses in Rue St. Claude are being pulled down, among them
Number 1, formerly occupied by the Comte de Cagliostro. At the time that
the work commenced, I availed myself of a little leisure to visit
that house, once so famous. I was very much interested, and found it
fascinating to walk up the Grande Staircase where so many historical
personages once walked to consult the seer. But great as was my interest
in the apartments of Cagliostro, I was even more interested in one of
the apartments in a neighboring house, into which--quite accidentally,
you understand--I found myself looking."

XXIII

RAID IN THE RUE ST. CLAUDE

"I perceived," said M. Gaston Max, "that owing to the progress of the
work of demolition, and owing to the carelessness of the people in
charge--nom d'un nom! they were careless, those!--I was able, from
a certain point, to look into a small room fitted up in a way very
curious. There was a sort of bunk somewhat similar to that in a steamer
berth, and the walls were covered with paper of a Chinese pattern most
bizarre. No one was in the room when I first perceived it, but I had not
been looking in for many moments before a Chinaman entered and closed
the shutters. He was hasty, this one.

"Eh bien! I had seen enough. I perceived that my visit to the house of
Cagliostro had been dictated by a good little angel. It happened that
for many months I had been in quest of the headquarters of a certain
group which I knew, beyond any tiny doubt, to have its claws deep in
Parisian society. I refer to an opium syndicate"...

Dr. Cumberly started and seemed about to speak; but he restrained
himself, bending forward and awaiting the detective's next words with
even keener interest than hitherto.

"I had been trying--all vainly--to trace the source from which the
opium was obtained, and the place where it was used. I have devoted much
attention to the subject, and have spent some twelve months in the opium
provinces of China, you understand. I know how insidious a thing it is,
this opium, and how dreadful a curse it may become when it gets a hold
upon a community. I was formerly engaged upon a most sensational case
in San Francisco; and the horrors of the discoveries which we made
there--the American police and myself--have remained with me ever since.
Pardi