Detective and mystery stories; Drug traffic -- Fiction
“You are all waiting to hear—or, to be exact, two are waiting to hear,
Gray and Margaret already know—who spoke as Kazmah through the little
window behind the chair. The deep-voiced speaker was Juan Mareno, Mrs.
Sin’s brother! Mrs. Sin’s maiden name was Lola Mareno.
“Many of these details were provided by Mareno, who, after the death of
his sister, to whom he was deeply attached, volunteered to give crown
evidence. Most of them we have confirmed from other sources.
“Behold ‘Kazmah the dream-reader,’ then, established in Buenos Ayres.
The partners in the enterprise speedily acquired considerable wealth.
Sir Lucien—at this time plain Mr. Pyne—several times came home and
lived in London and elsewhere like a millionaire. There is no doubt, I
think, that he was seeking a suitable opportunity to establish a London
branch of the business.”
“My God!” said Monte Irvin. “How horrible it seems!”
“Horrible, indeed!” agreed Seton. “But there are two features of the
case which, in justice to Sir Lucien, we should not overlook. He, who
had been a poor man, had become a wealthy one and had tasted the sweets
of wealth; also he was now hopelessly in the toils of the woman Lola.
“With the ingenious financial details of the concern, which were
conducted in the style of the ‘Jose Santos Company,’ I need not trouble
you now. We come to the second period, when the flat in Albemarle
Street and the two offices in old Bond Street became vacant and were
promptly leased by Mareno, acting on Sir Lucien’s behalf, and calling
himself sometimes Mr. Isaacs, sometimes Mr. Jacobs, and at other times
merely posing as a representative of the Jose Santos Company in some
other name.
“All went well. The concern had ample capital, and was organized by
clever people. Sin Sin Wa took up new quarters in Limehouse; they had
actually bought half the houses in one entire street as well as a
wharf! And Sin Sin Wa brought with him the good-will of an illicit drug
business which already had almost assumed the dimensions of a control.
“Sir Lucien’s household was a mere bluff. He rarely entertained at
home, and lived himself entirely at restaurants and clubs. The private
entrance to the Kazmah house of business was the back window of the
Cubanis Cigarette Company’s office. From thence down the back stair to
Kazmah’s door it was a simple matter for Mareno to pass unobserved. Sir
Lucien resumed his rôle of private inquiry agent, and Mareno recited
the ‘revelations’ from notes supplied to him.
“But the ‘dream reading’ part of the business was merely carried on to
mask the really profitable side of the concern. We have recently
learned that drugs were distributed from that one office alone to the
amount of thirty thousand pounds’ worth annually! This is excluding the
profits of the House of a Hundred Raptures and of the private _chandu_
orgies organized by Mrs. Sin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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