undred spin
out. You have brought me a new supply?"

"Oh no, indeed," replied Mrs. Sin, tossing her head in a manner oddly
reminiscent of a once famous Spanish dancer. "Next Tuesday you get some
more. Ah! it is no good! You talk and talk and it cannot alter anything.
Until they come I cannot give them to you."

"But it appears to me," murmured Kilfane, "that the supply is always
growing less."

"Of course. The best goes all to Edinburgh now. I have only three sticks
of Yezd left of all my stock."

"But the cigarettes."

"Are from Buenos Ayres? Yes. But Buenos Ayres must get the opium before
we get the cigarettes, eh? Five cases come to London on Tuesday, Cy. Be
of good courage, my dear."

She patted the sallow cheek of the American with her jewelled fingers,
and turned aside, glancing about her.

"Yes," murmured Kilfane. "We are all present, Lola. I have had the room
prepared. Come, my children, let us enter the poppy portico."

He opened a door and stood aside, waving one thin yellow hand between
the first two fingers of which smouldered the drugged cigarette. Led by
Mrs. Sin the company filed into an apartment evidently intended for
a drawing-room, but which had been hastily transformed into an opium
divan.

Tables, chairs, and other items of furniture had been stacked against
one of the walls and the floor spread with rugs, skins, and numerous
silk cushions. A gas fire was alight, but before it had been placed an
ornate Japanese screen whereon birds of dazzling plumage hovered amid
the leaves of gilded palm trees. In the centre of the room stood a small
card-table, and upon it were a large brass tray and an ivory pedestal
exquisitely carved in the form of a nude figure having one arm upraised.
The figure supported a lamp, the light of which was subdued by a
barrel-shaped shade of Chinese workmanship.

Mollie Gretna giggled hysterically.

"Make yourself comfortable, dear," she cried to Rita, dropping down upon
a heap of cushions stacked in a recess beside the fireplace. "I am going
to take off my shoes. The last time, Cyrus, when I woke up my feet were
quite numb."

"You should come down to my place," said Mrs. Sin, setting the leather
case on the little card-table beside the lamp. "You have there your own
little room and silken sheets to lie in, and it is quiet--so quiet."

"Oh!" cried Mollie Gretna, "I must come! But I daren't go alone. Will
you come with me, dear?" turning to Rita.

"I don't know