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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."
The uncanny cracked voice proceeded to give an excellent imitation of a police whistle, and concluded with that of the clicking of castanets. "Shut the door, Lucy," came the murmurous tones of Kilfane from the gloom of the stuffy little room, in the centre of which stood a stove wherefrom had proceeded the dim light shining out upon the pavement. "Light up, Sin Sin." "Sin Sin Wa!
Here were garments, male and female, no less than five dilapidated bowler hats, more tea-chests, broken lamps, tattered fragments of cocoanut-matting, steel bed-laths and straw mattresses, ruins of chairs the whole diffusing an indescribably unpleasant odor. Opening a cupboard door, Kilfane revealed a number of pendent, ragged garments, and two more bowler hats.
Sin reclosed the false back of the cupboard, which, viewed from the other side, proved to be a door fitted into a recess in the corridor of the adjoining house. This recess ceased to exist when a second and heavier door was closed upon the first. "You know," murmured Kilfane, "old Sin Sin has his uses, Lola. Those doors are perfectly made."
"Pooh!" scoffed the woman, with a flash of her dark eyes; "he is half a ship's carpenter and half an ape!" She moved along the passage, her arm linked in that of Sir Lucien. The others followed, and: "Is she truly married to that dreadful Chinaman?" whispered Mollie Gretna. "Yes, I believe so," murmured Kilfane. "She is known as Mrs. Sin Sin Wa." "Oh!" Mollie's eyes opened widely.
"I am the offender, dear Lola," said Kilfane, dreamily waving his cigarette towards her. "I have managed to make the last hundred 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.
"Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea." Pyne's big car was at the stage-door on the fateful Saturday night, for Rita had brought her dressing-case to the theatre, and having called for Kilfane and Mollie Gretna they were to proceed direct to Limehouse.
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