“There’s the door,” I said.
It opened into a tiny cul de sac, flanked by dilapidated
hoardings, and no other door of any kind was visible
in the vicinity. Nayland Smith stood tugging
at the lobe of his ear almost savagely.
“Where the devil do they go?” he whispered.
Even as he spoke the words, came a gleam of light
through the upper curtained part of the door, and
I distinctly saw the figure of a man in silhouette.
“Stand back!” snapped Smith.
We crouched back against the dirty wall of the court,
and watched a strange thing happen. The back
door of the Cafe de l’Egypte opened outward,
simultaneously a door, hitherto invisible, set at right
angles in the hoarding adjoining, opened inward!
A man emerged from the cafe and entered the secret
doorway. As he did so, the cafe door swung back
... and closed the door in the hoarding!
“Very good!” muttered Nayland Smith.
“Our friend Ismail, behind the counter, moves
some lever which causes the opening of one door automatically
to open the other. Failing his kindly offices,
the second exit from the Cafe de l’Egypte is
innocent enough. Now—what is the next
move?”
“I have an idea, Smith!” I cried.
“According to Morrison, the place in which the
hashish may be obtained has no windows but is lighted
from above. No doubt it was built for a studio
and has a glass roof. Therefore——”
“Come along!” snapped Smith, grasping
my arm; “you have solved the difficulty, Petrie.”
THE HOUSE OF HASHISH
Along the leads from Frith Street we worked our perilous
way. From the top landing of a French restaurant
we had gained access, by means of a trap, to the roof
of the building. Now, the busy streets of Soho
were below me, and I clung dizzily to telephone standards
and smoke stacks, rarely venturing to glance downward
upon the cosmopolitan throng, surging, dwarfish, in
the lighted depths.
Sometimes the bulky figure of Inspector Weymouth would
loom up grotesquely against the star-sprinkled blue,
as he paused to take breath; the next moment Nayland
Smith would be leading the way again, and I would
find myself contemplating some sheer well of blackness,
with nausea threatening me because it had to be negotiated.
None of these gaps were more than a long stride from
side to side; but the sense of depth conveyed in the
muffled voices and dimmed footsteps from the pavements
far below was almost overpowering. Indeed, I am
convinced that for my part I should never have essayed
that nightmare journey were it not that the musical
voice of Karamaneh seemed to be calling to me, her
little white hands to be seeking mine, blindly, in
the darkness.
That we were close to a haunt of the dreadful Chinamen
I was persuaded; therefore my hatred and my love cooperated
to lend me a coolness and address which otherwise
I must have lacked.
