THE DOPE FIENDS
"I have a terrible headache," remarked Constance Dunlap to her friend,
Adele Gordon, the petite cabaret singer and dancer of the Mayfair, who
had dropped in to see her one afternoon.
"You poor, dear creature," soothed Adele. "Why don't you go to see Dr.
Price? He has cured me. He's splendid--splendid."
Constance hesitated. Dr. Moreland Price was a well-known physician. All
day and even at night, she knew, automobiles and cabs rolled up to his
door and their occupants were, for the most part, stylishly gowned
women.
"Oh, come on," urged Adele. "He doesn't charge as highly as people seem
to think. Besides, I'll go with you and introduce you, and he'll charge
only as he does the rest of us in the profession."
Constance's head throbbed frantically. She felt that she must have some
relief soon. "All right," she agreed, "I'll go with you, and thank you,
Adele."
Dr. Price's office was on the first floor of the fashionable Recherche
Apartments, and, as she expected, Constance noted a line of motor cars
before it.
They entered and were admitted to a richly furnished room, in mahogany
and expensive Persian rugs, where a number of patients waited. One
after another an attendant summoned them noiselessly and politely to
see the doctor, until at last the turn of Constance and Adele came.
Dr. Price was a youngish, middle-aged man, tall, with a sallow
countenance and a self-confident, polished manner which went a long way
in reassuring the patients, most of whom were ladies.
As they entered the doctor's sanctum behind the folding doors, Adele
seemed to be on very good terms indeed with him.
They seated themselves in the deep leather chairs beside Dr. Price's
desk, and he inclined his head to listen to the story of their ailments.
"Doctor," began Constance's introducer, "I've brought my friend, Mrs.
Dunlap, who is suffering from one of those awful headaches. I thought
perhaps you could give her some of that medicine that has done me so
much good."
The doctor bowed without saying anything and shifted his eyes from
Adele to Constance. "Just what seems to be the difficulty?" he inquired.
Constance told him how she felt, of her general lassitude and the big,
throbbing veins in her temples.
"Ah--a woman's headaches!" he smiled, adding, "Nothing serious,
however, in this case, as far as I can see. We can fix this one all
right, I think."
He wrote out a prescription quickly and handed it to Constance.
"Of course," he added, as he pocketed his fee, "it makes no difference
to me personally, but I would advise that you have it filled at
Muller's--Miss Gordon knows the place. I think Muller's drugs are
perhaps fresher than those of most druggists, and that makes a great
deal of difference."
He had risen and was politely and suavely bowing them out of another
door, at the same time by pressing a button signifying to his attendant
to admit the next patient.
Constance had preceded Adele, and, as she passed through the other
door, she overheard the doctor whisper to her friend, "I'm going to
stop for you to-night to take a ride. I have something important I want
to say to you."
She did not catch Adele's answer, but as they left the marble and onyx,
brass-grilled entrance, Adele remarked: "That's his car--over there.
Oh, but he is a reckless driver--dashes along pell-mell--but always
seems to have his eye out for everything--never seems to be arrested,
never in an accident."
Constance turned in the direction of the car and was startled to see
the familiar face of Drummond across the street dodging behind it. What
was it now, she wondered--a divorce case, a scandal--what?
The medicine was made up into little powders, to be taken until they
gave relief, and Constance folded the paper of one, poured it on the
back of her tongue and swallowed a glass of water afterward.
Her head continued to throb, but she felt a sense of well-being that
she had not before. Adele urged her to take another, and Constance did
so.
The second powder increased the effect of the first marvelously. But
Constance noticed that she now began to feel queer. She was not used to
taking medicine. For a moment she felt that she was above, beyond the
reach of ordinary rules and laws. She could have done any sort of
physical task, she felt, no matter how difficult. She was amazed at
herself, as compared to what she had been only a few moments before.
"Another one?" asked Adele finally.
Constance was by this time genuinely alarmed at the sudden unwonted
effect on herself. "N-no," she replied dubiously, "I don't think I want
to take any more, just yet."
"Not another?" asked Adele in surprise. "I wish they would affect me
that way. Sometimes I have to take the whole dozen before they have any
effect."
They chatted for a few minutes, and finally Adele rose.
"Well," she remarked with a nervous twitching of her body, as if she
were eager to be doing something, "I really must be going. I can't say
I feel any too well myself."
"I think I'll take a walk with you," answered Constance, who did not
like the continued effect of the two powders. "I feel the need of
exercise--and air."
Adele hesitated, but Constance already had her hat on. She had seen
Drummond watching Dr. Price's door, and it interested her to know
whether he could possibly have been following Adele or some one else.
As they walked along Adele quickened her pace, until they came again to
the drug store.
"I believe I'll go in and get something," she remarked, pausing.
For the first time in several minutes Constance looked at the face of
her friend. She was amazed to discover that Adele looked as if she had
had a spell of sickness. Her eyes were large and glassy, her skin cold
and sweaty, and she looked positively pallid and thin.
As they entered the store Muller, the druggist, bowed again and looked
at Adele a moment as she leaned over the counter and whispered
something to him. Without a word he went into the arcana behind the
partition that cuts off the mysteries of the prescription room in every
drug store from the front of the store.
When Muller returned he handed her a packet, for which she paid and
which she dropped quickly into her pocketbook, hugging the pocketbook
close to herself.
Adele turned and was about to hurry from the store with Constance. "Oh,
excuse me," she said suddenly as if she had just recollected something,
"I promised a friend of mine I'd telephone this afternoon, and I have
forgotten to do it. I see a pay station here." Constance waited.
Adele returned much quicker than one would have expected she could call
up a number, but Constance thought nothing of it at the time. She did
notice, however, that as her friend emerged from the booth a most
marvelous change had taken place in her. Her step was firm, her eye
clear, her hand steady. Whatever it was, reasoned Constance, it could
not have been serious to have disappeared so quickly.
It was with some curiosity as to just what she might expect that
Constance went around to the famous cabaret that night. The Mayfair
occupied two floors of what had been a wide brownstone house before
business and pleasure had crowded the residence district further and
further uptown. It was a very well-known bohemian rendezvous, where
under-, demi-and upper-world rubbed elbows without friction and seemed
to enjoy the novelty and be willing to pay for it.
Adele, who was one of the performers, had not arrived yet, but
Constance, who had come with her mind still full of the two unexpected
encounters with Drummond, was startled to see him here again.
Fortunately he did not see her, and she slipped unobserved into an
angle near the window overlooking the street.
Drummond had been engrossed in watching some one already there, and
Constance made the best use she could of her eyes to determine who it
was. The outdoor walk and a good dinner had checked her headache, and
now the excitement of the chase of something, she knew not what,
completed the cure.
It was not long before she discovered that Drummond was watching
intently, without seeming to do so, a nervous-looking fellow whose
general washed-out appearance of face was especially unattractive for
some reason or other. He was very thin, very pale, and very stary about
the eyes. Then, too, it seemed as if the bone in his nose was going,
due perhaps to the shrinkage of the blood vessels from some cause.
Constance noticed a couple of girls whom she had seen Adele speak to on
several other occasions approaching the young man.
There came an opportune lull in the music and from around the corner of
her protecting angle Constance could just catch the greeting of one of
the girls, "Hello, Sleighbells! Got any snow!"
It was a remark that seemed particularly malapropos to the sultry
weather, and Constance half expected a burst of laughter at the
unexpected sally.
Instead, she was surprised to hear the young man reply in a very
serious and matter-of-fact manner, "Sure. Got any money, May?"
She craned her neck, carefully avoiding coming into Drummond's line of
vision, and as she did so she saw two silver quarters gleam momentarily
from hand to hand, and the young man passed each girl stealthily a
small white paper packet.
Others came to him, both men and women. It seemed to be an established
thing, and Constance noted that Drummond watched it all covertly.
"Who is that?" asked Constance of the waiter who had served her
sometimes when she had been with Adele, and knew her.
"Why, they call him Sleighbells Charley," he replied, "a coke fiend."
"Which means a cocaine fiend, I suppose!" she queried.
"Yes. He's a lobbygow for the grapevine system they have now of selling
the dope in spite of this new law."
"Where does he get the stuff!" she asked.
The waiter shrugged his shoulders. "Nobody knows, I guess. I don't. But
he gets it in spite of the law and peddles it. Oh, it's all
adulterated--with some white stuff, I don't know what, and the price
they charge is outrageous. They must make an ounce retail at five or
six times the cost. Oh, you can bet that some one who is at the top is
making a pile of money out of that graft, all right."
He said it not with any air of righteous indignation, but with a
certain envy.
Constance was thinking the thing over in her mind. Where did the "coke"
come from? The "grapevine" system interested her.
"Sleighbells" seemed to have disposed of all the "coke" he had brought
with him. As the last packet went, he rose slowly, and shuffled out.
Constance, who knew that Adele would not come for some time, determined
to follow him. She rose quietly and, under cover of a party going out,
managed to disappear without, as far as she knew, letting Drummond
catch a glimpse of her. This would not only employ her time, but it was
better to avoid Drummond as far as possible, at present, too, she felt.
At a distance of about half a block she followed the curiously
shuffling figure. He crossed the avenue, turned and went uptown, turned
again, and, before she knew it, disappeared in a drug store. She had
been so engrossed in following the lobbygow that it was with a start
that she realized that he had entered Muller's.
What did it all mean? Was the druggist, Muller, the man higher up? She
recalled suddenly her own experience of the afternoon. Had Muller tried
to palm off something on her? The more she thought of it the more sure
she was that the powders she had taken had been doped.
Slowly, turning the matter over in her mind, she returned to the
Mayfair. As she peered in cautiously before entering she saw that
Drummond had gone. Adele had not come in yet, and she went in and sat
down again in her old place.
Perhaps half an hour later, outside, she heard a car drive up with a
furious rattle of gears. She looked out of the window and, as far as
she could determine in the shadows, it was Dr. Price. A woman got out,
Adele. For a moment she stopped to talk, then Dr. Price waved a gay
good-bye and was off. All she could catch was a hasty, "No; I don't
think I'd better come in to-night," from him.
As Adele entered the Mayfair she glanced about, caught sight of
Constance and came and sat down by her.
It would have been impossible for her to enter unobserved, so popular
was she. It was not long before the two girls whom Constance had seen
dealing with "Sleighbells" sauntered over.
"Your friend was here to-night," remarked one to Adele.
"Which one?" laughed Adele.
"The one who admired your dancing the other night and wanted to take
lessons."
"You mean the young fellow who was selling something?" asked Constance
pointedly.
"Oh, no," returned the girl quite casually. "That was Sleighbells," and
they all laughed.
Constance thought immediately of Drummond. "The other one, then," she
said, "the thick-set man who was all alone!"
"Yes; he went away afterward. Do you know him?"
"I've seen him somewhere," evaded Constance; "but I just can't quite
place him."
She had not noticed Adele particularly until now. Under the light she
had a peculiar worn look, the same as she had had before.
The waiter came up to them. "Your turn is next," he hinted to Adele.
"Excuse me a minute," she apologized to the rest of the party. "I must
fix up a bit. No," she added to Constance, "don't come with me."
She returned from the dressing room a different person, and plunged
into the wild dance for which the limited orchestra was already tuning
up. It was a veritable riot of whirl and rhythm. Never before had
Constance seen Adele dance with such abandon. As she executed the wild
mazes of a newly imported dance, she held even the jaded Mayfair
spellbound. And when she concluded with one daring figure and sat down,
flushed and excited, the diners applauded and even shouted approval. It
was an event for even the dance-mad Mayfair.
Constance did not share in the applause. At last she understood. Adele
was a dope fiend, too. She felt it with a sense of pain. Always, she
knew, the fiends tried to get away alone somewhere for a few minutes to
snuff some of their favorite nepenthe. She had heard before of the
cocaine "snuffers" who took a little of the deadly powder, placed it on
the back of the hand, and inhaled it up the nose with a quick intake of
breath. Adele was one. It was not Adele who danced. It was the dope.
Constance was determined to speak.
"You remember that man the girls spoke of?" she began.
"Yes. What of him?" asked Adele with almost a note of defiance.
"Well, I really DO know him," confessed Constance. "He is a detective."
Constance watched her companion curiously, for at the mere word she had
stopped short and faced her. "He is?" she asked quickly. "Then that was
why Dr. Price--"
She managed to suppress the remark and continued her walk home without
another word.
In Adele's little apartment Constance was quick to note that the same
haggard look had returned to her friend's face.
Adele had reached for her pocketbook with a sort of clutching eagerness
and was about to leave the room.
Constance rose. "Why don't you give up the stuff?" she asked earnestly.
"Don't you want to?"
For a moment Adele faced her angrily. Then her real nature seemed
slowly to come to the surface. "Yes," she murmured frankly.
"Then why don't you?" pleaded Constance.
"I haven't the power. There is an indescribable excitement to do
something great, to make a mark. It's soon gone, but while it lasts, I
can sing, dance, do anything--and then--every part of my body begins
crying for more of the stuff again."
There was no longer any necessity of concealment from Constance. She
took a pinch of the stuff, placed it on the back of her wrist and
quickly sniffed it. The change in her was magical. From a quivering
wretched girl she became a self-confident neurasthenic.
"I don't care," she laughed hollowly now.
"Yes, I know what you are going to tell me. Soon I'll be 'hunting the
cocaine bug,' as they call it, imagining that in my skin, under the
flesh, are worms crawling, perhaps see them, see the little animals
running around and biting me."
She said it with a half-reckless cynicism. "Oh, you don't know. There
are two souls in the cocainist--one tortured by the pain of not having
the stuff, the other laughing and mocking at the dangers of it. It
stimulates. It makes your mind work--without effort, by itself. And it
gives such visions of success, makes you feel able to do so much, and
to forget. All the girls use it."
"Where do they get it?" asked Constance "I thought the new law
prohibited it."
"Get it?" repeated Adele. "Why, they get it from that fellow they call
'Sleighbells.' They call it 'snow,' you know, and the girls who use it
'snowbirds.' The law does prohibit its sale, but--"
She paused significantly.
"Yes," agreed Constance; "but Sleighbells is only a part of the system
after all. Who is the man at the top?"
Adele shrugged her shoulders and was silent. Still, Constance did not
fail to note a sudden look of suspicion which Adele shot at her. Was
Adele shielding some one?
Constance knew that some one must be getting rich from the traffic,
probably selling hundreds of ounces a week and making thousands of
dollars. Somehow she felt a sort of indignation at the whole thing. Who
was it? Who was the man higher up?
In the morning as she was working about her little kitchenette an idea
came to her. Why not hire the vacant apartment cross the hall from
Adele? An optician, who was a friend of hers, in the course of a recent
conversation had mentioned an invention, a model of which he had made
for the inventor. She would try it.
Since, with Constance, the outlining of a plan was tantamount to the
execution, it was not many hours later before she had both the
apartment and the model of the invention.
Her wall separated her from the drug store and by careful calculation
she determined about where came the little prescription department.
Carefully, so as to arouse no suspicion, she began to bore away at the
wall with various tools, until finally she had a small, almost
imperceptible opening. It was tedious work, and toward the end needed
great care so as not to excite suspicion. But finally she was rewarded.
Through it she could see just a trace of daylight, and by squinting
could see a row of bottles on a shelf opposite.
Then, through the hole, she pushed a long, narrow tube, like a putty
blower. When at last she placed her eye at it, she gave a low
exclamation of satisfaction. She could now see the whole of the little
room.
It was a detectascope, invented by Gaillard Smith, adapter of the
detectaphone, an instrument built up on the principle of the cytoscope
which physicians use to explore internally down the throat. Only, in
the end of the tube, instead of an ordinary lens, was placed what is
known as a "fish-eye" lens, which had a range something like nature has
given the eyes of fishes, hence the name. Ordinarily cameras, because
of the flatness of their lenses, have a range of only a few degrees,
the greatest being scarcely more than ninety. But this lens was
globular, and, like a drop of water, refracted light from all
directions. When placed so that half of it caught the light it "saw"
through an angle of 180 degrees, "saw" everything in the room instead
of just that little row of bottles on the shelf opposite.
Constance set herself to watch, and it was not long before her
suspicions were confirmed, and she was sure that this was nothing more
than a "coke" joint. Still she wondered whether Muller was the real
source of the traffic of which Sleighbells was the messenger. She was
determined to find out.
All day she watched through her detectascope. Once she saw Adele come
in and buy more dope. It was with difficulty that she kept from
interfering. But, she reflected, the time was not ripe. She had thought
the thing out. There was no use in trying to get at it through Adele.
The only way was to stop the whole curse at its source, to dam the
stream. People came and went. She soon found that he was selling them
packets from a box hidden in the woodwork. That much she had learned,
anyhow.
Constance watched faithfully all day with only time enough taken out
for dinner. It was after her return from this brief interval that she
felt her heart give a leap of apprehension, as she looked again through
the detectascope. There was Drummond in the back of the store talking
to Muller and a woman who looked as if she might be Mrs. Muller, for
both, seemed nervous and anxious.
As nearly as she could make out, Drummond was alternately threatening
and arguing with Muller. Finally the three seemed to agree, for
Drummond walked over to a typewriter on a table, took a fresh sheet of
carbon paper from a drawer, placed it between two sheets of paper, and
hastily wrote something.
Drummond read over what he had written. It seemed to be short, and the
three apparently agreed on it. Then, in a trembling hand, Muller signed
the two copies which Drummond had made, one of which Drummond himself
kept and the other he sealed in an envelope and sent away by a boy.
Drummond reached into his pocket and pulled out a huge roll of bills of
large denomination. He counted out what seemed to be approximately
half, handed it to the woman, and replaced the rest in his pocket. What
it was all about Constance could only vaguely guess. She longed to know
what was in the letter and why the money had been paid to the woman.
Perhaps a quarter of an hour after Drummond left Adele appeared again,
pleading for more dope. Muller went back of the partition and made up a
fresh paper of it from a bottle also concealed.
Constance was torn by conflicting impulses. She did not want to miss
anything in the perplexing drama that was being enacted before her, yet
she wished to interfere with the deadly course of Adele. Still, perhaps
the girl would resent interference if she found out that Constance was
spying on her. She determined to wait a little while before seeing
Adele. It was only after a decided effort that she tore herself away
from the detectascope and knocked on Adele's door as if she had just
come in for a visit. Again she knocked, but still there was no answer.
Every minute something might be happening next door. She hurried back
to her post of observation.
One of the worst aspects of the use of cocaine, she knew, was the
desire of the user to share his experience with some one else. The
passing on of the habit, which seemed to be one of the strongest
desires of the drug fiend, made him even more dangerous to society than
he would otherwise have been. That thought gave Constance an idea.
She recalled also now having heard somewhere that it was a common
characteristic of these poor creatures to have a passion for fast
automobiling, to go on long rides, perhaps even without having the
money to pay for them. That, too, confirmed the idea which she had.
As the night advanced she determined to stick to her post. What could
it have been that Drummond was doing? It was no good, she felt positive.
Suddenly before her eye, glued to its eavesdropping aperture, she saw a
strange sight. There was a violent commotion in the store. Blue-coated
policemen seemed to swarm in from nowhere. And in the rear, directing
them, appeared Drummond, holding by the arm the unfortunate
Sleighbells, quaking with fear, evidently having been picked up already
elsewhere by the wily detective.
Muller put up a stout resistance, but the officers easily seized him
and, after a hasty but thorough search, unearthed his cache of the
contraband drug.
As the scene unfolded, Constance was more and more bewildered after
having witnessed that which preceded it, the signing of the letter and
the passing of the money. Muller evidently had nothing to say about
that. What did it mean?
The police were still holding Muller, and Constance had not noted that
Drummond had disappeared.
"It's on the first floor--left, men," sounded a familiar voice outside
her own door. "I know she's there. My shadow saw her buy the dope and
take it home."
Her heart was thumping wildly. It was Drummond leading his squad of
raiders, and they were about to enter the apartment of Adele. They
knocked, but there was no answer.
A few moments before Constance would have felt perfectly safe in saying
that Adele was out. But if Drummond's man had seen her enter, might she
not have been there all the time, be there still, in a stupor? She
dreaded to think of what might happen if the poor girl once fell into
their hands. It would be the final impulse that would complete her ruin.
Constance did not stop to reason it out. Her woman's intuition told her
that now was the time to act--that there was no retreat.
She opened her own door just as the raiders had forced in the flimsy
affair that guarded the apartment of Adele.
"So!" sneered Drummond, catching sight of her in the dim light of the
hallway. "You are mixed up in these violations of the new drug law,
too!"
Constance said nothing. She had determined first to make Drummond
display his hand.
"Well," he ground out, "I'm going to get these people this time. I
represent the Medical Society and the Board of Health. These men have
been assigned to me by the Commissioner as a dope squad. We want this
girl. We have others who will give evidence; but we want this one, too."
He said it with a bluster that even exaggerated the theatrical
character of the raid itself. Constance did not stop to weigh the value
of his words, but through the door she brushed quickly. Adele might
need her if she was indeed there.
As she entered the little living-room she saw a sight which almost
transfixed her. Adele was there--lying across a divan, motionless.
Constance bent over. Adele was cold. As far as she could determine
there was not a breath or a heart beat!
What did it mean? She did not stop to think. Instantly there flashed
over her the recollection of an instrument she had read about at one of
the city hospitals, It might save Adele. Before any one knew what she
was doing she had darted to the telephone in the lower hall of the
apartment and had called up the hospital frantically, imploring them to
hurry. Adele must be saved.
Constance had no very clear idea of what happened next in the
hurly-burly of events, until the ambulance pulled up at the door and
the white-coated surgeon burst in carrying a heavy suitcase.
With one look at the unfortunate girl he muttered, "Paralysis of the
respiratory organs--too large a dose of the drug. You did perfectly
right," and began unpacking the case.
Constance, calm now in the crisis, stood by him and helped as deftly as
could any nurse.
It was a curious arrangement of tubes and valves, with a large rubber
bag, and a little pump that the doctor had brought. Quickly he placed a
cap, attached to it, over the nose and mouth of the poor girl, and
started the machine.
"Wh-what is it?" gasped Drummond as he saw Adele's hitherto motionless
breast now rise and fall.
"A pulmotor," replied the doctor, working quickly and carefully, "an
artificial lung. Sometimes it can revive even the medically dead. It is
our last chance with this girl."
Constance had picked up the packet which had fallen beside Adele and
was looking at the white powder.
"Almost pure cocaine," remarked the young surgeon, testing it. "The
hydrochloride, large crystals, highest quality. Usually it is
adulterated. Was she in the habit of taking it this way?"
Constance said nothing. She had seen Muller make up the
packet--specially now, she recalled. Instead of the adulterated dope he
had given Adele the purest kind. Why? Was there some secret he wished
to lock in her breast forever?
Mechanically the pulmotor pumped. Would it save her?
Constance was living over what she had already seen through the
detectascope. Suddenly she thought of the strange letter and of the
money.
She hurried into the drug store. Muller had already been taken away,
but before the officer left in charge could interfere she picked up the
carbon sheet on which the letter had been copied, turned it over and
held it eagerly to the light.
She read in amazement. It was a confession. In it Muller admitted to
Dr. Moreland Price that he was the head of a sort of dope trust, that
he had messengers out, like Sleighbells, that he had often put dope in
the prescriptions sent him by the doctor, and had repeatedly violated
the law and refilled such prescriptions. On its face it was complete
and convincing.
Yet it did not satisfy Constance. She could not believe that Adele had
committed suicide. Adele must possess some secret. What was it?
"Is--is there any change?" she asked anxiously of the young surgeon now
engrossed in his work.
For answer he merely nodded to the apparently motionless form on the
bed, and for a moment stopped the pulmotor.
The mechanical movement of the body ceased. But in its place was a
slight tremor about the lips and mouth.
Adele moved--was faintly gasping for breath!
"Adele!" cried Constance softly in her ear. "Adele!"
Something, perhaps a far-away answer of recognition, seemed to flicker
over her face. The doctor redoubled his efforts.
"Adele--do you know me?" whispered Constance again.
"Yes," came back faintly at last. "There--there's something--wrong with
it--They--they--"
"How? What do you mean?" urged Constance. "Tell me, Adele."
The girl moved uneasily. The doctor administered a stimulant and she
vaguely opened her eyes, began to talk hazily, dreamily. Constance bent
over to catch the faint words which would have been lost to the others.
"They--are going to--double cross the Health Department," she murmured
as if to herself, then gathering strength she went on, "Muller and
Sleighbells will be arrested and take the penalty. They have been
caught with the goods, anyhow. It has all been arranged so that the
detective will get his case. Money--will be paid to both of them, to
Muller and the detective, to swing the case and protect him. He made me
do it. I saw the detective, even danced with him and he agreed to do
it. Oh, I would do anything--I am his willing tool when I have the
stuff. But--this time--it was--" She rambled off incoherently.
"Who made you do it? Who told you?" prompted Constance. "For whom would
you do anything?"
Adele moaned and clutched Constance's hand convulsively. Constance did
not pause to consider the ethics of questioning a half-unconscious
girl. Her only idea was to get at the truth.
"Who was it?" she reiterated.
Adele turned weakly.
"Dr. Price," she murmured as Constance bent her ear to catch even the
faintest sound. "He told me--all about it--last night--in the car."
Instantly Constance understood. Adele was the only one outside who held
the secret, who could upset the carefully planned frame-up that was to
protect the real head of the dope trust who had paid liberally to save
his own wretched skin.
She rose quickly and wheeled about suddenly on Drummond.
"You will convict Dr. Price also," she said in a low tone. "This girl
must not be dragged down, too. You will leave her alone, and both you
and Mr. Muller will hand over that money to her for her cure of the
habit."
Drummond started forward angrily, but fell back as Constance added in a
lower but firmer tone, "Or I'll have you all up on a charge of
attempting murder."
Drummond turned surlily to those of his "dope squad," who remained:
"You can go, boys," he said brusquely.
"There's been some mistake here."