"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 "s...o...b..rds." 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 "c.o.ke" 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 part.i.tion 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sing 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 a.s.signed 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 bl.u.s.ter 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.