“Why,” she cried, “if anyone had told me a year ago that the time would ever come when I would value some tiny white tablets above anything else in the world, yes, and even above my immortal soul, I would have thought him a lunatic.”
It was getting late, and as the woman showed no disposition to leave, Kennedy and I excused ourselves.
Outside Craig looked at me keenly. “Can you guess who that was?”
“Although she didn’t tell us her name,” I replied, “I am morally certain that it was Mrs. Garrett.”
“Precisely,” he answered, “and what a shame, too, for she must evidently once have been a woman of great education and refinement.”
He shook his head sadly. “Walter, there isn’t likely to be anything that we can do for some hours now. I have a little experiment I’d like to make. Suppose you publish for me a story in the Star about the campaign against drugs. Tell about what we have seen to-night, mention the cabaret by indirection and Whitecap directly. Then we can sit back and see what happens. We’ve got to throw a scare into them somehow, if we are going to smoke out anyone higher up than Whitecap. But you’ll have to be careful, for if they suspect us our usefulness in the case will be over.”
Together, Kennedy and I worked over our story far into the night down at the Star office, and the following day waited to see whether anything came of it.
It was with a great deal of interest tempered by fear that we dropped into the cabaret the following evening. Fortunately no one suspected us. In fact, having been there the night before, we had established ourselves, as it were, and were welcomed as old patrons and good spenders.
I noticed, however, that Whitecap was not there. The story had been read by such of the dope fiends as had not fallen too far to keep abreast of the times and these and the waiters were busy quietly warning off a line of haggard-eyed, disappointed patrons who came around, as usual.
Some of them were so obviously dependent on Whitecap that I almost regretted having written the story, for they must have been suffering the tortures of the damned.