“Why let them alone? I’ll tell you. Almost all of them contain cocaine. I acquired the drug habit by using headache powders, to begin with, Lynch. Don’t touch the things. The kind that seem to do you the most good are the most dangerous, for they invariably contain the most cocaine. Cure your headaches in some other way.”
“Much obliged, Du Boise,” said Lynch.
But ten minutes after Hal had left, Mike put on his coat and hat and proceeded to the nearest drug store, where he purchased some headache powders. And in twenty minutes after taking the first powder his headache had vanished, and he was feeling like a fighting cock.
The warning of Du Boise, himself a wreck from the use of drugs, had fallen on barren ground.
CHAPTER L.
WOLFE HAS AN IDEA.
Reaching the street after leaving Mike Lynch’s room, Wolfe and Ditson paused and looked at each other.
“Well, what do you think of it?” asked Bern, in a disgusted way.
“It beats me,” declared Dunc. “There’s something the matter with the fellow. There’s been something the matter with him ever since the night we accidentally ran down Merriwell and Buckhart as they were rowing on the harbor.”
“Accidentally?” murmured Bern, with a crafty wink. “Are you sure it was an accident, old chap?”
“Well, we didn’t take particular pains to avoid hitting their boat. I don’t understand now how it was Merriwell escaped. He disappeared, and we saw nothing of him. Even Buckhart thought for a time that he was drowned. You see, Lynch got a foolish idea into his head that he was haunted by Merriwell’s ghost. When the rest of us learned that Merriwell was still alive, Mike persisted in fancying him dead. That was the first indication of an unbalanced mind. He seems to have thrown off that delusion, but with its disappearance he has suddenly changed in a most astonishing way. He was the bitterest and most persistent of Merriwell’s enemies. Now he’s joined the ranks of the Merriwell toadies. All of a sudden he’s got good. Think of Mike Lynch doing anything like that!”