"This is not a very good place to talk it over," said Frank, glancing around. "There are too many ears to hear. Can't we go up to somebody's room?"
"Who do you want to talk it over with?" asked Havener.
"The whole company, if this thing is being run on the commonwealth plan. Bring in the girls, everyone, and I'll tell you just what I'll do."
The manager hesitated. He had a friendly feeling for Frank, as Merry had done him more than one good turn. At one time Havener had been jealous of Merriwell, having discovered that there was some secret between the young man and Cassie, with whom Roscoe was in love; but he had been convinced that there was nothing really wrong in the secret, and he finally came to appreciate Frank's manliness and courage. He had been assured by Cassie that he should know everything about the secret in time, and that satisfied him fairly well, although he sometimes puzzled over it and wondered what it could be.
It had happened that Frank, as property man of the company, was sent to bring something from the dressing room used by the soubrette, and he had entered abruptly, discovering the little actress in the very act of injecting morphine into her arm with a needle syringe.
Of course Cassie was overwhelmed, for she had kept her habit of using the dreaded drug a secret from everybody, deceiving even Havener, who believed her usual languidness and depression came from the effect of an injury she had sustained which had caused her to spend some weeks in a hospital.
Finding she was detected, the soubrette opened her heart to Frank and told him just how she had contracted the pernicious habit. The drug had been used on her to allay the pain while she was in the hospital, and she had continued to use it after being discharged, till at last she found she could not give it up.
She made Merriwell promise to keep her secret, but she had told him she should reveal it to Havener in time, if she found she could not break herself of it.
At first Cassie's regard for the stage manager had been kept secret, as Havener had a wife living somewhere, presumably, although he had not seen her or heard anything of her for four years. He had applied for a divorce for utter desertion, and expected to get it in the fall. Then he and Cassie were to be married.
"But I'll never marry him," the sad-faced little girl had said, "unless I can break myself of the habit. I won't tie myself up to any man the way I am. Ross Havener has used me white, and I'll use him white."