“A kind of wagon track led through a gate, which hung on one hinge, into the woods. The driver lifted the gate to let the car through, then closed it again behind him. Some distance from the road, well hidden in the trees, we came to a house, once a tenanted house, but now looking very dilapidated. It did not seem a likely place for a drug store—still I said nothing as my stepfather had directed.
“The car stopped and I stepped out. The driver knocked at the door twice, rather sharply. Some one peered through a dust-covered window half closed by rickety shutters. In a second or two the door opened, the driver mumbled a few words and we were ushered into a strange room by a misshapen dwarf.
“It was fitted up as a drug store—counters, shelves filled with bottles, all labeled, graduate glasses such as you see in the hospital, rolls of bandages, first aid kits and instruments. The druggist was a hunchback, who filled me with aversion. But he merely held out his hand for the prescription, turning his hand to his bottles and glasses as soon as I had given it to him. It was easy to see that he was a skilled apothecary by the way he handled everything. When he had filled the prescription he gave me a package. It contained a bottle of colorless liquid which was labelled: ‘Dose—ten drops with milk or other liquid.’ There was a small box, too, labelled ‘morphine.’ On the bottle was the word ‘scopolamin.’
“The driver was waiting outside the house for me. It seemed good to get out in the air again. Once in the taxicab, the driver backed in among the trees to turn around. He drove back along Broadway until he came to the city line. There he told me that I could return along the subway. All this mystery so puzzled me that I determined to see Bill again to learn if the prescription was properly filled. When I saw Bill Hovey I showed him the bottle. There were many bottles in his cell. He was known to be a good chemist and worked in the prison drug shop. He took this bottle and held it to the light. Then he took a sip of it. ‘Seems to be all right,’ he said. He wrapped up a bottle, but I know now, that he must have given me a different one. I put it in my pocket. From the prison I went straight to Mr. Craighead. Ross was with him. I said:
“‘Why all this round-about way to get a little drug? It was all horrible. I wish that you would not take any more of the stuff.’
“Mr. Craighead just laughed. ‘Well, little girl,’ he said, ‘if a man insists on buying liquor, he must go to rather ugly looking places to get it—if he must have morphine, and the doctors will not get it for him, he must go to even uglier places. But we will never try that again!’
“That night he took a hypodermic, but never touched the bottle. He kept all out of sight when Dr. Lawson came the next morning. Toward night his pain became intense again. That must have been why he used the drug the misshapen druggist had given me. If I had only known—oh, if I had only known.”
Tessie gave way to uncontrollable sobbing.
When she had grown somewhat composed, Mr. Bailey asked: