It was three weeks later when I saw her again. There was a different setting for the scene than at our two other meetings.
The scene was laid in a cell room at the Harrison street police station. On an iron cot lay a young girl. She was in a maudlin condition from drugs. Her clothes were dirty and torn. Her face was discolored and bloated.
It was the same girl—the little innocent show girl of a year before.
She had been arrested in a raid by the police on the notorious Clark street opium dive of On Ling Lung. Lying in a dirty cot in the rear of the basement den, she had been found by the raiders. She was unconscious. On a little stand by her side had been a little alcohol lamp. On the bunk beside her lay an opium pipe.
I asked the sergeant the details of her arrest.
"The station stool pigeons who had been watching the place saw her go down into it about a week ago," said the sergeant. "A well dressed Chinaman was with her. She looked as though she was drunk.
"We wanted to get all of those opium smokers down there all at once, so we waited a week. I don't think she has eaten much since she went there. Just laid there and smoked.
"After they get a taste of the dreamy stuff they can't leave it alone. It's poison and it just goes all through them.
"You don't want to monkey with her," the sergeant admonished when I suggested that I would see that care would be given her. "She's gone now. She got the taste, and there's no use trying to break it. You couldn't. She'll get a couple of months down in the Bridewell and it'll straighten her up for a while, but she'll be back in a little while.