h
the detectascope. There was Drummond in the back of the store talking
to Muller and a woman who looked as if she might be Mrs. Muller, for
both, seemed nervous and anxious.

As nearly as she could make out, Drummond was alternately threatening
and arguing with Muller. Finally the three seemed to agree, for
Drummond walked over to a typewriter on a table, took a fresh sheet of
carbon paper from a drawer, placed it between two sheets of paper, and
hastily wrote something.

Drummond read over what he had written. It seemed to be short, and the
three apparently agreed on it. Then, in a trembling hand, Muller signed
the two copies which Drummond had made, one of which Drummond himself
kept and the other he sealed in an envelope and sent away by a boy.
Drummond reached into his pocket and pulled out a huge roll of bills of
large denomination. He counted out what seemed to be approximately
half, handed it to the woman, and replaced the rest in his pocket. What
it was all about Constance could only vaguely guess. She longed to know
what was in the letter and why the money had been paid to the woman.

Perhaps a quarter of an hour after Drummond left Adele appeared again,
pleading for more dope. Muller went back of the partition and made up a
fresh paper of it from a bottle also concealed.

Constance was torn by conflicting impulses. She did not want to miss
anything in the perplexing drama that was being enacted before her, yet
she wished to interfere with the deadly course of Adele. Still, perhaps
the girl would resent interference if she found out that Constance was
spying on her. She determined to wait a little while before seeing
Adele. It was only after a decided effort that she tore herself away
from the detectascope and knocked on Adele's door as if she had just
come in for a visit. Again she knocked, but still there was no answer.
Every minute something might be happening next door. She hurried back
to her post of observation.

One of the worst aspects of the use of cocaine, she knew, was the
desire of the user to share his experience with some one else. The
passing on of the habit, which seemed to be one of the strongest
desires of the drug fiend, made him even more dangerous to society than
he would otherwise have been. That thought gave Constance an idea.

She recalled also now having heard somewhere that it was a common
characteristic of these poor creatures to have a passion for fast
automobiling, to go on