“I can’t see that you have done anything,” she remarked pointedly.  “But then doctors are queer—­queer.”

That parting shot also had in it, for me, something to ponder over.  In fact I began to wonder if she might not be a great deal more clever than even Kennedy gave her credit for being, whether she might not have submitted to his tests for pure love of pulling the wool over his eyes.

Downstairs again, Kennedy paused only long enough to speak a few words with his friend Dr. Klemm.

“I suppose you have no idea what Dr. Maudsley has prescribed for her?” he asked carelessly.

“Nothing, as far as I know, except rest and simple food.”

He seemed to hesitate, then he said under his voice, “I suppose you know that she is a regular dope fiend, seasons her cigarettes with opium, and all that.”

“I guessed as much,” remarked Kennedy, “but how does she get it here?”

“She doesn’t.”

“I see,” remarked Craig, apparently weighing now the man before him.  At length he seemed to decide to risk something.

“Klemm,” he said, “I wish you would do something for me.  I see you have the vocaphone here.  Now if—­say Hazleton—­should call—­will you listen in on that vocaphone for me?” Dr. Klemm looked squarely at him.

“Kennedy,” he said, “it’s unprofessional, but—–­”

“So it is to let her be doped up under guise of a cure.”

“What?” he asked, startled.  “She’s getting the stuff now?”

“No, I didn’t say she was getting opium, or from anyone here.  All the same, if you would just keep an ear open—–­”

“It’s unprofessional, but—­you’d not ask it without a good reason.  I’ll try.”

It was very late when we got back to the city and we dined at an uptown restaurant which we had almost to ourselves.

Kennedy had placed the little whitish tablets in a small paper packet for safe keeping.  As we waited for our order he drew one from his pocket, and after looking at it a moment crushed it to a powder in the paper.

“What is it?” I asked curiously.  “Cocaine?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head doubtfully.

He had tried to dissolve a little of the powder in some water from the glass before him, but it would not dissolve.

As he continued to look at it his eye fell on the cut-glass vinegar cruet before us.  It was full of the white vinegar.

“Really acetic acid,” he remarked, pouring out a little.

The white powder dissolved.

For several minutes he continued looking at the stuff.

“That, I think,” he remarked finally, “is heroin.”

“More ’happy dust’?” I replied with added interest now, thinking of our previous case.  “Is the habit so extensive?”