Taxicabs in droves seemed to have collected, like buzzards over a dead body.  They were doing a thriving business carrying away those who sought to escape.  Into one by which a man was waiting in the shadow the woman hurried.  The man looked for all the world like Dr. Harris.  An instant later the chauffeur was gone.

The policeman had the front door of Madame Margot’s covered all right, so efficiently that he was neglecting everything else.  From the basement now and then a scurrying figure catapulted itself out and was lost in the curious crowd that always collects at any time of day or night on a New York street when there is any excitement.

“It is of no use to expect to capture anyone now,” exclaimed Craig, as we hurried back into the dope joint.  “I hardly expected to do it.  All I panted was to protect Miss Kendall.  But we have the evidence against this joint that will close it for good.”

He stooped and picked up the bandage.

“I think I’ll keep that,” he remarked thoughtfully.  “I wonder what that blonde woman wore that for?”

“She must be up there,” reiterated Clare, who had followed us.  “I heard them talking, it seemed to me only the moment before I heard you in the hall.”

The excitement seemed now to have the effect of quieting her unstrung nerves and carrying her through.

“Let us go upstairs,” said Kennedy.

From room to room we hurried in the darkness, lighting the lights.  They were all empty, yet each one gave its mute testimony to the character of its use and its former occupants.  There were opium lay-outs with pipes, lamps, yen haucks, and other paraphernalia in some.  In others had been cocaine snuffers.  There seemed to be everything for drug users of every kind.

At last in a small room in front on the top floor we came upon a girl, half insensible from a drug.  She was vainly trying to make herself presentable for the street, ramblingly talking to herself in the meantime.

Again my hopes rose that we had found either the mysterious Marie Margot or Betty Blackwell.  A second glance caused us all to pause in surprise and disappointment.

It was the Titian-haired girl from the Montmartre office.

Miss Kendall, recovering from the effects of the drugs which she had been compelled to take in her heroic attempt to get at the dope joint, was endeavouring to quiet the girl from the Montmartre, who, now vaguely recollecting us, seemed to realize that something had gone wrong and was trembling and crying pitifully.

“What’s the matter with her?” I asked.

“Chloral,” replied Miss Kendall in a low voice aside.  “I suppose she has had a wild night which she has followed by chloral to quiet her nerves, with little effect.  Didn’t you ever see them?  They will go into a drug store in this part of the city where such things are sold, weak, shaky, nervous wrecks.  The clerk will sell them the stuff and they will retire for a moment into the telephone booth.  Sometimes they will come out looking as though they had never felt a moment’s effect from their wild debauches.  But there are other times when they are too weakened to get over it so quickly.  That is her case, poor girl.”