FullReads

“It’s on the first floor–left, men,” sounded a familiar voice outside her own door. “I know she’s there. My shadow saw her buy the dope and take it home.”

Her heart was thumping wildly. It was Drummond leading his squad of raiders, and they were about to enter the apartment of Adele. They knocked, but there was no answer.

A few moments before Constance would have felt perfectly safe in saying that Adele was out. But if Drummond’s man had seen her enter, might she not have been there all the time, be there still, in a stupor? She dreaded to think of what might happen if the poor girl once fell into their hands. It would be the final impulse that would complete her ruin.

Constance did not stop to reason it out. Her woman’s intuition told her that now was the time to act–that there was no retreat.

She opened her own door just as the raiders had forced in the flimsy affair that guarded the apartment of Adele.

“So!” sneered Drummond, catching sight of her in the dim light of the hallway. “You are mixed up in these violations of the new drug law, too!”

Constance said nothing. She had determined first to make Drummond display his hand.

“Well,” he ground out, “I’m going to get these people this time. I represent the Medical Society and the Board of Health. These men have been assigned to me by the Commissioner as a dope squad. We want this girl. We have others who will give evidence; but we want this one, too.”

He said it with a bluster that even exaggerated the theatrical character of the raid itself. Constance did not stop to weigh the value of his words, but through the door she brushed quickly. Adele might need her if she was indeed there.

As she entered the little living-room she saw a sight which almost transfixed her. Adele was there–lying across a divan, motionless.

Constance bent over. Adele was cold. As far as she could determine there was not a breath or a heart beat!

What did it mean? She did not stop to think. Instantly there flashed over her the recollection of an instrument she had read about at one of the city hospitals, It might save Adele. Before any one knew what she was doing she had darted to the telephone in the lower hall of the apartment and had called up the hospital frantically, imploring them to hurry. Adele must be saved.

Constance had no very clear idea of what happened next in the hurly- burly of events, until the ambulance pulled up at the door and the white-coated surgeon burst in carrying a heavy suitcase.

With one look at the unfortunate girl he muttered, “Paralysis of the respiratory organs–too large a dose of the drug. You did perfectly right,” and began unpacking the case.

Constance, calm now in the crisis, stood by him and helped as deftly as could any nurse.

It was a curious arrangement of tubes and valves, with a large rubber bag, and a little pump that the doctor had brought. Quickly he placed a cap, attached to it, over the nose and mouth of the poor girl, and started the machine.

“Wh-what is it?” gasped Drummond as he saw Adele’s hitherto motionless breast now rise and fall.

“A pulmotor,” replied the doctor, working quickly and carefully, “an artificial lung. Sometimes it can revive even the medically dead. It is our last chance with this girl.”

Constance had picked up the packet which had fallen beside Adele and was looking at the white powder.

“Almost pure cocaine,” remarked the young surgeon, testing it. “The hydrochloride, large crystals, highest quality. Usually it is adulterated. Was she in the habit of taking it this way?”

Constance said nothing. She had seen Muller make up the packet– specially now, she recalled. Instead of the adulterated dope he had given Adele the purest kind. Why? Was there some secret he wished to lock in her breast forever?