going on yet."




CHAPTER XXVI

THE BINET TEST


We rode downtown again and again sauntered in, this time with the
theater crowd. Our first visit had been so quiet and
unostentatious that the second attracted no attention or comment
from the waiters, or anyone else.

As we sat down we glanced over, and there in his corner still was
Whitecap. Apparently his supply of the dope was inexhaustible, for
he was still dispensing it. As we watched the tenderloin habitues
come and go, I came soon to recognize the signs by the mere look
on the face--the pasty skin, the vacant eye, the nervous quiver of
the muscles as though every organ and every nerve were crying out
for more of the favorite nepenthe. Time and again I noticed the
victims as they sat at the tables, growing more and more haggard
and worn, until they could stand it no longer. Then they would
retire, sometimes after a visit across the floor to Whitecap, more
often directly, for they had stocked themselves up with the drug
evidently after the first visit to him. But always they would come
back, changed in appearance, with what seemed to be a new lease of
life, but nevertheless still as recognizable as drug victims.