dispensed from jugs and bottles the "spiritual comforts" stacked
up in the "dark room" every Saturday against the Sunday of legally
enforced thirst and resultant sadness.

But while these minor villains slaved for the master who greedily
snatched every bill from the till, and held them up to a keen return
for every measured drink in the stock of the Sunday "bar" of the
mock drug-store, it was the taciturn Fritz Braun himself who murmured
in confidence to the important patrons of the den.

The morning run beginning at nine, embraced the haggard-eyed devotees
of pleasure--Wall Street men, clerk and financiers, habitues of
the Tenderloin--actors and men about town.

In subdued murmurs the skilful Fritz Braun trafficked with these
"shaky" mortals, while Timmins covered their "prescriptions" with
an innocent layer of Vichy.

Sometimes the favored few entered behind Braun's screen, until the
chemist solved their varying problems by manipulating his vials in
the closely locked cabinet, the key of which never left his person.

There were little packages by the gross ready in that capacious
lock box. Opium, hasheesh, chorodyne, sulphonal, cocaine, "dope,"
all the life-stealing narcotics in every form.

There were medicines the traffic in which leads even the innocent
behind the bars.

And it was from the sale of these "nervines," forbidden medicines,