seeming to do so, a nervous-looking fellow whose
general washed-out appearance of face was especially unattractive for
some reason or other. He was very thin, very pale, and very stary about
the eyes. Then, too, it seemed as if the bone in his nose was going,
due perhaps to the shrinkage of the blood vessels from some cause.

Constance noticed a couple of girls whom she had seen Adele speak to on
several other occasions approaching the young man.

There came an opportune lull in the music and from around the corner of
her protecting angle Constance could just catch the greeting of one of
the girls, "Hello, Sleighbells! Got any snow!"

It was a remark that seemed particularly malapropos to the sultry
weather, and Constance half expected a burst of laughter at the
unexpected sally.

Instead, she was surprised to hear the young man reply in a very
serious and matter-of-fact manner, "Sure. Got any money, May?"

She craned her neck, carefully avoiding coming into Drummond's line of
vision, and as she did so she saw two silver quarters gleam momentarily
from hand to hand, and the young man passed each girl stealthily a
small white paper packet.

Others came to him, both men and women. It seemed to be an established
thing, and Constance noted that Drummond watched it all covertly.

"Who is that?" asked Constance of the waiter who had served her
sometimes when she had been with Adele, and knew her.

"Why, they call him Sleighbells Charley," he replied, "a coke fiend."

"Which means a cocaine fiend, I suppose!" she queried.

"Yes. He's a lobbygow for the grapevine system they have now of selling
the dope in spite of this new law."

"Where does he get the stuff!" she asked.

The waiter shrugged his shoulders. "Nobody knows, I guess. I don't. But
he gets it in spite of the law and peddles it. Oh, it's all
adulterated--with some white stuff, I don't know what, and the price
they charge is outrageous. They must make an ounce retail at five or
six times the cost. Oh, you can bet that some one who is at the top is
making a pile of money out of that graft, all right."

He said it not with any air of righteous indignation, but with a
certain envy.

Constance was thinking the thing over in her mind. Where did the "coke"
come from? The "grapevine" system interested her.

"Sleighbells" seemed to have disposed of all the "coke" he had brought
with him. As the last packet went, he rose slowly, and shuffled out.
Constance, w