"
"Eh?" Kerry's eyes grew hard and fierce in a moment. "What drugs?"
"All sorts of drugs. Shortly after I became acquainted with Rita Irvin
I learned that she was a victim of the drug habit, and I tried to cure
her. I regret to say that I failed. At that time she had acquired a
taste for opium."
Kerry said not a word, and Margaret raised her head and looked at him
pathetically.
"I can see that you have no pity for the victims of this ghastly vice,
Inspector Kerry," she said.
"I haven't!" he snapped fiercely. "I admit I haven't, miss. It's bad
enough in the heathens, but for an Englishwoman to dope herself is
downright unchristian and beastly."
"Yet I have come across so many of these cases, during the war and
since, that I have begun to understand how easy, how dreadfully easy
it is, for a woman especially, to fall into the fatal habit.
Bereavement or that most frightful of all mental agonies, suspense,
will too often lead the poor victim into the path that promises
forgetfulness. Rita Irvin's case is less excusable. I think she must
have begun drug-taking because of the mental and nervous exhaustion
resulting from late hours and over-much gaiety. The demands of her
profession proved too great for her impaired nervous energy, and she
sought some stimulant which would enable her to appear bright on the
stage when actually she should have been recuperating, in sleep, that
loss of vital force which can be recuperated in no other way.
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