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there’s a bus stopping for a red light.”

CHAPTER FOUR

St. Damian’s
    T HE BUS DOOR WAS OPEN, the driver motionless at the wheel like a wooden man. A few passengers, dummy-like and morose, endured the journey and the gloom of the dim-out in silence. Gamadge put the fares in the box, and followed Idelia to the seat she had chosen next to the exit doors. The thin four-pointed red star of the street-lamp turned to green, and the bus began its climb uphill.
    After an interval Idelia turned her head. “Mr. Gamadge.”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œYou said something about knowing why I couldn’t get information at the hospital.”
    â€œKnowing? It was a wisp of theory. I have them.”
    â€œCan’t you tell me what it is?”
    â€œYou won’t like the one that leaps to the eye.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    He replied with another question: “Have you ever seen a drug addict?”
    â€œA what?” She spoke so indignantly that he knew he did not need to answer. Presently she asked: “You mean somebody that takes morphine?”
    â€œOr cocaine, or any narcotic drug.”
    â€œYou mean Mr. Crenshaw was one?”
    â€œIt’s a mighty good guess.”
    â€œHe wasn’t!”
    â€œYou know?”
    â€œI’ve read about them, and I’ve heard about them. Mr. Crenshaw wasn’t nervous or jerky. He acted quiet and natural.”
    â€œPerhaps he wasn’t so quiet and natural on Sunday, when you weren’t allowed to see him.”
    Idelia gazed at him in silence.
    â€œYou mustn’t be horrified,” said Gamadge. “You’ve engaged an investigator, and it’s his duty to canvass all the possibilities and reject them one by one—until he meets one he can’t reject. The drug theory answers some questions, you know.”
    â€œHow does it?”
    â€œWell, look at the situation up there in Vermont. Pike was the drug peddler who supplied Crenshaw from some distant source. If Crenshaw was frightened when Pike’s car came into sight that time, he was afraid that Pike hadn’t the consignment. Or he was afraid the supply mightn’t be satisfactory in quality—perhaps it hadn’t been, the last time. I understand that owing to war conditions bootleg drugs are much weakened by adulteration, so much so as to be practically useless to the addict.
    â€œThe addict is completely dependent on his source of supply. Crenshaw wouldn’t let Pike see you because Pike wouldn’t approve of his making friends; he might betray himself to them, or he might confide in them—you never can tell what an addict will do. Discovery would be a serious matter for Pike—drug traffic is a felony.
    â€œThen look at the marked passages in the Shakespeare—this theory explains them, too; for such is the peculiar construction of weak human nature,” said Gamadge, who was talking slumped down in his seat, his eyes fixed on nothing, “that it often blames the pander to its weaknesses. Crenshaw wouldn’t be grateful to Pike; he’d even hate him. He’d despise him, but he’d also despise himself. Pike is born to be hanged, he himself is a monster of weakness; credulous, too, if Pike has overcharged him or deceived him about the quality of the supply.
    â€œOne day the supply doesn’t come, or is useless. Crenshaw is on the point of collapse; they must pull up stakes and rush to the source—presumably New York, where a distributor has headquarters. But Crenshaw collapses at the apartment. Pike, terrified, must get him a doctor; explaining, of course, that he, Pike, is only an attendant, paid to keep Mr. Crenshaw off the stuff, unable to prevent him from getting and concealing it.
    â€œThe doctor puts Crenshaw in hospital. The hospital won’t tell what Crenshaw’s trouble is; the doctor won’t tell, especially if the doctor—but I mustn’t let my imagination run quite away