"Give us a deck, Coke," said one, in a harsh voice.
He nodded. A silver quarter gleamed momentarily from hand to hand,
and he passed to one girl stealthily a small white-paper packet.
Others came to him, both men and women. It seemed to be an
established thing.
"Who is that?" asked Kennedy, in a low tone, of the pickpocket
back of us.
"Coke Brodie," was the laconic reply.
"A cocaine fiend?"
"Yes, and a lobbygow for the grapevine system of selling the dope
under this new law."
"Where does he get the supply to sell?" asked Kennedy, casually.
The pickpocket shrugged his shoulders.
"No one knows, I suppose," Kennedy commented to me. "But he gets
it in spite of the added restrictions and peddles it in little
packets, adulterated, and at a fabulous price for such cheap
stuff. The habit is spreading like wildfire. It is a fertile means
of recruiting the inmates in the vice-trust hotels. A veritable
epidemic it is, too. Cocaine is one of the most harmful of all
habit-forming drugs. It used to be a habit of the underworld, but
now it is creeping up, and gradually and surely reaching the
higher strata of society.
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