O. O. McIntyre // A shiver of fear has reached those who live in the phantom world of drug addiction in New York. Dr. Simon, head of the narcotic squad, has written to wealthy drug addicts that they must take a cure or face arrest and exposure.
Drug addicts have a partnership in that silent understanding that links them into something closer than casual acquaintanceship. Several meetings have been held at which the rich rubbed elbows with the dregs of the underworld. They were facing the tragedy of their supply being cut off…at the narcotic clinic on the Bowery below Canal Street, where the bilge waters of the city tide and flow and eddy, curtained limousines arrive every hour and empty their heavily veiled patients. Sometimes they are screaming in delirium.
One broke away from her captors and rushed up to a laborer in crumpled corduroys. She kneeled at his feet, extracted a chamois bag of jewels from her bodice and baring her arm shouted: ‘Quick, for God’s sake, the needle!’ It developed that he was a peddler and in her agony she had recognized him.
Oddly Social:
