“It Walks by Night”

It Walks by Night, a detective novel by John Dickson Carr,  was first published by Harper Bros in 1930, and sold well.  This excerpt, typical of the nonsense being spread about Cannabis, was encountered by Rosie as she was trying to drift off to sleep last night. It had the opposite effect. (Bencolin is the brilliant detective hero.) 

“I am not sure that I can answer my own question about Vautrelle’s income. However, I am inclined to believe that he has been supplying madame la duchesse with drugs.”

“Ah!” Grafenstein exclaimed, heavily. “That was it, then. I make no statement till I am sure, but I thought—”

“Yes. When she came over to us this evening, I remarked that she looked as though she were in a drug fog. That was the literal truth. Did you see me pick up the cigarette she left in the ashtray?” Bencolin fished it out of his vest pocket. “There will be no maker’s name on that. Come here, Doctor. You notice how loosely packed and thick the tobacco is, with the paper edges folder over the ends? Smell it. You note those brown dried leaves inside the tobacco? Marihuana or hashish, I think; I can’t tell until our chemists analyse it. They eat green hashish leaves in Egypt; this is a deadlier variety from Mexico. Whoever supplied her with that is carrying on an extensive and far-reaching-trade… Symptoms, Doctor?”

“Contraction of eye pupils; heavy breathing when stirred; pallor; clammy skin; congestion; halluciantions. Didn’t I tell you? She told that mad story—”

“No more mad, Doctor, than the situation we are facing. I’m not sure that it was an hallucination. You’re speaking of hemp derivatives in large doses; this was a small one, and it gives no such paradise as the Indian sugar pellets. It was a stimulant. She is a confirmed user, or it would have made her violently ill. There are no languorous dreams in this preparation for a confirmed user. It kills, you know, within five years. Somebody is most earnestly trying to do away with her.”

He was silent, tapping a pencil against the table…

Emphasis added (the boldfaces) by O’S News Service.