His helplessness, however, was only temporary. Turning to a silver urn behind him, which bore the golden-inlaid legend: “Pasteurized Water,” he pressed what appeared to be a part of a carved figure in the mahogany base and a secret drawer shot out revealing a number of coffee cups, spoons and a box of tablets labeled: “Equivalent--2 Spoons Sugar and 1 Jigger Cream.” Dropping one of these tablets and a spoon into a cup, he set it down on his desk. Next he took a diminutive collapsible microscope, with a lens of flexible glass, out of his pocket; and, with its aid, picked out an all-but-invisible needle-point concealed in the filigree ornamentation of the faucet of the urn. This he pressed with his finger nail. Then he pushed a button in the faucet labeled “Hot,” and filled the coffee cup as he mumbled jubilantly to himself: “Some trick this! You get your ‘pasteurized water’ according to government regulations all right, but--oh! You naughty little needle.” He eyed the dubious looking mixture that flowed into the cup for a suspicious moment, tasted it hopefully--and then, livid with rage, spat the stuff out and hurled the cup across the room. Speechless for a moment, he controlled himself with an effort; and then, with desperate haste, unlocked a private drawer in his desk and opened it half-way to a visible line. Pulling a cord hanging over his head, which started an electric fan going--and which, in this precise connection, also caused a slight orifice in the panel of the drawer to unfold, revealing an assortment of crystalline-white and brownish-looking pills--he selected one of the white pills, placed it in his mouth and crunched it between his teeth to get quick action, in spite of his vigilant valet’s “Begging your pardon, sir,” protest. “Can’t help it, John,” he said. “This is a real emergency and I simply have got to have something. On the face of things, it looks like the narcotics are the only genuine stuff left to us by the ‘Bootlegger-Smuggler-Prohibitionist Combine’.”