Lanagan’s eyes were within a foot of his face. Thorne began to foam at the mouth. I thought he was going into a fit as I watched, fascinated, the horrible scene. Bearing down upon the wretch with savagery in his voice and manner, Lanagan hammered on: “Give you ten cents! What do you want with ten cents? You’ll never get another shot of coke as long as you live, Thorne! Never in this world! You are coming with me now, coming where you will never need coke again! Coming to your death by hanging for murder! _Not another shot in all this world will you ever get!_” With a shriek that was more animal’s than man’s, Thorne suddenly lunged forward. Quicker than the dart of a snake’s head, those hands, with their long, lean, writhing fingers, had twisted around Lanagan’s neck. With a strength that was the strength of temporary insanity, he flung Lanagan from him and fell with him. Then, like a lean gorilla, he shook Lanagan’s head from side to side while he screeched fearful imprecations. “_You lie! You lie! I’ll get all I want! That’s what he said, and I killed him, and I’ll kill you, too! Yah! Yeeah!_” He trailed away into a maniacal scream. I hurled myself at him, but the fiend, for the moment at least, had the strength of three men. I finally managed to get in a blow that settled him. Lanagan, rubbing his bruised neck ruefully, rose slowly. He was panting a little but chuckling. “Score one for mental suggestion on a weak subject,” he laughed. “But I didn’t figure those scrawny hands had quite that much strength. This murder is clearer than print. We all but re-enacted the scene. “Now, my boy, to establish the connection that would bring a man of Swanson’s position to a rendezvous at the Palace, to arouse the slumbering demon in this human orang-utang. It’s rather a commentary on that hoary police doctrine that a dope fiend never commits murder. I was right.” Within thirty minutes Chief Leslie and Brady, and Wilson, his right-hand men, were in the room, and Lanagan swiftly detailed the circumstances. Thorne had come to and was shaking and shivering as the drug wore out of his system, leaving him nerve-racked. He did not attempt to repudiate his utterance, but sullenly admitted the murder. In view of the words overheard by See Wong, there was but one person to clear up the mystery. Leslie, Lanagan and I hurried in the chief’s machine to the Swanson home, nearly midnight as it was. That they had had Thorne once under examination and had permitted him to go was a source of bitter chagrin to the chief. Thorne showed none of the ravages of the habit that men of weaker physique exhibited; the day the police picked him up he had happened to be comparatively normal, and consequently he had passed safely through the quiz.