“Good-by and good luck, Blacky. And you’d better lay away from that hop or it’ll make a bum of you.” CHAPTER XXIV I had money enough to last some little time, long enough to get my strength back, perhaps. I paid the landlady a month’s rent and told her I was a sick man and would be in my room all the time and not to disturb me. In this way I hoped to account for never stirring out of doors, which I did not dare do. I certainly was a sick man, and looked it. This landlady was very good-hearted, and, sympathizing with my illness, she did not leave me alone two hours in succession. She sent a Chinese boy every hour or two to see how I felt, and in the morning she would send in coffee and toast and come in herself to inquire how I was. After the boy had made the bed in the morning, she must come in to see if he had turned the mattress and shaken up the pillows for me. She was so busy helping me out that she nearly landed me back in jail. I came back to my room from the bathroom one morning, and there she stood staring at a gun I had been keeping under the mattress. She had insisted on turning the mattress herself and found it. She was standing there staring at it like she would at a rattlesnake, and asked me what I was doing with that “awful thing.” I sat down and said to her: “Mrs. Alexander, I bought that pistol to kill myself with in case I get physically disabled. You see, I’m a sick man. I told you I was a sick man, and I have a suspicion I am a consumptive. I don’t want to go to doctors and I’m going to let this thing run its course, but if I find I am down and out and done for I’m going to shoot myself. That’s what I have it for.” She was all upset with sympathy. She said: “You’re no consumptive. You are only run down. You’ll be all right in a few months, with good food and care. Let me keep this thing. I’ll take it and keep it. Don’t get downhearted, you’ll be all right.” Of course I had to let her take it. That night I went out and bought another one. I also bought a bag and a few clothes, and I was careful after that to lock the new pistol up in the bag when she was around. So I settled down to fight it out with my opium habit, at the same time keeping on the watch all the time for the police. I had been using opium steadily for ten years. For ten years I had never gone to sleep without taking it. I owed to it all the sleep, all the rest and forgetfulness and contentment I had had in that time. Now I made up my mind to quit. Right away I found I had to pay back every second of sleep, every quiet, restful moment I had got from the opium in the whole ten years. I was taking about five grains a day. I began to taper down slowly. I cut off a grain a week at the start, then for a couple of months I took only three grains a day.