Everybody looked tired. They looked like that because they were, most of them, trying steadily to escape from themselves and their own thoughts of themselves. Usually they failed and had recourse to the brandy bottle, the soft white powder that brought, with a good sniff, a sense of freedom for half an hour, or the hypodermic in the arm that got you out of one jag and pushed you into a more serious one— the problem as to where the next supply was coming from, and if that question were answered, who was going to pay for it.
Because, as your Sunday paper has probably told you, when a man or a woman dopes, somebody— usually more than one person, too,— pays for it dearly, even if the payment is not always made with money.
When Callaghan went down the stairs he saw Bellamy sitting at the tabl
