“Rody, for God’s sake! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Get up!”
“I’ll show you!” he cried determinedly if somewhat recklessly. “I’ll eat ’em all! I’ll eat ’em all! G—— D—— you!” and he swallowed all that he had thus far been able to collect.
I saw him dead before me in no time at all, or thought I did.
“Here, Johnson,” I called to another of our friends who came up just then, “help me with Rody, will you? He’s drunk, and he’s got a box of morphine pills and he’s trying to take them. I knocked them out of his hand and now he’s eaten a lot of them.”
“Here, Rody,” he said, pulling him to his feet and holding him against the wall, “stop this! What the hell’s the matter with you?” and then he turned to me: “Maybe they’re not morphine. Why don’t you ask the druggist? If they are we’d better be getting him to the hospital.”
“They’re morphine all right,” gurgled the victim. “Dont-cha worry—I know morphine all right, and I’ll eat ’em all,” and he began struggling with Johnson.
At the latter’s suggestion I hurried into the drugstore, the proprietor and clerk of which were friends to all of us, and inquired. They assured me that they were morphine and when I told them that Rodenberger had swallowed about a dozen they insisted that we bring him in and then call an ambulance, while they prepared an emetic of some kind. It happened that the head physician of the St. Louis City Hospital, Dr. Heinie Marks, was also a friend of all newspaper men (what free advertising we used to give him!), and to him I now turned for aid, calling him on the telephone.
“Bring him out! Bring him out!” he said. Then: “Wait; I’ll send the wagon.”
By this time Johnson, with the aid of the clerk and the druggist, had brought Rodenberger inside and caused him to drink a quantity of something, whereupon we gazed upon him for signs of his approaching demise. By now he was very pale and limp and seemed momentarily to grow more so. To our intense relief, however, the city ambulance soon came and a smart young interne in white took charge. Then we saw Rodenberger hauled away, to be pumped out later and detained for days. I was told afterward by the doctor that he had taken enough of the pills to end him had he not been thoroughly pumped out and treated. Yet within a week or so he was once more up and around, fate, in the shape of myself and Johnson, having intervened. And many a time thereafter he turned up at this selfsame corner as sound and smiling as ever.