RAIDING AN OPIUM DEN

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2333, 15 December 1914, Page 9

RAIDING AN OPIUM DEN

TWO VICTIMS AND THEIR PLANT. To the lay eye the miscellaneous assortment of articles arrayed on a' table at the Magistrate's Court yesterday would have been unexplainable. There was a pipe with a strange-looking cover, a few battered tobacco tins, a rusty, crooked, little instrument, a decrepit pair of scissors, a cut-down beer-bottle enclosing a candle, and two little phials. The two frightened Celestials in the dock and the frequent use of the word opium would have furnished tho solution to tho mystery. The ..nondescript collection of articles were capable of manufacturing the terrible opium drug, while the two emaciated Celestials were its victims. All had come under the eagle e.vo of Detec-tive-Sergeant Cassells. The opiumsmoker's outfit had been gathered in the raided Chinese opium-gambling den after an hour's search. "There might have been articlos you missed in your search," was the question counsol for tho opium victims put to Detective Cassells. "Quito possibly," replied Detective Cassells, "there were places in the. house where I would not put my hand for all the opium in the world." Among the articles soizod was _ a small box of opium pills. Detective Cassells \cxplained that when imprisoned, Chinese victims of the drug smuggled in these pills to gaol, so that even within tho walls of prison the tiny pills could bo swallowed to appease tho terrible craving. "They find them quite as good as smoking,'' said tho detective.