He would have supplied him with brandy if he had not been sure that the contraband would be discovered and stopped by the doctor; but opium, in the hands of one who knows exactly how it is used, is very much harder to detect, unless the doctor sees the smoker when he is under the influence of the drug, while the pupils of the eye are unnaturally contracted and the face is relaxed in that expression of beatitude which only the great narcotics can produce--the state which Baudelaire called the Artificial Paradise.
During these daily visits Logotheti became very confidential; that is to say, he exercised all his ingenuity in the attempt to make Feist talk about himself.

But he was not very successful.

Broken as the man was, his characteristic reticence was scarcely at all relaxed, and it was quite impossible to get beyond the barrier.

One day Logotheti gave him a cigarette more than usual, as an experiment, but he went to sleep almost immediately, sitting up in his chair.

The opium, as a moderate substitute for liquor, temporarily restored the habitual tone of his system and revived his natural self-control, and Logotheti soon gave up the idea of extracting any secret from him in a moment of garrulous expansion.
There was the other way, which was now prepared, and the Greek had learned enough about his victim to justify him in using it.