He's fallen in with a pair of reprobates, Bill Evans and Wash Gordon, who are more interested in him as the butt of their jokes than as a friend.

One night they drag King and a girl named Vinnie to a "ranch"—a sort of speakeasy where people smoke "grass".

On the phone, she tells the clerk that she wants her order fixed "just like the other night," referring to the fact that she'd had sleeping powder added to her coffee to help with insomnia.

The book ends with a final twist—back in her apartment Vinnie is alive and well, telling a friend about the gag she, Bill and Wash had pulled on King.

Likewise, the officer King shoots was attempting to purchase an illegal numbers ticket from the owner of the candy store.

Woolrich's depiction of marijuana is in keeping with popular views of the time which saw the drug as causing "insanity, criminality, and death," according to Federal Bureau of Narcotics Commissioner Harry J. Anslinger[1] In his efforts to circumscribe marijuana use, Anslinger disseminated stories based on the trope of "marijuana-crime-insanity", such as allegedly evidenced by the Victor Licata case in which the 21-year-old murdered his family with an axe.

)[2] Inhaling marijuana smoke initially makes King lethargic and he loses all sense of time—something that continues throughout the story as he thinks several days have gone by despite it being the same night; his murder of Eleanor is prompted by his insistence that a half-hour has passed since she ordered room service, when in fact it was only five minutes.

Peculiarly, Woolrich has the ranch operate as a buffet, with each visitor paying a cover charge in exchange for an unlimited amount of marijuana.