went over to the bureau, and brought me a dose of heroin. The effect was surprising ! I had felt as if I couldn't move a muscle, as if all the springs of my nerves had given way. Yet, in two minutes, one small sniff restored me to complete activity.
There was in this, however, hardly any element of joy. I was back to my normal self, but not to what you might call good form. I was perfectly able to do anything required, but the idea of doing it didn't appeal. I thought a bath and a shower would put me right ; and I certainly felt a very different man by the time I had got my clothes on.
When I came back into the sitting-room, I found Lou dancing daintily round the table. She went for me like a bull at a gate ; swept me away to the couch and knelt at my side as I lay, while she overwhelmed me with passionate kisses.
She divined that I was not in any condition to respond.
" You still need your nurse," she laughed merrily, with sparkling eyes and flashing teeth and nostrils twitching with excitement. I saw on the tip of one delicious little curling hair a crystal glimmer that I knew.
She had been out in the snowstorm !
My cunning twisted smile told her that I was wise to the game.
"Yes," she said excitedly, "I see how it's done now. You pull yourself together with H. and then you start the buzz-wagon with C. Come along, put in the clutch."
Her hand was trembling with excitement. But on the back of it there shimmered a tiny heap of glistening snow.
I sniffed it with suppressed ecstasy. I knew that it was only a matter of seconds before I caught the contagion of her crazy and sublime intoxication.
Who was it that said you had only to put salt on the tail of a bird, and then you could catch it ? Probably that fellow thought that he knew all about it, but he got the whole thing wrong. What you have to do is to get snow up your own nose, and then you can catch the bird all right.
What did Maeterlinck know about that silly old Blue Bird ?
Happiness lies within one's self, and the way to dig it out is cocaine.
But don't you go and forget what I hope you won't mind my calling ordinary prudence. Use a little common sense, use precaution, exercise good judgment. However hungry you may happen to be, you don't want to eat a dozen oxen en brochette. Natura non facit saltum.
It's only a question of applying knowledge in a reasonable manner. We had found out how to work the machine, and there was no reason in the world why we shouldn't fly from here to Kalamazoo.
So I took three quite small sniffs at reasonable intervals, and I was on the job once more.
I chased Lou around the suite ; and I dare say we did upset a good deal of the furniture, but that doesn't matter, for we haven't got to pick it up.
The important thing was that I caught Lou; and by-and-by we found ourselves completely out of breath; and then, confound it, just when I wanted a quiet pipe before lunch, the telephone rang, and the porter wanted to know if we were at home to Mr. Elgin Feccles.
Well, I told you before that I didn't care for the man so much as that. As Stevenson observes, if he were the only tie that bound one to home, I think most of us would vote for foreign travel. But he'd played the game pretty straight last night ; and hang it, one couldn't do less than invite the fellow to lunch. He might have a few more tips about the technique of this business anyhow. I'm not one of those cocksure fellows that imagine when they have one little scrap of knowledge, that they have drained the fount of wisdom dry.
So I said, " Ask hfin to be good enough to come up by all means."
Lou flew to the other room to fix her hair and her face and all those things that women always seem to be having to fix, and up comes Mr. Feccles with the most perfect manner that I have ever observed in any human being, and a string of kind inquiries and apologies on the tip of his tongue.
He said he wouldn't have bothered us by calling at all so soon after the case of indiscretion, only he felt sure he had left his cigarette case with us, and he valued it very much because it had been given him by his Aunt Sophronia.
Well, you know, there it was, right on the table, or rather, under the table, because the table was on top of it.
When we got the table on its legs again, we saw, quite plainly that the cigarette case had been under it, and therefore must have been on top of it before it was overturned.
Feccles laughed heartily at the humorous character of the incident. I suppose it was funny in a sort of way. On the other hand, I don't think it was quite the thing to call attention to. However, I suppose the fellow had to have his cigarette case, and after all, when you do find a table upside down, it's not much good pretending that you don't notice it. And very likely, on the whole, the best way to pass over the incident pleasantly is to turn it into a kind of joke.
And I must say that Feccles showed the tact of a perfect gentleman in avoiding any direct allusion to the circumstances that caused the circumstances that were responsible for the circumstances that gave rise to the circumstances which it wasso, difficult to overlook.
Well, you know, this man Feccles had been a perfect dear the night before. He had seen Lou through the worst of the business with the utmost good taste at the moment when her natural protector, myself, was physically unable to apply the necessary what-youmay-call-it.
Well, of course, the way things were at the moment, I wished Feccles in the place that modem Christianity has decided to forget. But the least I could do was to ask him to lunch. But before I had time to put this generous impulse into words, Lou sailed in like an angel descending from heaven.
She went straight up to Feccles, and she positively kissed him before my eyes, and begged him to stay and have lunch. She positively took the words out of my mouth.
But I murst admit that I wanted to be alone with Lou-not only then, but for ever ; and I was most consumedly glad when I heard Feccles say :
" Why, really, that's too kind of you, Lady Pendragon, and I hope you repeat the invitation some other day, but I've got to lunch with two birds from the Bourse. 'Ale have a tremendous deal coming off. Sir Peter's got more money already than he knows what to do with, otherwise I'd be only too glad to let him in on the rez-de-chaussle."
Well, you know, that's all right about my being a millionaire, and all that. It's one thing being a single man running round London perfectly happy with a shilling cigar and a stall at the Victoria Palace, and it's quite another being on a honeymoon with a girl whom her most intimate friends call " Unlimited Lou."
Feccles did not know that I had spent more than a third of my annual income in a fortnight. But, of course, I couldn't tell the man how I was situated. We Pendragons are a pretty proud lot, especially since Sir Thomas Malory gave us that write-up in the time of Henry VIII. We've always been a bit above ourselves. That's where my poor old dad went gaga.
However, the only thing to do was to beg the man to find a date in the near future to fight Paillard to a finish.
I think Paillard is the best restaurant in Paris, don't you ?
So out comes a little red pocket-book, and there is Mr. Feccles biting his pencil between his lips, and then cocking his head, first on one side and then on the other.
" Confound Parishe said at
