I turned the handle and opened the door. Naturally I expected to see Pyecraft.
Well, you know, he wasn"t there!
I never had such a shock in my life. There was his sitting-room in a state of untidy disorder, plates and dishes among the books and writing things, and several chairs overturned, but Pyecraft----
"It"s all right, old man; shut the door," he said, and then I discovered him.
There he was, right up close to the cornice in the corner by the door, as though some one had glued him to the ceiling. His face was anxious and angry. He panted and gesticulated. "Shut the door," he said. "If that woman gets hold of it----"
I shut the door, and went and stood away from him and stared.
"If anything gives way and you tumble down," I said, "you"ll break your neck, Pyecraft."
"I wish I could," he wheezed.
"A man of your age and weight getting up to kiddish gymnastics----"
"Don"t," he said, and looked agonised.
"I"ll tell you," he said, and gesticulated.
"How the deuce," said I, "are you holding on up there?"
And then abruptly I realised that he was not holding on at all, that he was floating up there--just as a gas-filled bladder might have floated in the same position. He began a struggle to thrust himself away from the ceiling and to clamber down the wall to me. "It"s that prescription," he panted, as he did so. "Your great-gran----"
He took hold of a framed engraving rather carelessly as he spoke and it gave way, and he flew back to the ceiling again, while the picture smashed on to the sofa. b.u.mp he went against the ceiling, and I knew then why he was all over white on the more salient curves and angles of his person. He tried again more carefully, coming down by way of the mantel.
It was really a most extraordinary spectacle, that great, fat, apoplectic-looking man upside down and trying to get from the ceiling to the floor. "That prescription," he said. "Too successful."
"How?"
"Loss of weight--almost complete."
And then, of course, I understood.
"By Jove, Pyecraft," said I, "what you wanted was a cure for fatness! But you always called it weight. You would call it weight."
Somehow I was extremely delighted. I quite liked Pyecraft for the time.
"Let me help you!" I said, and took his hand and pulled him down. He kicked about, trying to get foothold somewhere. It was very like holding a flag on a windy day.
"That table," he said, pointing, "is solid mahogany and very heavy. If you can put me under that----"
I did, and there he wallowed about like a captive balloon, while I stood on his hearthrug and talked to him.
I lit a cigar. "Tell me," I said, "what happened?"
"I took it," he said.
"How did it taste?"
"Oh, _beastly_!"
I should fancy they all did. Whether one regards the ingredients or the probable compound or the possible results, almost all my great-grandmother"s remedies appear to me at least to be extraordinarily uninviting. For my own part----
"I took a little sip first."
"Yes?"
"And as I felt lighter and better after an hour, I decided to take the draught."
"My dear Pyecraft!"
"I held my nose," he explained. "And then I kept on getting lighter and lighter--and helpless, you know."
He gave way suddenly to a burst of pa.s.sion. "What the goodness am I to _do?_" he said.
"There"s one thing pretty evident," I said, "that you mustn"t do. If you go out of doors you"ll go up and up." I waved an arm upward. "They"d have to send Santos-Dumont after you to bring you down again."
"I suppose it will wear off?"
I shook my head. "I don"t think you can count on that," I said.
And then there was another burst of pa.s.sion, and he kicked out at adjacent chairs and banged the floor. He behaved just as I should have expected a great, fat, self-indulgent man to behave under trying circ.u.mstances--that is to say, very badly. He spoke of me and of my great-grandmother with an utter want of discretion.
"I never asked you to take the stuff," I said.
And generously disregarding the insults he was putting upon me, I sat down in his armchair and began to talk to him in a sober, friendly fashion.
I pointed out to him that this was a trouble he had brought upon himself, and that it had almost an air of poetical justice. He had eaten too much.
This he disputed, and for a time we argued the point.
He became noisy and violent, so I desisted from this aspect of his lesson.
"And then," said I, "you committed the sin of euphuism. You called it, not Fat, which is just and inglorious, but Weight. You----"
He interrupted to say that he recognised all that. What was he to _do?_
I suggested he should adapt himself to his new conditions. So we came to the really sensible part of the business. I suggested that it would not be difficult for him to learn to walk about on the ceiling with his hands----
"I can"t sleep," he said.
But that was no great difficulty. It was quite possible, I pointed out, to make a shake-up under a wire mattress, fasten the under things on with tapes, and have a blanket, sheet, and coverlet to b.u.t.ton at the side. He would have to confide in his housekeeper, I said; and after some squabbling he agreed to that. (Afterwards it was quite delightful to see the beautifully matter-of-fact way with which the good lady took all these amazing inversions.) He could have a library ladder in his room, and all his meals could be laid on the top of his bookcase. We also hit on an ingenious device by which he could get to the floor whenever he wanted, which was simply to put the _British Encyclopaedia_ (tenth edition) on the top of his open shelves. He just pulled out a couple of volumes and held on, and down he came. And we agreed there must be iron staples along the skirting, so that he could cling to those whenever he wanted to get about the room on the lower level.
As we got on with the thing I found myself almost keenly interested. It was I who called in the housekeeper and broke matters to her, and it was I chiefly who fixed up the inverted bed. In fact, I spent two whole days at his flat. I am a handy, interfering sort of man with a screw-driver, and I made all sorts of ingenious adaptations for him--ran a wire to bring his bells within reach, turned all his electric lights up instead of down, and so on. The whole affair was extremely curious and interesting to me, and it was delightful to think of Pyecraft like some great, fat blow-fly, crawling about on his ceiling and clambering round the lintel of his doors from one room to another, and never, never, never coming to the club any more...
Then, you know, my fatal ingenuity got the better of me. I was sitting by his fire drinking his whisky, and he was up in his favourite corner by the cornice, tacking a Turkey carpet to the ceiling, when the idea struck me.
"By Jove, Pyecraft!" I said, "all this is totally unnecessary."
And before I could calculate the complete consequences of my notion I blurted it out. "Lead underclothing," said I, and the mischief was done.