"Well," he said, "now the cat"s out of the bag, I"ll admit, yes, it is so. I had it--"
"From Pattison?"
"Indirectly," he said, which I believe was lying, "yes."
"Pattison," I said, "took that stuff at his own risk."
He pursed his mouth and bowed.
"My great-grandmother"s recipes," I said, "are queer things to handle.
My father was near making me promise--"
"He didn"t?"
"No. But he warned me. He himself used one--once."
"Ah!... But do you think--? Suppose--suppose there did happen to be one--"
"The things are curious doc.u.ments," I said.
"Even the smell of "em.... No!"
But after going so far Pyecraft was resolved I should go farther. I was always a little afraid if I tried his patience too much he would fall on me suddenly and smother me. I own I was weak. But I was also annoyed with Pyecraft. I had got to that state of feeling for him that disposed me to say, "Well, TAKE the risk!" The little affair of Pattison to which I have alluded was a different matter altogether. What it was doesn"t concern us now, but I knew, anyhow, that the particular recipe I used then was safe. The rest I didn"t know so much about, and, on the whole, I was inclined to doubt their safety pretty completely.
Yet even if Pyecraft got poisoned--
I must confess the poisoning of Pyecraft struck me as an immense undertaking.
That evening I took that queer, odd-scented sandalwood box out of my safe and turned the rustling skins over. The gentleman who wrote the recipes for my great-grandmother evidently had a weakness for skins of a miscellaneous origin, and his handwriting was cramped to the last degree. Some of the things are quite unreadable to me--though my family, with its Indian Civil Service a.s.sociations, has kept up a knowledge of Hindustani from generation to generation--and none are absolutely plain sailing. But I found the one that I knew was there soon enough, and sat on the floor by my safe for some time looking at it.
"Look here," said I to Pyecraft next day, and s.n.a.t.c.hed the slip away from his eager grasp.
"So far as I--can make it out, this is a recipe for Loss of Weight.
("Ah!" said Pyecraft.) I"m not absolutely sure, but I think it"s that.
And if you take my advice you"ll leave it alone. Because, you know--I blacken my blood in your interest, Pyecraft--my ancestors on that side were, so far as I can gather, a jolly queer lot. See?"
"Let me try it," said Pyecraft.
I leant back in my chair. My imagination made one mighty effort and fell flat within me. "What in Heaven"s name, Pyecraft," I asked, "do you think you"ll look like when you get thin?"
He was impervious to reason. I made him promise never to say a word to me about his disgusting fatness again whatever happened--never, and then I handed him that little piece of skin.
"It"s nasty stuff," I said.
"No matter," he said, and took it.
He goggled at it. "But--but--" he said.
He had just discovered that it wasn"t English.
"To the best of my ability," I said, "I will do you a translation."
I did my best. After that we didn"t speak for a fortnight. Whenever he approached me I frowned and motioned him away, and he respected our compact, but at the end of a fortnight he was as fat as ever. And then he got a word in.
"I must speak," he said. "It isn"t fair. There"s something wrong. It"s done me no good. You"re not doing your great-grandmother justice."
"Where"s the recipe?"
He produced it gingerly from his pocket-book.
I ran my eye over the items. "Was the egg addled?" I asked.
"No. Ought it to have been?"
"That," I said, "goes without saying in all my poor dear great-grandmother"s recipes. When condition or quality is not specified you must get the worst. She was drastic or nothing.... And there"s one or two possible alternatives to some of these other things. You got FRESH rattlesnake venom."
"I got a rattlesnake from Jamrach"s. It cost--it cost--"
"That"s your affair, anyhow. This last item--"
"I know a man who--"
"Yes. H"m. Well, I"ll write the alternatives down. So far as I know the language, the spelling of this recipe is particularly atrocious.
By-the-bye, dog here probably means pariah dog."
For a month after that I saw Pyecraft constantly at the club and as fat and anxious as ever. He kept our treaty, but at times he broke the spirit of it by shaking his head despondently. Then one day in the cloakroom he said, "Your great-grandmother--"
"Not a word against her," I said; and he held his peace.
I could have fancied he had desisted, and I saw him one day talking to three new members about his fatness as though he was in search of other recipes. And then, quite unexpectedly, his telegram came.
"Mr. Formalyn!" bawled a page-boy under my nose, and I took the telegram and opened it at once.
"For Heaven"s sake come.--Pyecraft."
"H"m," said I, and to tell the truth I was so pleased at the rehabilitation of my great grandmother"s reputation this evidently promised that I made a most excellent lunch.
I got Pyecraft"s address from the hall porter. Pyecraft inhabited the upper half of a house in Bloomsbury, and I went there so soon as I had done my coffee and Trappistine. I did not wait to finish my cigar.
"Mr. Pyecraft?" said I, at the front door.
They believed he was ill; he hadn"t been out for two days.
"He expects me," said I, and they sent me up.
I rang the bell at the lattice-door upon the landing.
"He shouldn"t have tried it, anyhow," I said to myself. "A man who eats like a pig ought to look like a pig."