Ambrotox and Limping Dick

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"Yes, indeed," said Caldegard. "I've never in my life drunk black coffee
to beat what your yellow-haired Dutch girl used to make."

Randal turned to his brother. "Parlour-maid, Dick. Best servant I ever
had. Didn't mind the country, and after she'd been here a fortnight
disclosed a heaven-sent gift for making coffee. Took some diplomacy, I
can tell you, to get cook to cede her rights."

"Why haven't you got her now?" asked Dick.

"Mother started dying in Holland," replied his brother, "and we miss our
coffee."

"I'll do it to-morrow night," said Dick.

"What'll Rogers say?" said Randal.

"Rogers? You don't tell me you've got Rogers still?"

"Of course I have."

"Not _my_ Mrs. Rogers!" exclaimed Dick. "Why, she'd let me skate all
over her kitchen, if I wanted to."

* * * * *

Randal Bellamy, although he had a motor-car and used the telephone,
lagged lovingly behind the times in less important matters. He was proud
of his brass candlesticks, and hated electric light.

While Amaryllis was saying good-night to her host, Dick Bellamy lighted
her candle and waited for her at the foot of the stairs. When she
reached him, she did not at once take it, so that they mounted several
steps together; then she paused.

"Good night, Mr. Bellamy. I hope you didn't hurt your fingers, putting
the fire out. Are you a very awkward person?" she asked, looking up at
him whimsically.

"Shocking," said Dick. "I'm always doing things like that."

"I believe you are," she replied softly. "Thank you so much."

When he went to his room that night, Dick Bellamy was followed by a
vivid ghost with reddish-gold hair, golden-brown, expressive eyes,
adorable mouth, and skin of perfect texture, over neck and shoulders of
a creamy whiteness which melted into the warmer colour of the face by
gradation so fine that none could say where that flush as of a summer
sunset first touched the snow.

As he got into bed, he told himself that he did not object to being
haunted up to midnight, nor even over the edge of sleep, by a spook so
attractive. But if it should come to waking too early to a spectre
implacable--well, that had happened to him once only, long ago, and he
didn't want it to happen again.

But the car would be all right to-morrow--there was always the car.

CHAPTER V.

AMBROTOX.

Amaryllis found her father and Sir Randal at the breakfast-table.

"I'm so glad I'm not the laziest," she said, as she took her seat.

"I'm afraid you are, my dear," replied her father.

"Dick's fetching his car from Iddingfield," explained Randal.

The air was torn by three distinct wails from a syren.

"How unearthly!" said Amaryllis, with her hands to her ears.

"That's Dick," said his brother. "He would have a noise worse than
anyone else's."

Dick came in from the garden. "Morning, Miss Caldegard," he said, as he
sat down. "How d'you like my hooter? Sounds like a fog-horn deprived of
its young, doesn't it?"

Amaryllis laughed.

"I hate it," she said.

Randal looked up from the letter he was reading.

"I'm afraid you two will have to amuse each other this morning," he
said, glancing from the girl to his brother as he handed the letter
across the table to Caldegard. "That'll take a lot of answering, and I
can't do it without your help. I'm afraid Sir Charles has got hold of
the wrong end of the stick."

"How are you going to amuse me, Miss Caldegard?" asked Dick.

"I haven't the faintest idea," she replied.

"Help me try my car?"

"I should like to--if you can do without me, dad?"

* * * * *

At half-past seven that evening Sir Randal went to his brother's room,
and found him dressing for dinner.

"Nice sort of chap you are," he said. "I ask you to amuse a young woman
after breakfast----"

"I did," said Dick.

"And you keep her for eight hours. Where have you been?"

"Miss Caldegard bought things in Oxford Street. We had lunch in Oxford,
and tea at Chesham," said Dick, brushing his hair carefully back from
his forehead. "You can't call that wasting time."

"Not yours," said his brother. And they went to dinner.

Before Amaryllis left the table, Dick rose from his seat.

"Where are you going?" asked his brother.

"To keep my tryst with Mrs. Rogers," said Dick, and went out.

"I've told 'em we'll have our wine and coffee in the study, Caldegard,"
said Randal. "I think it's the safest place for what we're going to talk
about."

Amaryllis rose to leave them together, but her father stopped her.

"You'll come with us, won't you, my dear? You're one of the gang," he
said.

"What gang?" she asked, looking at him with eyes opened wide.

"The Ambrotox gang," replied her father, lowering his voice almost to a
whisper. "The only four people in the world, I believe, who know even
that silly nick-name you invented, Amaryllis, are in this house. Sir
Randal knows its properties. I know all about it. You know that I have
spent two years in reaching it, and Dick Bellamy knows there is
something in which we three are deeply interested. And so Sir Randal has
advised me to take you younger people into full confidence."

He slipped his arm through his daughter's, and led the way across the
hall and down the narrow passage beyond the stair, to the study.

Randal, with his back to the open door, was filling the port glasses,
while Amaryllis and her father were gazing from the open french-window
across the moonlit lawn, when all three were startled by a thin,
high-pitched voice behind them.

"Me lib for make one dam fine lot coffee, missy," it said.

But, turning, they laughed to see only Dick, setting down the tray.

"When does the seance begin?" he asked, turning to close the door.

"Now," said his brother. "Better leave that open, and sit here where you
can see right down the passage. Miss Caldegard," he went on, "please
make Gorgon lie outside the window."

Amaryllis stepped out upon the terrace, and the dog followed her. "Lie
down," she said. "On guard."

She came back into the room, and Randal drew the heavy curtains across
the window. "Keep your eye on the end of the passage, Dick," he said.
"There's no other door in it but ours."

Then he sat down. "Coal-tar," he said, "the mother of wealth, the aunt
of colour, and the grandmother of drugs, is a mystery to the layman. The
highest, if not the best known, of its priesthood, is my old friend
Caldegard. Some little time ago he penetrated too far into the arcana of
his cult; and on one of the branches of that terrific tree he found and
coaxed into blossom a bud which grew into the fruit which his daughter
has named Ambrotox--as if it were a beef essence or a cheap wine. Tell
'em its properties, Caldegard--in the vernacular."

Between the first and second puffs at a fresh cigar, Caldegard grunted a
sort of final protest.

"You answer for him?" he asked, nodding to Dick.

"Of course. And you for your daughter."

"It is," began Caldegard, "the perfect opiate. As anodyne it gives more
ease, and as anaesthetic leaves less after-effect to combat than any
other. Morphia, opium, cannabis Indica, cocaine, heroin, veronal and
sulphonal act less equally, need larger doses, tempt more rapidly to
increase of dose, and, where the patient knows what drug he has taken,
lead, in a certain proportion of cases, very quickly to an ineradicable
habit. In wise hands, the patient's and the public's ignorance being
maintained, Ambrotox"--and here he bestowed a little laugh on amateur
nomenclature--"Ambrotox will be a blessing almost as notable as was
chloroform in the fifties.

"But there's another side: carry the thing a step further, and you have
a life, waking, and dreams, sleeping, of delight such as has never
been--I think never could be expressed in words; not because, as with De
Quincey and his laudanum, the coherent story of the dreams and visions
cannot be remembered, but because the clear sunshine of personal
happiness and confidence in the future--the pure joy of being
alive--which the abuser of Ambrotox experiences in his whole daily life,
is incommunicable. It is a period of bliss, of clear head, good
impulses, celestial dreams, and steady hope. These effects last, on an
even dose, longer than with any other drug of which I have experience.
And then there begins and grows a desire for action, the devil preaching
that no good works have resulted from the faith, the hope and the good
intentions. A little more, and we shall accomplish, he assures us, the
full measure of our dreams. The dose is increased, confidence returns,
and performance is still for to-morrow. I have never seen a victim of
Ambrotox pursue this descent to the grave, but all analogous experience
assures me that the final stages must be hell."

"How do you know so much about the effects?" asked Dick.

"There was only one possible subject for experiment--myself," replied
Caldegard.

Amaryllis sat upright in her chair, and drew in her breath sharply. But
she did not speak.

"Ghastly risk to take," said Dick.

"Ghastly," assented Caldegard. "But it wasn't the first, nor the second
time that I'd chanced it. The very memory of the horrors I went through
in curing myself after a course of hashish, gave me faith in my power to
push this tremendous experiment to the point I had determined upon,
without overshooting the mark."

"What was the mark?" inquired Dick.

"The appearance," replied Caldegard, "of certain cardiac symptoms which
I expected."

"Oh, dad!" exclaimed Amaryllis. "That must have been the time when you
sent for Dr. Greaves at three in the morning."

Caldegard nodded.

"For three weeks after that," went on Amaryllis indignantly, "I thought
you were horribly ill."

"That, my darling," answered her father, smiling at her, "was because I
was getting better."

"I've been wondering, Caldegard," said Randal, "how often and how
strongly the remembrance of that incommunicable bliss cries out for an
epicurean repetition of those early stages of your scientific
experiment."

Caldegard laughed. "Oh, she calls, and calls pretty loud sometimes," he
said. "Let her call. It's all part of the experiment. Knowledge, you
see, has the sweeter voice."

Amaryllis had tears in her eyes, and for a moment the others waited on
her evident desire to speak.

"But do you think, father," she said at last, "that's it's really worth
while to let the world know you have found a more delightful temptation
than opium or cocaine, just for the sake of giving a few sick people a
more comfortable medicine than they've been accustomed to. Ambrotox!"
she sighed scornfully. "I wish I'd never given it that pretty name. I
think it's horrid stuff!"

"That's what I was going to ask," said Dick.

"As for publicity, my dear boy," replied Caldegard, "Ambrotox will very
probably do more harm than good if its properties become general
knowledge. But the Home Office is drafting a comprehensive measure for
State control of the manufacture and distribution of injurious drugs.
You all know that the growth of the drug habit caused serious alarm in
the early days of the war, and that even the amendment to the Defence of
the Realm Act, forbidding the unauthorised sale and possession of
cocaine and other poisons, did little to diminish the illicit traffic.
Such contrabrand dealing is immensely lucrative, and prices rise in
direct ratio with the danger. But the new Bill may contain a clause
vesting in the State the formulae and the manufacture of all
newly-discovered drugs of this kind. The Government is relying in this
matter greatly upon the experience and advice of Sir Randal, and if a
sufficiently stringent clause can be devised, it is probable that never
more than three living persons, in addition to the discoverer, will be
acquainted with the processes necessary to the manufacture of a newly
discovered chemical compound which has been brought under State control.
In regard to the good which may be done by Ambrotox--do you remember,
Amaryllis, the two pretty little old ladies who lived in the small grey
house with the red blinds? Don't say names, my child, nor mention the
town. They were sisters and devotedly attached."

The girl's face was a picture of curiosity.

"Yes, father," she said. "And they grew pale and anxious. One of them
came to see you, and then the other, several times; and once, just
before I went to Scotland, they both came together. I remember how
dreadfully ill they looked. But when I came home, their cheeks were pink
again, one always laughed when the other did, and their garden was full
of roses."

"What about 'em?" asked Dick.

"This," said Caldegard: "For several years each of those old women had
been taking morphia; each had been concealing it from the other; each
had suffered in conscience the torture of the damned; each confessed to
me her vice, and the dreadful failure of her struggle to overcome it.
Experimentally I treated each with Ambrotox, in gradually decreasing
doses. The return to health was quicker and more complete than I had
dared to hope; the craving for morphia has not reappeared, and I do not
think it will."

"Oh, you darling!" cried Amaryllis. "I always thought you'd something to
do with it."

"It is the story of two cases only, I admit," continued Caldegard. "But
I am convinced that I have found a means of releasing at least unwilling
slaves from that bondage."

"But what do you gain by telling us?" asked Dick.

"Secrecy," said Caldegard. "You and my daughter know now the importance
of my two years' work, and you cannot fail to see the danger of a rumour
that 'Professor Caldegard, we understand, has achieved an epoch-making
discovery in the history of science. An anodyne with more than all the
charms and few of the dangers of opium will bring comfort with a good
conscience to thousands of sufferers in this nerve-racked world.' Every
chemist in the country that knows my line of work will be searching in a
furious effort to forestall the new legislation by discovering and
putting on the market new synthetic opiates. There is not, perhaps, much
fear that chance shooting will achieve the actual bull's-eye of
Ambrotox. But there is a greater danger than commercial
rivalry--criminal! The illicit-drug interest is growing in numbers and
wealth. Every threat of so-called temperance legislation stimulates it.
We have lately heard much of crime as a policy. Soon, perhaps, the world
will learn with startled disgust, that crime went into trade two years
ago.

"There are men in every big city to whom thousands of pounds and the
lives of many hirelings would be a small price to pay for the half-sheet
of paper and the small bottle hidden in the safe in that alcove.

"Knowing a little," he concluded, turning to Dick, "you might have told
too much. Knowing everything, you will tell nothing at all."

There was a silence in the room, so heavy that it seemed long. And then,

"Some dope," said Dick Bellamy.

CHAPTER VI.

AMARYLLIS.

A little after noon on the following day, Amaryllis and Dick Bellamy,
followed by Gorgon with his tongue hanging out of his mouth, entered the
hall by the front door, clamouring for drinks, to find Caldegard
swearing over a telegram.

"What's the matter, dad?" she asked.

"Sir Charles Colombe," replied her father. "He will be deeply indebted
if I will call at the Home Office at one-thirty p.m. I should think he
would be! If the message had been sent in time I could have caught the
twelve thirty-five. It's a quarter past now, and it can't be done."

"Yes, it can," said Dick. "Grab your hat and tie it on, while I get my
car."

Randal, coming from his study, was in time to see the car vanish in a
cloud of dust.

"Where are they going?" he asked.

"To catch the twelve thirty-five," replied Amaryllis. "Dick says he can
do it in seven and a half minutes."

Randal not only noticed the christian name, but also the girl's
unconsciousness of having used it.

"They want father at the Home Office. Who's Sir Charles Colombe, Sir
Randal?" she asked.

"Permanent Under Secretary," he answered. "I suppose Broadfoot is making
trouble again."

And he looked at her as if he were thinking of Amaryllis rather than of
permanent or political chiefs of Home Affairs.

"This is Friday, you know," he said at last.

"Yes," replied the girl, and Randal thought her face showed
embarrassment--but of what nature, he could not tell.

"I won't spoil your lunch, my dear child," he said, looking down at her
with eyes curiously contracted. "But if you'll give me half an hour in
the afternoon----"

"Of course I will," she replied, with frank kindness. "And, oh! may I
have a lemon-squash?"

A little later, as he watched her drink it, he admired her more than
ever before. Since he first met her he had taken increasing pleasure
from the tall figure, of which the fine lines and just proportions hid
the strength and energy he had seen her upon occasion display; and he
had often asked himself in what attitude or action her inherent grace
appeared most charming. Sometimes it was driving from the tee, at
another taking a swift volley which she must run to meet; or, again,
just pouring out his coffee. But now, lounging on the old leather sofa,
with her head tipped well back for red lips and white teeth to capture
the slip of ice sliding to them from the bottom of the long tumbler, he
thought her the very perfection of innocent freedom and symmetry.

And when the ice was crunched and swallowed, she laughed joyously,
showing him that the teeth he had cried pity on were sound as ever; so
that he raked his mind for jest and anecdote just that he might see them
flash yet again.

But there was a difference in her to-day--a softer touch, as of
happiness to come, flinging backward in her face a clouded reflection
from the future. The image in that distant mirror, however, he could not
see, and his gaiety failed him.

"I'm awfully untidy," she said at last, springing to her feet and
pushing back loosened hair. "It's nearly lunch time--I hope so, at
least, because I'm horribly hungry."

Perhaps it was best, after all, standing a little to one side, to see
her mount that flight of broad, shallow steps; yet, being unable at once
to make up his mind, he waited there at the stair's foot to see her come
down again.

She came at last, with so new a smile on her lips, that criticism was
lost in curiosity. Its subtle curves blended expectancy, fear and
tenderness, seen through a veil of restraint.

Then he saw that she was looking over his head, and turned to see his
brother standing in the doorway, with the sunlight behind him.

The half-hour she had promised him left Amaryllis little less unhappy
than Randal Bellamy.

Tea under the cedar was over, and Amaryllis could not eat even another
eclair, when he had said to her, "It's half-past five."

"Oh, yes," she replied, and folded her hands in her lap.

"So I've got till six o'clock," he went on.

"Yes," said Amaryllis, adding, a little uneasily, "and as much longer as
you like, Sir Randal."

He smiled at her mistake, and shook his head in resignation.

"You don't mean that--not in my sense," he said. "But look here, my
dear: I do really think it wouldn't be a bad thing for you to marry me.
You have no idea how good I should be to you. I have money and position.
You like me, and you will like me better. And for me--well, it hardly
seems fair to tell you what it would mean to me."

"Why not fair?" asked the girl, pained by his eagerness, and wishing it
all over.

"I've always thought that appealing _ad misericordiam_ was taking a mean
advantage. If I do it now, don't listen to me. But, if I'm worth it to
you, Amaryllis, take me, and you shan't regret it."

"You are worth anything--everything!" she cried, much distressed. "Worth
ever so much more, dear Sir Randal, than I could give. But I'd give you
all that I am--indeed I would--if it wasn't for--for----"

"Yes?" he asked. "Go on. Wasn't for what?"

"If it wasn't for something that says 'don't!' Oh, please understand. I
like you awfully, but it says it, and says it--I don't know why."

For a moment neither spoke.

"You _do_ understand, don't you?" she asked at last.

"I believe you, my dear," he answered; then added gently: "There's a
happier man somewhere, I think."

Amaryllis opened her eyes wide, almost, it seemed, in fear.

"Oh, no, no!" she cried. "Truthfully, I don't know any more than I've
told you."

When he was gone, she sat for a long time, wishing she could feel alone.

* * * * *

Several times between lunch and dinner that day had Amaryllis wondered
why Dick Bellamy was so taciturn--silent and sombre almost to
moroseness. But Randal had no doubt that he knew.

Dick, the least sullen and most even-tempered of men, was for once at
war with himself. The midnight phantom had become a daylight obsession.

Although he thought he knew what women were, he had never reached a
definition of "being in love." For, having more than once believed
himself in that condition, he had as often found himself too suddenly
free.

Before this English girl had seized upon his thoughts so that nothing
else interested him, he had said there was always the car in which to
run away.

He was not afraid of offending his brother, for Randal knew him as he
knew Randal. But a man does not throw himself into the sea just because
there is a lifebuoy handy. Secure, therefore, in his power to escape, it
was not until this afternoon that he found decision forced upon him. If
he went, there was good chance of freedom; if he stayed, no chance at
all.

He was lying on his back, looking up through the branches of a huge
tree, when he reached what he considered this clear alternative. He was
a man who seldom lied to himself; so now it was with a sudden sharpness
that he felt the sting of self-deception.

"I've been trying to kid myself that I'm like the damn fool who runs
away from the girl he's getting fond of because he's afraid of marriage.
But I'm not. I'm the coward who's up to his knees, and funks letting
himself all in for fear of not being able to reach what he's at least
able to swim for."

At dinner, Amaryllis, in sheer kindness of heart, shone with good
humour, readiness of reply and flow of conversation. Randal, while he
felt that she now and then forced the note, caught her motive, and
responding, smoothed her way. But Dick, having from childhood accepted
Randal's immunity from love as an axiom, took it all in good faith, and
emerging by quick degrees from his taciturnity, soon had his share of
the talk and laughter.

He too had noticed at first a certain strain and effort in the girl's
manner; but put it down to the absence of her father from the table. And
so, when the trunk-call came to tell them he was dining with the
Secretary of State and would be home late, and Amaryllis seemed to
"settle into her stride," Dick thought of the matter no further, but
only of her.

After coffee in the hall, Randal excused himself on the plea of
letter-writing, and Amaryllis, alone with his brother, fell silent.

For a minute he watched her unobtrusively, and wondered why the life had
gone out of her.

"Sleepy, Miss Caldegard?" he asked at last.

"No," she replied. "Tired--a little--and worried. Everybody's so keen on
something. Father on--you know what. You, though I've never seen you do
anything, look keener than any man I ever saw; and Sir Randal's keen
about horrid business-letters. Generally I don't even want to open
mine."

"'Cause you don't want to answer 'em," suggested Dick.

"Yes," admitted the girl, laughing--and suddenly stopped.

"What's up?" asked Dick.

"You've reminded me," she answered, pressing the bell beside her, "that
there's one of my letters this morning that I never looked at. We were
talking such a lot. I remember the look of the envelope. I haven't a
notion what was in it."

"Might be money," suggested Dick.

"Or bad news," said Amaryllis. "I hate letters. When you want them, they
don't say enough. When you don't, they say too much." Then, to the
parlour-maid she had summoned: "I have left some letters on my table. If
there's one that hasn't been opened, please bring it to me." And to
Dick: "I wonder what it's like having dinner with Home Secretaries."

"Nearest I've been to it was having breakfast with a Prime Minister," he
answered. "It was soon over, and not so bad as it might have been. The
omelette was dispersed by shrapnel, and a machine-gun found the range of
the coffee-pot."

"What did the Prime Minister do?" asked the girl.

"Forgot where the door was, and went out of office by the window."

"Was it a war?"

"Oh, no," said Dick. "Only Mexico."

The parlour-maid returned with a sealed letter. Until she was gone,
Amaryllis eyed the writing on the envelope with reluctant displeasure;
then looked at Dick.

"Please do," he said.

When she had glanced at the letter.

"I wish you'd said don't," she complained. "Neither money nor bad news.
Foolishness from an unpleasant person--that's all."

On the point of tearing it, she checked herself.

"It's dad's business after all," she murmured, more to herself than
Dick; and rising, went upstairs quickly, as about to return.

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