Ambrotox and Limping Dick | Page 7

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 séance 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 anæsthetic 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