Ambrotox and Limping Dick | Page 9

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