Ambrotox and Limping Dick | Page 8

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 formul? 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