"During the Great War," said Brown, "I went down with pneumonia. They
painted my chest yellow, and, when I asked the Sister why, she said it
was a counter-irritant. That's what you want to use now, my lad. Stand
up to your little friend and beat him at his own game."
"But how?" I said. "I can't. What he doesn't know about the gentle
Czech isn't worth a cussovitch."
"Cultivate a counter-burden," said Brown, "and make him eat it as he
has made you eat his."
When I left Brown it was decided that I was henceforth to be an
authority on Mittel-Afrika. The next evening I was purposely
unoccupied in a corner of the smoking-room when T.-T. came in,
frowning and bowed down by his burden, to which apparently I had
brought no relief.
"Well, to-day's news from Mittel-Europa is hardly--" he began.
"Scarcely glanced at it," I said. "I was so busy with the news from
Mittel-Afrika--Abyssinia, in fact."
T.-T. looked surprised, partly, no doubt, because he knew as well as
I did that Abyssinia is nowhere near the middle of Africa. Then he
gained balance and reopened with the remark that "The ineradicable
weakness of the Czecho-Slovak is--"
"Just what I feel about the Ethiopians," I said.
"Of course there is in the Czecho a fundamental--" began T.-T. once
more.
"Not half so fundamental as in the Abyssinians," I said promptly.
T.-T. was puzzled but obstinate. The burden, I think, was rather bad
that evening. He tried me with Grabski and got as far as saying that
he had little respect for that gentleman's antecedents.
I broke in by comparing Grabski's antecedents with the antecedents of
B'lumbu, the Abyssinian Deputy Under-secretary of the Admiralty, much
to the detriment of the latter. Then I launched out into a long and
startling _exposé_ of what I called the Swarthy Peril. I told T.-T.
that the Ethiopians ate their young, and warned him that, unless he
was careful, they would soon be over here devouring his own spectacled
progeny. I told him about the Ethiopic secret plans for the invasion
of Mexico as a stepping-stone to the subjugation of Mittel-Amerika.
I hinted that Abyssinian spies were everywhere--that even one of the
club waiters was not above suspicion.
For thirty-five minutes I held T.-T. in his chair (may the Abyssinian
gods forgive me!). After the first three minutes he forgot his burden
and never a word spake he.
Then I released him with a final warning against putting any faith at
all in Gran'slâm, the Abyssinian Assistant Foreign Secretary, and as
we parted I said gratefully, "It has been a pleasure to talk to such a
sympathetic listener."
I don't think T.-T. really believes even now in the Swarthy Peril, but
the counter-irritant has done its work.
* * * * *