“If anything gives way and you tumble down,” I said, “you'll break your
neck, Pyecraft.”
“I wish I could,” he wheezed.
“A man of your age and weight getting up to kiddish gymnastics--”
“Don't,” he said, and looked agonised.
“I'll tell you,” he said, and gesticulated.
“How the deuce,” said I, “are you holding on up there?”
And then abruptly I realised that he was not holding on at all, that he
was floating up there--just as a gas-filled bladder might have floated
in the same position. He began a struggle to thrust himself away
from the ceiling and to clamber down the wall to me. “It's that
prescription,” he panted, as he did so. “Your great-gran--”
He took hold of a framed engraving rather carelessly as he spoke and
it gave way, and he flew back to the ceiling again, while the picture
smashed onto the sofa. Bump he went against the ceiling, and I knew then
why he was all over white on the more salient curves and angles of his
person. He tried again more carefully, coming down by way of the mantel.
It was really a most extraordinary spectacle, that great, fat,
apoplectic-looking man upside down and trying to get from the ceiling to
the floor. “That prescription,” he said. “Too successful.”
“How?”
“Loss of weight--almost complete.”
And then, of course, I understood.
“By Jove, Pyecraft,” said I, “what you wanted was a cure for fatness!
But you always called it weight. You would call it weight.”
Somehow I was extremely delighted. I quite liked Pyecraft for the time.
“Let me help you!” I said, and took his hand and pulled him down. He
kicked about, trying to get a foothold somewhere. It was very like
holding a flag on a windy day.
“That table,” he said, pointing, “is solid mahogany and very heavy. If
you can put me under that---”
I did, and there he wallowed about like a captive balloon, while I stood
on his hearthrug and talked to him.