AMBROTOX.
Amaryllis found her father and Sir Randal at the breakfast-table.
"I'm so glad I'm not the laziest," she said, as she took her seat.
"I'm afraid you are, my dear," replied her father.
"Dick's fetching his car from Iddingfield," explained Randal.
The air was torn by three distinct wails from a syren.
"How unearthly!" said Amaryllis, with her hands to her ears.
"That's Dick," said his 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 proportion of cases, very quickly to an ineradicable
habit. In wise hands, the patient's and the public's ignorance being
maintained, Ambrotox"--and here he bestowed a little laugh on amateur
nomenclature--"Ambrotox will be a blessing almost as notable as was
chloroform in the fifties.
"But there's another side: carry the thing a step further, and you have
a life, waking, and dreams, sleeping, of delight such as has never
been--I think never could be expressed in words; not because, as with De
Quincey and his laudanum, the coherent story of the dreams and visions
cannot be remembered, but because the clear sunshine of personal
happiness and confidence in the future--the pure joy of being
alive--which the abuser of Ambrotox experiences in his whole daily life,
is incommunicable. It is a period of bliss, of clear head, good
impulses, celestial dreams, and steady hope. These effects last, on an
even dose, longer than with any other drug of which I have experience.
And then there begins and grows a desire for action, the devil preaching
that no good works have resulted from the faith, the hope and the good
intentions. A little more, and we shall accomplish, he assures us, the
full measure of our dreams. The dose is increased, confidence returns,
and performance is still for to-morrow. I have never seen a victim of
Ambrotox pursue this descent to the grave, but all analogous experience
assures me that the final stages must be hell."
"How do you know so much about the effects?" asked Dick.
"There was only one possible subject for experiment--myself," replied
Caldegard.
Amaryllis sat upright in her chair, and drew in her breath sharply. But
she did not 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 formulæ 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
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.