200 The Diary of a Drug Fiend
was Miss Laleham, but now I am Lady Pen-
dragon.”
“Dear, dear,” he said, ‘‘ where can I have been?
ite out of the world, quite out of the world!”
“Oh, I’m not quite such an important person as
‘that, and I only married Sir Peter in July.”
“‘ Ah, that accounts for it,’’ said the doctor. ‘I’ve
been away all the summer in the heather with the
Marchioness of Eigg. Quite out of the world, quite
out of the world. Well, I’m sure you're very happy,
my dear Lady Pendragon.”’
He always mentioned a title with a noise like a
child sucking a stick of barley sugar.
I saw at once the way to appeal to him.
“Well, of course, you know,” I said, ‘in really
smart circles one has to offer heroin and cocaine to
people. It’s only a passing fashion, of course, but
while it’s on, one’s really out of it if one doesn’t do
the right thing.”
McCall got out of the chair at his desk, and drew up
a little tapestried stool close to mine.
“T see, I see,” he muttered confidentially, taking my
hand and beginning to stroke it gently, “ but you know,
it’s very hard to get.”
“It is for us poor outsiders,” I lamented, ‘‘ but
not for you.”
He rolled back my sleeve, and moved his hand up
and down inside of my forearm. I resented the
familiarity acutely. The snobbishness of the man
reminded me that he was the son of a small shopkeeper
in a lowland village—a fact which I shouldn’t have
thought of for a second but for his own unctuous
insistence on Debrett.
He got up and went to a little wall safe behind my
back. I could hear him open and shut it. He returned
and leant over the back of-my chair, stretching out his
left arm so that I could see what was in his hand.
It was a sealed ten-gramme bottle labelled “‘ Heroini
Hydrochlorid,’’ with the quantity and the maker's