82 The Diary of a Drug Fiend
course of civilisation. I ate it; and if I were in similar
circumstances to-morrow, I would do it again.
In the immortal words of Browning, “‘ You lied,
D’Ormea, I do not repent.” Beside which, this was no
ordinary lunch. It was big with the future.
It was an unqualified success from the start. We
were all in our best form. Feccles talked freely and
irresponsibly with the lightness of champagne. He
talked about himself and his amazing luck in financial
matters; but he never stayed long enough on any
subject to make a definite impression or, you might
say, to allow of a reply. He interspersed his remarks
with the liveliest anecdotes, and apologised towards
the end of the meal for having been preoccupied with
the deal which he had on at the moment.
“I’m afraid it’s literally obsessing me,” he said.
“ But you know it makes, or rather will make, a big
difference to my prospects. Unfortunately, I’m not a
millionaire like you, old thing. I’ve been doing very
well, but somehow, it’s gone as easy as it came. But
I’ve scraped up twenty thousand of the best to buy an
eighth share in this oil proposition that I told you
about.”
“No,” put in Lou, “ you didn’t tell us what it was.”
“T made sure I had,” he laughed back ; “ I’ve got it
fairly on the brain, especially since that lunch was
put off. I need another five thou’, you see, and I was
going to dig it out of those birds. The only difficulty
was that I can’t exactly borrow it on my face, can I ?
and I don’t want to let those birds into ‘the know’—
they’d simply snap the whole thing up for themselves.
By the way, that reminds me of a very good thing
I heard of the other day——’”’ and he rattled off an
amusing story which had no connection with what he
had been saying before.
I didn’t listen to what it was. My brain was working
very fast with the champagne on top of the other
things. His talk had brought to my mind that I should
have to wire for another thousand to-day or to-morrow.