Diary of a Drug Fiend

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.