Diary of a Drug Fiend

The Gitter on the Snow 85 mean the wild fancies that you find in a crank, but a good, wholesome, sound imagination.” In the ordinary way, I should have been embarrassed by so direct a compliment from a man who was so evidently in the know, a man who was holding his own with the brightest minds all over the world. But in my present mood I took it as perfectly natural. Lou laughed in my ear. ‘ That’s right, Cockie, dear,” she chirruped. ‘“ This is where you go right in and win. I’ve really got to have those pearls, you know.” _ “She’s quite right,’ agreed Feccles. “‘ When you're through with this honeymoon, come round with me, and we'll take our coats off and get into the game for all we’re worth and a bit more, and when we come out, we'll have J. D. Rockefeller as flat as a pancake.” “ Well,” said I, ‘no time like the present. I don’t want to buttin, but if I could be any use to you about this deal of yours——”’ Feccles shook his head. _ “No,” he said, ‘‘ this isn’t the sort of thing at all I’m putting my last bob into the deal; but it’s a risky business at the best, and I wouldn’t take a chance on your dropping five thou’ on the very first bet. Of course, it is rather a good thing if it comes off——” . “* Let’s have the details, dear boy,” I said, trying to feel like a business man bredin the bone. “The thing itself’s simple enough,” said Feccles. “It’s just a case of taking up an option on some wells at a place called Sitka. They used to be all right before the war—but in my opinion they were never properly developed. They haven’t been worked ever since, and it might take all sorts of money to put them on the map again. But that’s the smaller point. What I and my friends know and nobody else has got on to is that if we apply the Feldenberg process to the parti- cular kind of oil that Sitka yields, we’ve got practically a world’s monopoly of the highest class oil that exists. I needn’t tell you that we can sell it at our own price.”