That evening I took that queer, odd-scented sandalwood box out of my safe and turned the rustling skins over. The gentleman who wrote the recipes for my great-grandmother evidently had a weakness for skins of a miscellaneous origin, and his handwriting was cramped to the last degree. Some of the things are quite unreadable to me--though my family, with its Indian Civil Service associations, has kept up a knowledge of Hindustani from generation to generation--and none are absolutely plain sailing. But I found the one that I knew was there soon enough, and sat on the floor by my safe for some time looking at it.
"Look here," said I to Pyecraft next day, and snatched the slip away from his eager grasp.
"So far as I--can make it out, this is a recipe for Loss of Weight.
("Ah!" said Pyecraft.) I'm not absolutely sure, but I think it's that.
And if you take my advice you'll leave it alone. Because, you know--I blacken my blood in your interest, Pyecraft--my ancestors on that side were, so far as I can gather, a jolly queer lot. See?"
"Let me try it," said Pyecraft.
I leant back in my chair. My imagination made one mighty effort and fell flat within me. "What in Heaven's name, Pyecraft," I asked, "do you think you'll look like when you get thin?"
He was impervious to reason. I made him promise never to say a word to me about his disgusting fatness again whatever happened--never, and then I handed him that little piece of skin.
"It's nasty stuff," I said.
"No matter," he said, and took it.
He goggled at it. "But--but--" he said.
He had just discovered that it wasn't English.
"To the best of my ability," I said, "I will do you a translation."
I did my best. After that we didn't speak for a fortnight. Whenever he approached me I frowned and motioned him away, and he respected our compact, but at the end of a fortnight he was as fat as ever.
And then he got a word in.
"I must speak," he said. "It isn't fair. There's something wrong.
It's done me no good. You're not doing your great-grandmother justice."
"Where's the recipe?"
He produced it gingerly from his pocket-book.
I ran my eye over the items. "Was the egg addled?" I asked.
"No. Ought it to have been?"
"That," I said, "goes without saying in all my poor dear great-grandmother's recipes. When condition or quality is not specified you must get the worst. She was drastic or nothing. . . . And there's one or two possible alternatives to some of these other things. You got FRESH rattlesnake venom."
"I got a rattlesnake from Jamrach's. It cost--it cost--"
"That's your affair, anyhow. This last item--"
"I know a man who--"
"Yes. H'm. Well, I'll write the alternatives down. So far as I know the language, the spelling of this recipe is particularly atrocious.
By-the-bye, dog here probably means pariah dog."
For a month after that I saw Pyecraft constantly at the club and as fat and anxious as ever. He kept our treaty, but at times he broke the spirit of it by shaking his head despondently. Then one day in the cloakroom he said, "Your great-grandmother--"
"Not a word against her," I said; and he held his peace.
I could have fancied he had desisted, and I saw him one day talking to three new members about his fatness as though he was in search of other recipes. And then, quite unexpectedly, his telegram came.
"Mr. Formalyn!" bawled a page-boy under my nose, and I took the telegram and opened it at once.
"For Heaven's sake come.--Pyecraft."
"H'm," said I, and to tell the truth I was so pleased at the rehabilitation of my great grandmother's reputation this evidently promised that I made a most excellent lunch.
I got Pyecraft's address from the hall porter. Pyecraft inhabited the upper half of a house in Bloomsbury, and I went there so soon as I had done my coffee and Trappistine. I did not wait to finish my cigar.
"Mr. Pyecraft?" said I, at the front door.
They believed he was ill; he hadn't been out for two days.
"He expects me," said I, and they sent me up.
I rang the bell at the lattice-door upon the landing.
"He shouldn't have tried it, anyhow," I said to myself. "A man who eats like a pig ought to look like a pig."
An obviously worthy woman, with an anxious face and a carelessly placed cap, came and surveyed me through the lattice.
I gave my name and she let me in in a dubious fashion.
"Well?" said I, as we stood together inside Pyecraft's piece of the landing.
"'E said you was to come in if you came," she said, and regarded me, making no motion to show me anywhere. And then, confidentially, "'E's locked in, sir."
"Locked in?"
"Locked himself in yesterday morning and 'asn't let any one in since, sir. And ever and again SWEARING. Oh, my!"
I stared at the door she indicated by her glances.
"In there?" I said.
"Yes, sir."
"What's up?"
She shook her head sadly, "'E keeps on calling for vittles, sir.
'EAVY vittles 'e wants. I get 'im what I can. Pork 'e's 'ad, sooit puddin', sossiges, noo bread. Everythink like that. Left outside, if you please, and me go away. 'E's eatin', sir, somethink AWFUL."
There came a piping bawl from inside the door: "That Formalyn?"
"That you, Pyecraft?" I shouted, and went and banged the door.
"Tell her to go away."
I did.
Then I could hear a curious pattering upon the door, almost like some one feeling for the handle in the dark, and Pyecraft's familiar grunts.
"It's all right," I said, "she's gone."
But for a long time the door didn't open.
I heard the key turn. Then Pyecraft's voice said, "Come in."
I turned the handle and opened the door. Naturally I expected to see Pyecraft.
Well, you know, he wasn't there!
I never had such a shock in my life. There was his sitting-room in a state of untidy disorder, plates and dishes among the books and writing things, and several chairs overturned, but Pyecraft--"It's all right, o' man; shut the door," he said, and then I discovered him.
There he was right up close to the cornice in the corner by the door, as though some one had glued him to the ceiling. His face was anxious and angry. He panted and gesticulated. "Shut the door," he said.
"If that woman gets hold of it--"
