THE INSOMNIAC.
Miss Brown announced her intention of retiring to roost. Not that she was likely to sleep a blink, she said; but she thought all early-Victorian old ladies should act accordingly.
She asked Aunt Angela what she took for her insomnia. Aunt Angela said she fed it exclusively on bromides. Edward said he gave his veronal and Schopenhauer, five grains of the former or a chapter of the latter.
They prattled of the dietary and idiosyncrasies of their several insomnias as though they had been so many exacting pet animals. Miss Brown then asked me what I did for mine.
Edward spluttered merrily. "He rises with the nightingale, comes bounding downstairs some time after tea and wants to know why breakfast isn't ready. Only last week I heard him exhorting Harriet to call him early next day as he was going to a dance."
They all looked reproachfully at me because I didn't keep a pet insomnia too. I spoke up for myself. I admitted I hadn't got one, and what was more was proud of it. All healthy massive thinkers are heavy sleepers, I insisted. They must sleep heavily to recuperate the enormous amount of vitality expended by them in their waking hours. Sleep, I informed my audience, is Nature's reward to the blameless and energetic liver. If they could not sleep now they were but paying for past years of idleness and excess, and they had only themselves to blame. I was going on to tell them that an easy conscience is the best anodyne, etc., but they snatched up their candles and went to bed. I went thither myself shortly afterwards.
I was awakened in the dead of night by a rapping at my door.
"Who's there?" I growled.
"I—Jane Brown," said a hollow voice.
"What's the matter?"
"Hush, there are men in the house."
"If they're burglars tell 'em the silver's in the sideboard."
"It's the police."
I sat up in bed. "The police!—why?—what?"
"Shissh! come quickly and don't make a noise," breathed Miss Brown.
I hurried into a shooting-jacket and slippers and joined the lady on the landing. She carried a candle and was adequately if somewhat grotesquely clad in a dressing-gown and an eider-down quilt secured about her waist by a knotted bath-towel. On her head she wore a large black hat. She put her finger to her lips and led the way downstairs. The hall was empty.
"That's curious," said Miss Brown. "There were eighteen mounted policemen in here just now. I was talking to the Inspector—such a nice young man, an intimate friend of the late Sir Christopher Wren, who, he informs me privately, did not kill Cock Robin."
She paused, winked and then suddenly dealt me three hearty smacks—one on the shoulder, one on the arm and one in the small of the back. I removed myself hastily out of range.
"Tarantulas, or Peruvian ant-bears, crawling all over you," Miss Brown explained. "Fortunate I saw them in time, as their suck is fatal in ninety-nine cases out of a million, or so Garibaldi says in the Origin of Species." She sniffed. "Tell me, do you smell blood?"
I told her that I did not.
"I do," she said, "quite close at hand too. Yum-yum, I like warm blood." She looked at me through half-closed eyelids. "I should think you'd bleed very prettily, very prettily."
I removed myself still further out of range, assuring her that in spite of my complexion I was in reality anæmic.
She pointed a finger at me. "I know where those policemen are. They're in the garden digging for the body."
"What body?" I gasped.
"Why, Einstein's, of course," said Miss Brown. "Edward murdered him last night for his theory. Didn't you suspect?"
I confessed that I had not.
"Oh, yes," she said; "smothered him with a pen-wiper. I saw him do it, but I said nothing for Angela's sake, she's so refined."
She darted from me into the drawing-room. I followed and found her standing before the fireplace waving the candle wildly in one hand, a poker in the other and sniffing loudly.
"We must save Edward," she said; "we must find the body and hide it before they can bring in a writ of Habeas Corpus. It is here. I can smell blood. Look under the sofa."
She made a flourish at me with her weapon and I at once dived under the sofa. I am a brave man, but I know better than to withstand people in Miss Brown's state of mind.
"Is it there?" she inquired.
"No."
"Then search under the carpet—quickly!"
She swung the poker round her head and I searched quickly under the carpet. During the next hour, at the dictates of her and her poker, I burrowed under a score of carpets, swarmed numerous book-cases, explored a host of cupboards, dived under a multitude of furniture and even climbed into the open chimney-place of the study, because Miss Brown's nose imagined it smelt roasting flesh up there. These people must be humoured. When I came down (accompanied by a heavy fall of soot) the lady had vanished. I rushed into the hall. She was mounting the stairs.
"Where are you going now?" I demanded.
She leaned over the balustrade and nodded to me, yawning broadly: "To Edward's room. He must have taken the corpse to bed with him."
"Stop! Hold on! Come back," I implored, panic-stricken. Miss Brown held imperviously on. I sped after her, but mercifully she had got the rooms mixed in her decomposed brain and, instead of turning into Edward's, walked straight into her own and shut the door behind her. I wedged a chair against the handle to prevent any further excursions for the night and crept softly away.
As I went I heard a soft chuckle from within, the senseless laughter, as I diagnosed it, of a raving maniac.
I got down to breakfast early next morning, determined to tell the whole sad story and have Miss Brown put under restraint without further ado.
Before I could get a word out, however, the lunatic herself appeared, looking, I thought, absolutely full of beans. She and Aunt Angela exchanged salutations.
"I hope you slept better last night, Jane."
"Splendidly, thank you, Angela, except for an hour or so; but I got up and walked it off."
"Walked it off! Where?"
"All over the house. Most exciting."
"Do you mean to say you were walking about the house last night all by yourself?" Aunt Angela exclaimed in horror.
Miss Brown shook her grey head. "Oh, no, not by myself. Our sympathetic young friend had a touch of insomnia himself for once and was good enough to keep me company." She smiled sweetly in my direction. "He was most entertaining. I've been chuckling ever since."
Patlander.
Urchin (who has been "moved on" by emaciated policeman). "Ain't yer got a cook on your beat?"