THE GREAT IDEA.
Perkins has got hold of a brilliant idea. He explained it to me in the Tube yesterday.
"Our little world," he said, "is turned topsy-turvy."
"Knocked absolutely sideways," I replied.
"Those who were rich in the old days," said Perkins, "haven't two sixpences to rub together, and the world's workers are rolling in Royces and having iced méringues with every meal. What follows?"
"Indigestion," I said promptly.
"Everybody," he said, ignoring my jeu d'esprit, "feels like a fish out of water, and discontent is rife. The newly-poor man wishes he had in him the stuff of which millionaires are made, and the profiteer sighs for a few pints of the true ultramarine Norman blood, as it would be so helpful when dealing with valets, gamekeepers and the other haughty vassals of his new entourage. And that is where my scheme comes in. There are oceans of blue blood surging about in the veins and arteries of dukes and other persons who have absolutely no further use for such a commodity, and I'm sure lots of it could be had at almost less than the present price of milk. So what is to prevent the successful hosier from having the real stuff coursing through the auricles and ventricles of his palpitating heart, since transfusion is such a simple stunt nowadays?"
"And I suppose," I said, "that you would bleed him first so as to make room for the new blood?"
"There you touch the real beauty of my idea," said Perkins. "The plebeian sighs for aristocratic blood to enable him to hold his own in his novel surroundings; the aristocrat could do with a little bright red fluid to help him to turn an honest penny. So it is merely a case of cross-transfusion; no waste, no suffering, no weakness from loss of blood on either side."
I gasped at the magnitude of the idea.
"I'm drawing up plans," Perkins continued, "for a journal devoted to the matter, in which the interested parties can advertise their blood-stock for disposal, a sort of 'Blood Exchange and Mart.' The advertisements alone would pay, I expect, for the cost of production. See," he said, handing me a slip of paper, "these are the sort of ads. we should get."
This is what I read:—
"Peer, ruined by the War, would sell one-third of arterial contents for cash, or would exchange blood-outfits with successful woollen manufacturer.—5016 Kensington Gore, W.
"To War Profiteers. Several quarts of the real cerulean for disposal. Been in same family for generations. Pedigree can be inspected at office of advertiser's solicitor. Cross-transfusion not objected to. Address in first instance, Bart., 204, Bleeding Heart Yard, E.C.
"Public School and University Man of Plantagenet extraction would like to correspond with healthy Coal Miner with view to cross-transfusion. Would sell soul for two shillings.—A. Vane-Bludyer, 135, Down (and Out) Street, West Kensington, W."
"Makes your blood run cold," I said, handing back the paper.
"Not it," he said, detaching himself from the strap as the train drew into King's Cross; "not if the operation's properly performed."