Mr. Ricardo repeated the name. It conveyed nothing to him whatever.
"There are a good many bulbs just like that in the cup upon the mantelshelf," said Hanaud.
Ricardo looked quickly up.
"Why?" he asked.
"Mescal is a drug."
Ricardo started.
"Yes, you are beginning to understand now," Hanaud continued, "why your young friend Calladine turned out of St. James's into the Adelphi Terrace."
Ricardo turned the little bulb over in his fingers.
"You make a decoction of it, I suppose?" he said.
"Or you can use it as the Indians do in Yucatan," replied Hanaud. "Mescal enters into their religious ceremonies. They sit at night in a circle about a fire built in the forest and chew it, whilst one of their number beats perpetually upon a drum."