“‘All right,’ he said, ‘but don’t be in such a hurry, and remember, if you don’t, someone else will. Why should he have the money rather than you?’

“I walked quickly out of the restaurant, but I had hardly gone a hundred yards when, putting my hand into my pocket for a box of matches, I felt my fingers touch a smooth leather purse. I took it out, opened it, and saw inside a small grey envelope. Inside the envelope was a reddish powder.

“I shall never forget what I endured during the next few hours. I brought forward all the arguments that I could summon—duty, patriotism, my name, but there remained always at the back of my mind this thought: ‘Two thousand pounds means an income of a hundred pounds a year. I can resign my commission, and spend the rest of my life in quiet study.’ I began to picture the long evenings before a fire, with a lamp shedding a mild light upon my book, and I contrasted it with the smoky atmosphere of the mess and the Colonel’s interminable anecdotes. And there was no real reason why I should refuse this opportunity. Someone else would accept it. The opium was certain to be got through. This was the chance for which I had waited all my life: it would never come again.”

“But you did refuse?” I said.

“Yes. I did, and I do not know whether or not I did wisely. I went through agonies of mind, and when my orderly came at half-past nine to tell me that it was time for me to be starting on my rounds I knew that if I once got out there I should be unable to resist. So I took out a bottle of whisky, filled up my glass, spilt the powder into it, and before the red powder had had time to reach the bottom I had raised the glass to my mouth and emptied it.

“It was a good drug for the purpose for which it was required. I sat down in my chair. I did not feel ill, or sick, or dizzy. I just went off, and when I came round it was after half-past ten, and I was safe. I felt no ill effects.”

“And that was the end of it?” I said.

“As far as I was concerned. But I suppose that the story does not end there really. I met the same man a couple of months later in another café a few miles farther up the coast. He looked cleaner and smarter than when I had seen him before, and he greeted me effusively and stood me drinks. After a while he took me aside.

“‘You were a fool,’ he said.

“I shrugged my shoulders.