II
After dinner, Brookes and Dr Henson-Blake went off to see a friend at the Savoy. They left with grim half-chaffing injunctions to young Lake to take care of himself. Lake, a little sulky, settled himself in one corner of the hall to smoke a cigarette before his experiment.
And suddenly Miss Jocelyn, whom he did not know, came up to him.
She was a dark girl, pale-skinned and red-lipped. She had a little of that jaunty, almost slangy American air of being able to take care of herself. But she also carried the impression that this air was superficial, and underneath it there might be poetry of a rather volcanic order. She sat down quietly on the other side of the table, and said:
"Do you not know me, Mr Lake?"
Lake said that at any rate he was charmed to have the privilege of making her acquaintance.
"But," she went on, "I want you to behave just as if you had known me for some time. My Aunt Esmeralda is watching us from away back, and she's pretty 'cute. Don't smile too much. Offer me a cigarette or order some coffee for me, as if it were an ordinary thing that you had often done before for me. Don't look at me all the time—look away now and then. I'll tell you why I'm doing this directly."
Lake did his best to act the part, and to take things more simply. He was consumed with curiosity, and for that reason he said, as he lighted her cigarette, "It is so nice of you to do this—to take pity on my loneliness—that I feel the reason why does not matter at all. I am unquestioningly contented with things as they are."
"I just want to tell you. I know Dr Henson-Blake—we were on the tourist boat together. He's playing it low down on you. That tobacco he gave you is ordinary tobacco. He wants to make you say afterwards that you got a lot of funny sensations out of it, and then he'll say there was no hasheesh in it at all, and just laugh at you. You needn't ask me how I know, but it's the truth."
"I believe you. The possibility of it had occurred to me. Well, I have only to tell him that I got no sensations at all, and that's all over with this little joke."