"Aw! You're getting touchy. If I didn't get interested in something I'd go mad," chuckled Bridgers.
He had reached that stage of cocaine intoxication when the world was a very pleasant place indeed and full of subject for jocularity.
"This place is getting right on my nerves," he went on, "couldn't I go to London? I'm stagnating here. Why, some of the stuff I cultivated the other day wouldn't react. Isn't that so, Milsom? I get so dull in this hole that all bugs look alike to me."
Van Heerden glanced at the man who was addressed as Dr. Milsom and the latter nodded.
"Let him go back," he said, "I'll look after him. How's the lady?" asked Milsom when they were alone.
The other made a gesture and Dr. Milsom nodded.
"It's good stuff," he said. "I used to give it to lunatics in the days of long ago."
Van Heerden did not ask him what those days were. He never pryed too closely into the early lives of his associates, but Milsom's history was public property. Four years before he had completed a "life sentence" of fifteen years for a crime which had startled the world in '99.
"How are things generally?" he asked.