"Pardon me," murmured the doctor, "I pass--"
"--on their lips, are at the same time battening on the proceeds of an infamous monopoly of a drug dealing death and disease to a whole continent."
"One-third of one per cent of the total population," murmured the doctor again.
"You forget the opium grown in China," put in Sonny with great heat.
"My dear fellow, isn't there a story somewhere about the Emperor of China's clothes? If I remember right he forgot to put 'em on, and then every one was afraid to tell him he was naked. It appears to me that in this opium business the good gentleman hasn't a rag of reason for complaint, but that you are all afraid to say so. If we can prevent our subjects from growing poppy except under supervision, why can't he? It isn't Jonah's gourd, but a three month crop."
Sonny baba began to walk up and down the room excitedly. "It is perfectly inexplicable to me how a man like you--"
"Excuse me," interrupted the doctor. "I'll explain. I'm forty-four years of age. Two and twenty years of that I lived in a parish in Scotland where every decent, respectable body would have thought shame to himself if he didn't have more whisky than he could carry on market days. The other two and twenty I've spent in India. Out of cantonments, where they've learnt the trick from us, I only remember having met two drunken men in all those years, and though I see more of the natives than most people, I can only call to mind three who might be said to have suffered seriously from the effects of opium.[[13]] But it is a subject which it is quite useless to discuss. It turns on a question of heredity, like most things. The Indo-Germanic races never have taken and never will take to narcotics, so naturally they abuse them--and drink instead. Chacun à son gout."
"And mine is to give poor old Dhurm Singh an extra pension when I go itinerating, and send him back to end his days in peace in his village."
The doctor whistled. "Don't you wish you may get him to do it?"
"He must if he is a hindrance to the work--"