“I’m glad I came to the theatre,” he said mockingly to himself, in one of his lucid intervals. “Better have gone to a doctor for something to send me to sleep.”
Then he became conscious of the fact that people in the pit were saying “Hush!” and “Sit down!” and that somebody had risen and come out from the place where he was jammed in, right in the centre of the stalls, just as the climax of the play was being reached.
Then he grew conscious that he was the offender, and breathed more freely as he got out into the cool night air.
It was not ten, and he found a chemist’s open near the Strand.
“I’m not very well,” he said to the gentlemanly-looking man behind the counter. “Had a lot of trouble, made me restless, and I want to take something to give me a good nights rest. Can you give me a dose of laudanum?”
The man looked at him curiously.
“You ought to go to a doctor,” he said.
“Doctor! Absurd! What for? I’m as well as you are. Give me something calming. It will be better than going back to the hotel and taking brandy or wine.”
The chemist nodded, and prepared a draught.
“What’s that? Laudanum—morphia?”