He had written to his wife at Nice, letters so falsely sympathetic that he felt she must suspect something. He followed up every letter with a long, costly telegram. A telegram is not autograph and the very lesions of the prose conceal the lesions of the sender's dull intention. His physical state was beginning to be so alarming that he was putting himself constantly under the influence of bromide and such-like drugs. He went regularly to the Turkish Bath in Jermyn Street, had his face greased and hammered in the Haymarket each morning, and fought with a constantly growing terror against an advancing horror which he trembled to think might not be far off now.
Delirium Tremens.
But when Rita met him at night, drugs, massage and alcohol had had their influence and kept him still upon the brink.
In his well-cut evening clothes, with his face a little fatter, a little redder perhaps, he was still her clever, debonnair Gilbert.
A necessity to her now.
CHAPTER IV
THE CHAMBER OF HORRORS
"Let us have a quiet hour,
Let us hob-and-nob with Death."