"Tumpany!" he said with a giggle. "My wild-fowling man! Mary used to like him, so I suppose he's all right. But, damn him, looking out of the wall like that with his ugly red face!—"
He began to sing. His lips were dark-red and cracked, his eyes fixed and staring.
"Tiddle-iddle, iddle-tiddle, so the green frog said in the garden!"
Saliva dropped from the corners of his mouth.
His body was jerking like a puppet of a marionette display, actuated by unseen strings.
He began to dance.
Blazing eyes, dropping sweat and saliva, twitching, awful body. . . .
She left him dancing clumsily like a performing bear. She fled hurriedly down to the office of the commissionaire.
When the man, his assistant and Miss Harrison returned to the flat, Lothian was writhing on the floor in the last stages of delirium tremens.
As they carried him, tied and bound, to the nearest hospital, they had to listen to a cryptic, and to them, meaningless mutter that never ceased.