"I can use money wisely, for I am a great man. If I were rich I should cruise in the South Seas."
"That has been done before," I murmured.
"I shall go to Tahiti and surround myself with beautiful island women. There I will build the world's greatest laboratory and search for the philosopher's stone as I recline against the bronze breasts of flower-decked girls."
I meditated a moment on the vision he had conjured up and concluded he would look rather well in the part as outlined. Finally I ventured. "Isn't Tahiti quite an out of the way place for a chemical laboratory? 'Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.'"
"I do not agree with you. The hero of 'Locksley Hall' was wrong. He but reflected sentimentally the materialism of the nineteenth century."
I was amused to have my quotation recognized by him. What was this strange man, and what had he done with himself in the world? I wondered what kind of chemist he would prove.
"In spite of your youth, Edward, I see you are, like me, a thinker and philosopher; on a lower plane, of course, yet our minds have much in common."
He talked after a fashion of the characters in an early Victorian novel or a transpontine melodrama. Where could such a creature have obtained the skill to keep consistently his elaborate pose? I wished to draw him out, so I played back to him: "I find the world a mildly amusing place and always interesting even in its unpleasant phases."
"That is very true, Edward. At one time I was forced by unusual circumstances to apply my chemical skill to the making of what is known as moonshine whiskey. This was in the mountains of North Carolina. Here, if you please, was one of life's unpleasant phases—that I, of all men, should be technically classified by a capitalistic government as a criminal and hence be subjected to annoyances from internal revenue minions. Nevertheless, I was profoundly interested in the problems involved in eluding man-made laws."
He bared his right forearm; across the drum-like skin ran a long seared scar. "That was as near as the law came to me," he said, and emptied a pony of brandy, which he had ordered as soon as his bottle of stout was empty. I made an effort to stop him by referring to the early hour at which work began at the factory. There was as yet no trace of thickness in his speech; only his fiery eyes were shining more and more brightly. With his next brandy he commanded Welsh rabbits and chocolate ice-cream. Fortunately he made no attempt to urge me to keep pace with him in drinking. As for the morrow, he dismissed it with a shrug.