"You appear to be a methodical boy, Teddy," he remarked with a yawn, at the same time choosing a Meissen ware dish as an ash tray. "I can't be bothered to write results down. I carry them stored here," and he tapped his forehead.
"All very well," I replied, "but what would happen if you dropped dead?"
Prospero smiled: "That is impossible. I have been sent to this planet to do a great work. Not until all the world rings with the name de Fougère shall I pass away. When that time comes I may pass, like Arthur, into the deep. I have seen my death in dreams, and it is a glorious one. There is no fear of my falling in the street."
All this explanation was not so comforting to me as it was to him, and I decided to add his records to mine, as far as it was possible to get them from observation and question. Was he a megalomaniac, or was his ego an effect of drugs upon a nerve-wracked constitution? Was there any knowledge accompanying this colossal conceit—this ego-centrism of his?
"I grant you, Teddy, that last evening has given you some cause to mistrust me. As soon as this headache clears from my brain, you shall see and marvel at the true de Fougère. You imagine I am often as you saw me last night? You are wrong, young man, wrong. That is the body of de Fougère struggling for freedom from the mind of de Fougère. I make my body so completely my slave that at times it revolts and demands such food as drugs and flesh."
I was fascinated by this pompous speech, which seemed as if it had been written out beforehand and memorized. A hundred questions were on the tip of my tongue. Where had he acquired this language, this farrago of phrases from Godey's Ladies' Magazine? This thought kept recurring to me as the most inexplicable of all the strange things about this man. I turned to my morning's work and abandoned the problem of Prospero.
In the evening I went to Knowlton's room at the Otooska House and laid formal complaint against de Fougère. Knowlton grinned: "It's great experience for you, Teddy boy. You don't meet many jewels like Prospero at your pink teas, I guess. So he hit the booze and worse, in spite of your protests? Tut, tut, Teddy that's bad."
"Not only that, but I tell you he uses morphine," I said, nettled by the way Knowlton took my story.
"Our contract is only for three months, Teddy, and he has forgotten more chemistry than most people will ever know. Now, Ted, keep your hair on. I'm simply gambling on a long chance. If we keep him fairly straight for three months, he can be mightily useful. If we don't, we are only out three months' salary for him. He spent two months' of it last night, which pretty well guarantees us against further blow-ups. I wanted to pay him the whole three in advance, but the old devil was too foxy to take it," Knowlton added reflectively.