‘You’re getting things to work very nicely on your line this year. Very few of the other lines can beat what you’ve done up here.’
It may here be mentioned that the carriages were dirty, curtainless, and uncomfortable; the average pace was, as I have said, about ten miles an hour, and there were only two trains each way per day.
Smith felt Maori’s compliment, and replied with a sigh—‘Yes, yes, it has cost me a lot of thought. You can’t imagine the anxiety and scheming I have gone through to get things as they are.’
Then he passed his hand over his little brow, as if he wished us to imagine that his brain was yet feeling the effects of the strain that had been imposed upon it.
‘Everything fits to a nicety, and I think—the employés are satisfied, and the public are pleased.’
‘You’re quite right,’ said Maori, with a twinkle in his eye; ‘the very fact that no one grumbles shows that things are satisfactory. It’s impossible to improve on what you have done, Mr. Smith.’ Mac afterwards suggested to me that walking would be a great improvement.
It was dark when we reached Cambridge. After some tea at an hotel called Kirkwood’s Cottage, at the recommendation of our landlady, we adjourned to the Town Hall to witness the spiritualistic performance of Professor Baldwin. The performance, which was clever and amusing, consisted of many rope-tying tricks after the manner of the original Davenport Brothers, finding a pin hidden amongst the audience, and finally an exhibition by Mrs. Baldwin of her powers as a thought-reader. In the latter performance you wrote a question on a piece of paper which you placed in your pocket. Mrs. Baldwin undertook, while in a trance, to tell you what the question was, and to give the same an answer. How she succeeded to the extent she did was a mystery. All we could do when we got outside was to say, ‘Well, it’s a trick, do you know.’
When I went to my bedroom that night, I observed standing on my dressing-table a spherically shaped blue flask, with a corrugated surface. When I first went into the room on my arrival, I had seen this same bottle, and thought it was a scent-bottle or something or other which had been left in the room by accident. As I undressed I could not keep my eyes away from the queer-looking bottle, which I observed was corked and had evidently not been opened. Some sort of schnaps, perhaps? No, I know what it is; we are getting near the hot springs, and there is some sort of mineral water put up here as a sample just to induce strangers to buy. It might, however, be whisky, I said to myself on reflection; but whatever it was, if I opened it, I must pay.
So, blowing the light out, I jumped into bed, congratulating myself on having escaped from a dodgy old landlady. Still, I could not help thinking about the blue bottle. It was so very different to all bottles that I had seen before. It’s a funny way of forcing business by exciting the curiosity of people who want to go to sleep, I thought. And so I kept on thinking, and thinking, and speculating as to the contents and raison d’être of the blue bottle. I suppose it must have been two hours before I went to sleep.
When I awakened, the first thing I saw was the blue bottle. The prominent position it occupied upon the dressing-table, together with its oddness of shape and colour, made it an object from which I could not remove my eyes. The more I looked at the thing the more I desired to solve the riddle.