“Don’t be deceived,” begged he. “Don’t be imposed upon. They are things given to the most deplorable treachery. One can place no faith in them whatever; they are worthy of not the lightest confidence. They have been known,” and here his voice shook a little, “to stop short in their functions at an instant’s notice—and this after years of apparent devotion.”
“Well,” said Scanlon, “that does sound like a dirty trick, that’s a fact. But what’s a fellow unaccustomed to such things to do? How is he to know when to jump in with his corrective measures?”
“Any time will do before the thing asserts its independence of you. If it is mild, beware of it; for like as not it will eventually become like an old man of the sea and rule you completely. Scourge it; drench it with compelling draughts; submerge it completely; bombard it with bitter pills.”
“I suppose,” said Bat, “you speak as a man who neglected all these measures.”
“Utterly, sir, utterly!” The saffron-hued man shook his head sadly. “I had no voice to speak a warning word; I was unlearned in the wiles of the thing. Even after it had secured the whip hand of me, I could have defeated it if I had been told how by a person of experience in such struggles. With a few dozen bottles of ‘Seaweed Tonic’ I could have stopped its assaults; and with a handful of ‘Grady’s Grey Granules’ I could have put it to flight.”
“Maybe,” said Mr. Scanlon, “I’ll lay in a stock of those some time.”
“They are the only permanent hope of man,” declared the yellow gentleman. “Behind a stockade made of the ‘Tonic’ and the ‘Granules’ he can defy the encroachments of even the most evilly disposed of livers.”
Bat went inside, smoked a second cigar, and chatted with the landlord. None of the guests was to be seen, and so the big man gradually drifted into a conversation concerning them. But the landlord was apparently without any information.
“They come and they go,” said he, “and, as I said, I’m glad to have them, to get over the autumn and the winter months. But I don’t know anything about them except that they are sick.”
After a time Scanlon, seeing that little was to be gained by lingering about the inn, departed. He noted that the jaundiced man was not upon the porch as he crossed it; but beyond that he never gave him a thought.