“Thank you,” said the doctor, and looking at his watch he continued, “It is now half-past six—just six hours ago. Did you partake of anything in the way of spirits?”
“No, nothing of the kind,” answered Grenits, “nothing but a little pale ale.”
The doctor then placed his thermometers in position under the patient’s arms.
While all this was doing, van Rheijn was busily employed dividing the opium into twenty-five equal parts. Then he lit the lamps, and, warming the bits of opium at the flame of the little lamp to make them soft, he kneaded into each of them some very finely cut Javanese tobacco, and then rolled them into small round pills. His friends looked on with some surprise at the dexterity with which he performed these manipulations; for he had not told them that, previously, he had asked Lim Ho to show him how the thing ought to be done. This lesson the wily Chinaman had been only too willing to give him. “Who knows,” thought he, with a grin, “perhaps the Europeans may take a fancy to the delicacy.” When Edward had prepared his pills, he produced the bedoedan. It consisted of a tolerably thick bamboo stem some nine or ten inches in length, highly polished and of a beautiful light-brown tint. This stem was open at one end and sealed at the other. Very near to the closed end and at right angles to the stem, a small earthenware bowl was inserted into the wood.
“It is a spick-span brand new one, I can assure you,” said van Rheijn to Theodoor, “I bought it myself for this very occasion.”
“Thank heaven for that!” cried Grenits. “Just fancy if one of those old sots had been sucking and slobbering at it! Bah! it makes me sick to think of it.”
“That shows how innocent you are,” rejoined van Rheijn, “your real lover of opium, your ‘feinschmecker,’ prizes an old pipe very highly. When the stem is thoroughly saturated and the bowl thickly encrusted with juice, the smoke must be indeed delicious.”
Thus saying, Edward put one of the little pills into the bowl and handed the pipe, thus loaded, to his friend, while he drew the little table with the lamp within easy reach of the smoker.
Grenits lay stretched out at full length on the divan, the front of his kabaai was wide open, so that the action of the chest was plainly visible, and his head rested on a somewhat hard pillow.
“Now,” remarked Grashuis, “there is only one thing lacking, and that is the greasy filthy pillow we saw in the den at Kaligaweh.”