I assented to this excellent principle, noting, however, that he seemed to have “given way to ’em,” all the same.
As we had been talking, we had gradually drifted from the surgery up a flight of stairs to a shabby, cosy little room on the first floor, where a cheerful fire was burning and a copper kettle on a trivet purred contentedly and breathed forth little clouds of steam. Usher inducted me into a large easy chair, the depressed seat of which suggested its customary use by an elephant of sedentary habits, and produced from a cupboard a spirit decanter, a high-shouldered Dutch gin-bottle, a sugar-basin, and a couple of tumblers and sugar-crushers.
“Whisky or Hollands?” he demanded; and, as curiosity led me to select the latter, he commented: “That’s right, Gray. Good stuff, Hollands. Touches up the cubical epithelium—what! I am rather partial to a drop of Hollands.”
It was no empty profession. The initial dose made me open my eyes; and that was only a beginning. In a twinkling, as it seemed, his tumbler was empty and the collaboration of the bottle and the copper kettle was repeated. And so it went on for nearly an hour, until I began to grow quite uneasy, though without any visible cause, so far as Usher was concerned. He did not turn a hair (he hadn’t very many to turn, for that matter, but I speak figuratively). The only effect that I could observe was an increasing fluency of speech with a tendency to discursiveness; and I must admit that his conversation was highly entertaining. But his evident intention to “make a night of it” set me planning to make my escape without appearing to slight his hospitality. How I should have managed it, unaided by the direct interposition of Providence, I cannot guess: for his conversation had now taken the form of an interminable sentence punctuated by indistinguishable commas; but in the midst of this steadily flowing stream of eloquence the outer silence was rent by the sudden jangling of a bell.
Usher stopped short, stared at me solemnly, deliberately emptied his tumbler, and stood up.
“Night bell, ol’ chappie,” he explained. “Got to go out. But don’t you disturb yourself. Back in a few minutes. Soon polish ’em off.”
“I’ll walk round with you as far as your patient’s house,” said I, “and then I shall have to get home. It is past ten and I have a longish walk to Camden-square.”
He was disposed to argue the point, but another violent jangling cut his protests short and sent him hurrying down the stairs with me close at his heels. A couple of minutes later we were out in the street, following in the wake of a hurrying figure; and, looking at Usher as he walked sedately at my side, with his top-hat, his whiskers, and his inevitable umbrella, I had the feeling that all those jorums of Hollands had been consumed in vain. In appearance, in manner, in speech, and in gait, he was just his normal self, with never a hint of any change from the status quo ante bellum.
Our course led us into the purlieus of St. John Street-road, where we presently turned into a narrow, winding, and curiously desolate little street, along which we proceeded for a few hundred yards, when our “fore-runner” halted at a door into which he inserted a latch-key. When we arrived at the open door, inside which a shadowy figure was lurking, Usher stopped and held out his hand.
“Good night, old chap,” he said. “Sorry you can’t come back with me. If you keep straight on and turn to the left at the cross-roads you will come out presently into the King’s Cross-road. Then you’ll know your way. So long.”