"Why?"
"It is like peyote—just another herb. It has a similar effect to that of the Mescal cactus button, but since you would not seem to be a devotee of the Sun Dance I do not think it would interest you."
I went into a slump again when I heard him run down yage. I knew what peyote was. It might be all right for Indians, but it just made the average junkie sick to his stomach.
"What would interest me, then?" I asked him.
"I have a certain amount of a substance called uru," he said. "It is—and I do not exaggerate when I say this—the most."
I couldn't help grinning. Jones had been speaking the store-bought English of the educated foreigner and then he came out with this hep expression.
"Tell me more, professor," I said. "You're ringing my bell."
"You tell me more, my friend," he came back. "What is your great interest in this will-o'-the-wisp yage that so excites you, although you claim to be 'off the stuff'?"
I could almost hear the quotation marks he put around the phrase.
"Okay," I said. "I'll tell you."