But I held up my hand again.
“I must beg you to control yourself,” I said, “until this unfortunate mishap has been fully explained to you.”
“Mishap?” he said. “Do you call it a mishap, sir, to invite your employer to a religious gathering and leave him to be received by a thing like a stunted gorilla, because you’re too drunk to stand by yourself?”
“But, my dear sir,” I began.
“Don’t say that again,” he said. “Don’t say anything again. I don’t want to hear it. You were drunk, sir. You were damnably drunk. You were so drunk that you fell off the platform.”
Involuntarily I winced, as who would not have done? But once more I held up my hand.
“Mr. Lorton,” I said, “you have forgotten who I am, or such words could never have escaped you. And I was neither drunk, nor would have such a thing have been possible. I was merely suffering from deliberate port-poisoning.”
If anything, however, he became more violent.
“Port-poisoning?” he bawled. “What’s port-poisoning? Port isn’t poison, sir. I drink it myself. In fact I was obliged, sir, to drink some of your own—an excellent port, sir, that probably saved my life.”
“I regret to hear it,” I said. “But allow me to point out to you that the fluid you mention was not my own, and that I had been informed by its donors that it was a species of fruit squash, imported from Portugal and known as Portugalade.”