Part 13 (1/2)

”I confess I don't see why.”

”Cigarettes d'Auvergne!”

”Some French rubbish.”

”The boy has evidently been dependent on them?”

”It looks like it.”

”And this man Bompas made him give them all up?”

”So he has the impudence to say.”

”Is it possible you don't see the importance of all this?”

Mr. Upton confessed incompetence unashamed.

”I never heard of these cigarettes before; they're an imported article; you can't get them everywhere, I'll swear! Your boy has got to rely on them; he's out of reach of the doctor who's forbidden them; he'll try to get them somewhere! If he's been trying in London, I'll find out where before I'm twenty-four hours older!”

”But how can you?” asked Mr. Upton, less impressed with the possibility than by this rapid if obvious piece of reasoning.

”A. V. M.!” replied Eugene Thrush, with cryptic smile.

”Who on earth is he?”

”n.o.body; it's the principle on which I work.”

”A. V. M.?”

”Otherwise the old nursery game of Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral.”

Again Mr. Upton had to prevent himself by main force from declaring it all no laughing matter; but his silence was almost bellicose.

”You divide things into two,” explained Thrush, ”and go on so dividing them until you come down to the indivisible unit which is the answer to the riddle. Animal or Vegetable? Vegetable or Mineral? Northern or Southern Hemisphere? Ah! I thought your childhood was not so very much longer ago than mine.”

Mr. Upton had shrugged an impatient recognition of the game.

”In this case it's Chemists Who Do Sell D'Auvergne Cigarettes and Chemists Who Don't. Then-Chemists Who Do and Did Yesterday, and Chemists Who Do but Didn't! But we can probably improve on the old game by playing both rounds at once.”

”I confess I don't quite follow,” said Mr. Upton, ”though there seems some method in the madness.”

”It's all the method I've got,” rejoined Thrush frankly. ”But you shall see it working, for unless I'm much mistaken this is Mullins back sooner than I expected.”

Mullins it was, and with the negative information expected and desired, though the professional melancholy of his countenance might have been the precursor of the worst possible news. The hospitals on his rapid round had included Charing Cross, St. Thomas's, St. George's, and the Royal Free; but he had telephoned besides to St. Mary's and St. Bartholomew's.

At none of these inst.i.tutions had a young gentleman of the name of Upton, or of unknown name, been admitted in the last forty-eight hours. Mullins, however, looked as sympathetically depressed as though no news had lost its proverbial value; and he had one of those blue-black faces that lend themselves to the look, his chin being in perpetual mourning for the day before.

”Don't go, Mullins! I've another job for you,” said Eugene Thrush. ”Take the telephone directory and the London directory, and sit you down at my desk. Look up 'chemists' under 'trades'; there are pages of them. Work through the list with the telephone directory, and ring up every chemist who's on the telephone, beginning with the ones nearest in, to ask if he keeps d'Auvergne Cigarettes for asthma. Make a note of the first few who do; go round to them all in turn, and be back here at nine with a box from each. Complain to each of the difficulty of getting 'em elsewhere-say you wonder there's so little demand-and with any luck you should find out whether and to whom they've sold any since Wednesday evening.”

”But surely that's the whole point?” suggested the ironmaster.

”It's the next point,” said Thrush. ”The first is to divide the chemists of London into the Animals who keep the cigarettes and the Vegetables who don't. I should really like to play the next round myself, but Mullins must do something while we're out.”