Diary of a Drug Fiend

200 The Diary of a Drug Fiend was Miss Laleham, but now I am Lady Pen- dragon.” “Dear, dear,” he said, ‘‘ where can I have been? ite out of the world, quite out of the world!” “Oh, I’m not quite such an important person as ‘that, and I only married Sir Peter in July.” “‘ Ah, that accounts for it,’’ said the doctor. ‘I’ve been away all the summer in the heather with the Marchioness of Eigg. Quite out of the world, quite out of the world. Well, I’m sure you're very happy, my dear Lady Pendragon.”’ He always mentioned a title with a noise like a child sucking a stick of barley sugar. I saw at once the way to appeal to him. “Well, of course, you know,” I said, ‘in really smart circles one has to offer heroin and cocaine to people. It’s only a passing fashion, of course, but while it’s on, one’s really out of it if one doesn’t do the right thing.” McCall got out of the chair at his desk, and drew up a little tapestried stool close to mine. “T see, I see,” he muttered confidentially, taking my hand and beginning to stroke it gently, “ but you know, it’s very hard to get.” “It is for us poor outsiders,” I lamented, ‘‘ but not for you.” He rolled back my sleeve, and moved his hand up and down inside of my forearm. I resented the familiarity acutely. The snobbishness of the man reminded me that he was the son of a small shopkeeper in a lowland village—a fact which I shouldn’t have thought of for a second but for his own unctuous insistence on Debrett. He got up and went to a little wall safe behind my back. I could hear him open and shut it. He returned and leant over the back of-my chair, stretching out his left arm so that I could see what was in his hand. It was a sealed ten-gramme bottle labelled “‘ Heroini Hydrochlorid,’’ with the quantity and the maker's