8 The Diary of a Drug Fiend
The result had been that he had steadily become a
heavier and heavier drinker.
I learnt at the hospital that seventy-five per cent.
of the human bodyis composed of water; butin this
case, as in the old song, it must have been that he was
a relation of the McPherson who had a son,
“That married Noah’s daughter
And: nearly spoilt the flood
By drinking all the water.
And this he would have done,
I really do believe it,
But had that mixture been
Three parts or more Glen Livet.”
The slight figure of a young-old man with a bulbous
nose to detract from his otherwise remarkable beauty,
spoilt though it was by years of insane passions, came
into the café. His cold blue eyes were shifty and
malicious. One got the impression of some filthy
creature of the darkness—a raider from another world
looking about him for something to despoil. At his
heels lumbered his jackal, a huge, bloated, verminous
creature like a cockroach, in shabby black clothes,
ill-fitting, unbrushed and stained, his linen dirty, his
face bloated and pimpled, a horrible evil leer on his
dripping mouth, with its furniture like a bombed grave-
yard.
The café sizzled as the men entered. They were
notorious, if nothing else, and the leader was the Earl
of Bumble. Every one seemed to scent some mischief
in the air. The earl came up to the table next to mine,
and stopped deliberately short. A sneer passed across
his lips. He pointed to the two men.
“Drunken Bardolph and Ancient Pistol,” he said,
with his nose twitching with anger.
Jack Fordham was not behindhand with the repartee.
“Well roared, Bottom,’’ he replied calmly, as pat
as if the whole scene had been rehearsed beforehand.