“I’m sure you don’t,” A.B.C. retorted, “and that’s exactly why I think it my duty to warn you. You may be interested to know that I’ve made some inquiries about your — shall I say, misadventure when in practice in London. In my view you were lucky to get off with only a wigging; if the coroner had been as clear-sighted as he was garrulous, something worse might have befallen you.”
“Don’t be a fool!” snapped the young man.
“I rarely am, my friend. So I warn you without further ado that, should any harm befall your uncle while you remain with him, I shall make it my business to demand a post-mortem.”
“Do you think I’m a murderer?” Clive Badling sneered.
“Potentially, yes,” said A.B.C. “I’m sure you are. No, don’t dream of using violence on me; despite my seniority in years, I’m probably still a much better boxer than you’ll ever he. So do be careful of your uncle’s health, won’t you? Or, by Paracelsus, I’ll make you wish you’d never been born. Good day.”
A door slammed and Clive Badling passed me to the gate, cursing finder his breath.
It may have been a coincidence, but I noted that the Colonel’s health quickly improved from that day, until he was as hale as ever.
Gradually the incident faded from my memory, and I began to think that my friend had been needlessly suspicious, for Clive Badling seemed to become more friendly and often accompanied his uncle when the old gentleman paid us a call. Still, there were rumors round the village that he was running into debt with bookmakers and moneylenders.
“That nephew of mine’s a good doctor, Mr. Hawkes,” the Colonel announced one morning, when he visited us alone. “He’s discovered at last what my trouble is; it’s my liver! He’s put me on a diet. Look at me! I haven’t been so fit for a dozen years. I tell you, Mr. Hawkes, if ever you’ve anything the matter with you, you might do worse than consult Clive.”
“What is the diet?” A.B.C. asked, disregarding the end of our guest’s remarks.
“Oh, it’s ridiculously simple. I’m not to eat anything fried or made with eggs, and I mustn’t drink any wine or spirits. That’s all — but it’s a bit of a strain, I don’t mind telling you.” The old gentleman smiled. “You see, if there’s one thing I like better than another, it’s a jolly good omelette and a glass of port to follow; but, by Jove, Mr. Hawkes, it’s worth losing them to feel as well as I do now!”
“Is that the whole treatment, Colonel!” I asked.
“Well, Clive’s giving me some injections, too,” the old gentleman replied. “Strychnine, I suppose. They’ve certainly bucked me up wonderfully.”
I threw a glance at A.B.C., but he ignored me. “I’ve often wondered,” my friend remarked, “why more Englishmen don’t give up port and drink strychnine instead — in safe doses, of course. It’s so much healthier and, to my mind, the flavor isn’t much inferior. After all, no Englishman likes a sweet wine, and yet he swills port, which is the sweetest of all.”
The Colonel laughed. “One either is or isn’t a port drinker, Mr. Hawkes. If you are — and I expect you are, despite what you say — you’ll agree with me that port’s infinite variety is the secret of its charm. One champagne is very like another, or they differ within narrow limits, but the varieties and vintages of port are a world in themselves. In my case, too, I’ve another reason for feeling well disposed towards port. Have I ever told you about our Lakdoo dinner?”
“Your what dinner?” I asked.
“Lakdoo, Mr. Johnstone, is a village on the borders of Tibet. I’m not surprised that you’ve never heard of it, for very few people have. But I’m never likely to forget it. You see, I was nearly wiped out there thirty years ago.”
“Be reminiscent, my dear Colonel,” A.B.C. cried. “Tell us how you cheated death.”
The old gentleman settled down in his easy chair and told us the whole story.
“Lakdoo is a village of twenty houses, and two hundred smells, all nasty,” the Colonel began, “and it’s up a valley not very far past Gilgit, full of the nastiest rocks and the coldest snow-streams I’ve ever come across. In the daytime it’s almost too hot to breathe, with the sun streaming down on you from directly overhead, while at nightfall the temperature drops well below freezing and there’s a wind that cuts like a scythe. An unpleasant climate, but not so unpleasant as were the local inhabitants! And they were not so bad as their neighbors in the next valleys, but we weren’t to know that.
“You see, two other subalterns and I happened to land up in Lakdoo on leave, looking for bear, and the very first night we were there, all our carriers and shikaris cleared out — they must have had a warning — and we found that a party of tribesmen had taken cover on a hill overlooking the village and were only waiting for us to come out to pick us off.
“We were lodged in a stone fort a little away from the rest of Lakdoo, and every time we opened the gate, they took pot-shots at us. The worst of it was that we only had a couple of cans of water and there was a four hundreds yards’ climb down to the river to get any more. So things looked damnably unhealthy for us. We couldn’t get out, and the tribesmen didn’t care to try to come in; they just sat down and waited for us to run out of water.
“We did our best, but the two cans couldn’t last long in that heat. To cut a long story short, we found ourselves one fine day with empty cans and only a bottle of port among us, and dying of thirst. We’d brought the port with us, intending to celebrate our first bear with it. But now that we were hunted instead of hunting, we decided to drink it right away and die fighting. It tasted pretty good, I can tell you, and, when it was finished, we shook hands and got ready to clear out as soon as darkness came. We hoped to fight our way back to Gilgit — not that there was much hope!
“Well, gentlemen, the fact that I’m sitting here proves that something unexpected happened. As a matter of fact, somebody back in Gilgit must have got wind of our trouble, for, just as we were opening the gate to make our sortie, there was a terrific shindy on the hillside and another tribe wandered along and carved up our besiegers, rescuing us. The other two subalterns and I swore that, ever afterwards so long as we lived, we’d try to dine together on the anniversary of that last evening and drink a bottle of that identical port. We’ve been lucky. We’re still alive and fairly fit; one of us is a General, another is in the Cabinet, and I’m here. But you realize what it’ll mean to me if I can’t have my share of the port at our next Lakdoo dinner.”
A.B.C. smiled at Colonel Badling’s conclusion. “A terrible predicament,” he said.
“It is indeed,” said our visitor, gloomily shaking his head.
We did not see him again for a few days, but during that time our housekeeper reminded us of his new diet.
Apologizing at breakfast for serving us sausages instead of eggs with our bacon, she said, “It’s that young Dr. Badling. He come round to my husband this morning, he did, and bought up all the eggs we got, and my husband never knowed that I hadn’t any in the house here for you. He’s been buying a terr’ble lot of eggs lately, has Dr. Badling.”
I looked at A.B.C. “Why on earth do the Badlings want so many eggs, if the Colonel isn’t allowed to eat them?” I asked him. He shrugged his shoulders without answering.
A day or two later our housekeeper brought up the subject again. “That young Dr. Badling, sir,” she told my friend, “is fair ruining my hens, he is. He’s been throwing ever so many eggshells into our hen-run, and, of course, that’ll ruin my hens.”
“I thought eggshells were good for hens,” I said. “Makes them lay eggs with good, hard shells, doesn’t it?”
“A little shell, well broken up, don’t do them no harm, sir,” replied the woman, “but if they gets big lumps of shells to eat, same as Dr. Badling’s thrown into my run, why, it encourages ’em to eat their own eggs. And that’s what they will do. I told young Dr. Badling so. ‘If you wants to buy all them eggs from me,’ I says, ‘I shan’t be able to let you have them if you makes my hens cat their own eggs.’ ”