“I never mentioned parrots,” he said, enunciating the words very distinctly. “I shouldn’t think of talking about parrots.”
“I once knowed a parson wot ’ad a parrot,” continued the old man. “Joey, they called “im.”
“Wot, the parson?” asked the little man.
“No, the parrot,” said the old fellow, mildly, “and that there parrot hadn’t ever been out of the parson’s family. Joined in family prayers, he did and said ‘Amen’ like a Christian. Well, one day this here parson-”
A rush of customers entering from the market drew the landlord’s attention away and drowned the next sentence or so of the story. The carter hailed some acquaintances and joined them in a fresh round of beer. Hector, shaking off the intoxicated gentleman, who seemed now to be inviting him to join a cozy little fishing party in Scotland, turned to go, but found himself caught and held by the old man.
“-and old parson found the bishop sitting over the cage with a lump of sugar in his fingers, saying, ‘Come on, Joey, say it! B… b… b…!’ And that, mind you,” said the old man, “was a Church of England bishop. And what do you think the bishop did then?”
“I can’t imagine,” said Hector.
“Made the parson a canon,” said the old man, triumphantly.
“Never!” said Hector.
“But that’s nothing,” pursued the old man. “There was a parrot I knew down in Somerset -”
Hector felt he really could not bear to hear about the parrot down in Somerset. He extricated himself politely and fled.
His next activity was to go home and have a bath, after which he coiled himself up on his bed and slept placidly till his normal breakfast-time at nine.
He breakfasted in his dressing-gown, and it was when he was transferring his various possessions from his grey flannels to his navy lounge suit that he came upon the little packet. It was neatly done up with sealing-wax in white paper, and bore the innocent label “Bicarbonate of Soda.” He stared at it in surprise.
Hector Puncheon was a young man with a hearty and healthy digestion. He had heard, of course, of sodium bicarb, and its virtues, but only as a wealthy man hears of hire-purchase. For the moment he thought he must have accidentally picked the little package up in the bathroom and slipped it into his pocket unaware. Then he remembered that he had not taken his coat into the bathroom that morning, and that he had emptied out the pockets the previous night. He distinctly recollected that, when the summons to the fire had reached him, he had had to tumble hurriedly into them the few odds and ends he habitually carried about him-handkerchief, keys, loose cash, pencils and what-not, taken from his dressing-table. It was quite inconceivable that there should have been any bicarbonate on his dressing-table.
Hector Puncheon was puzzled. A glance at the clock, however, reminded him that he had not time for puzzlement just then. He had to get down to St. Margaret’s, Westminster, by 10.30 to report the wedding of a fashionable beauty who was being married in the strictest secrecy at that unfashionable hour. He had then to hasten back to report a political meeting in Kingsway Hall, and thence he must gallop round the corner to attend a luncheon given to a distinguished airman in the Connaught Rooms. If the speeches were over by 3 o’clock, he could then make a dash for a train and get out to Esher, where a royalty was opening a new school and inaugurating it with a children’s tea-party. After which, if he were still alive, and had contrived to get his copy written up in the train, he could turn it in at the office and find time to think.
This strenuous programme was carried out without more than the usual number of exasperating hitches, and not until he had pushed the last sheet of copy over to the sub-editor, and was sitting, tired but conscious of work well done, in the Cock Tavern, tackling a beef-steak, did he give another thought to the mysterious packet of sodium bicarb. And now, the more he thought about it, the odder the incident became.
He ran over in his mind the various activities of the previous night. At the fire, he remembered now quite distinctly, he had put on his burberry and buttoned it up, by way of protecting his light grey flannels against showers of smuts and the spray of the firemen’s hoses. The mysterious package could hardly have been placed in his jacket-pocket then. After that, there had been interviews with various people-including the cat-the writing of his copy in the Morning Star offices and his breakfast in the Fleet Street eating-house. To suppose that he had accidentally found and pocketed four ounces of bicarbonate on any of these occasions seemed to him fantastic. Unless, of course, one of his newspaper colleagues had put the thing there for a joke. But who? And why?
He went on to consider the walk home and the conversation in the White Swan. His exhilarated acquaintance in dress clothes was the kind of man, he thought, who might from time to time require the assistance of a mild digestive and carminative. Possibly in one of his more affectionate moments he might have slipped the packet into Hector’s coat-pocket by mistake for his own. The two carters would not, Mr. Puncheon felt sure, be carrying drugs round with them…
Drugs. As the word shaped itself in his mind-for Hector Puncheon usually thought articulately, and often, indeed, conversed quite sensibly aloud with his own soul-an enormous query shot up in his brain. Bicarbonate of soda, hell! He was ready to stake his journalistic reputation it was nothing of the sort. His fingers sought the packet, which he had thrust back into the pocket where he had found it, and he was on the point of opening it and investigating the contents when a better idea struck him. Leaving his rump-steak half finished, and muttering to the astonished waiter that he would be back in a minute, he ran out hatless to the establishment of the nearest chemist, one Mr. Tweedle, who knew him well.
Mr. Tweedle s shop was shut, but a light still burned within, and Hector hammered violently until the door was opened by an assistant. Was Mr. Tweedle in? Yes, he was in, but he was just going. On being assured that Mr. Puncheon wanted to see Mr. Tweedle personally, the assistant volunteered to see what could be done.
Mr. Tweedle, hatted and coated, appeared from the inner recesses of the shop with just enough delay to make Hector feel that he had acted with some precipitation and had probably started out upon a wild-goose chase. Once started, however, he had to go through with it.
“Look here, Tweedle,” he said, “I’m sorry to bother you, and there’s probably nothing in it, but I wish you’d have a look at this for me. It came into my hands in rather a curious way.”
The chemist received the packet and held it balanced in his hand for a moment.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“I don’t know that anything’s wrong with it. I want you to tell me.”
“Bicarbonate of soda,” said Mr. Tweedle, glancing at the label and at the sealed flaps of the package. “No chemist’s name-the ordinary printed label. You don’t seem to have opened it.”
“No, I haven’t, and I want you to bear witness to that, if necessary. It appears to be just as it came from the chemist, doesn’t it?”
“It appears to be, certainly,” rejoined Mr. Tweedle in some surprise. “The label seems to be the original label and the ends have apparently only been sealed once, if that is what you want to know.”
“Yes, and I couldn’t have sealed it up like that, could I? I mean, it looks professional.”
“Quite.”
“Well, now, if you’re quite satisfied about that, open it.”
Mr. Tweedle carefully inserted a penknife beneath one flap, broke the wax and opened up the paper. The packet was, as might have been expected, filled with a fine white powder.
“What next?” inquired Mr. Tweedle.
“Well, is it bicarbonate of soda?”
Mr. Tweedle shook some of the powder out into the palm of his hand, looked closely at it, smelt it, moistened his finger and took up a few grains, and then carried them to his tongue. Then his face changed. He took out his handkerchief, wiped his mouth, poured the powder from his palm carefully back into the paper and asked: