I anticipated a swift drink an' a speedy return, because I wanted
to see the performin' elephants. Instead o' which Vickery began to
navigate the town at the rate o' knots, lookin' in at a bar every three
minutes approximate Greenwich time. I'm not a drinkin' man, though there
are those present"--he cocked his unforgetable eye at me--"who may have
seen me more or less imbued with the fragrant spirit. None the less, when
I drink I like to do it at anchor an' not at an average speed of eighteen
knots on the measured mile. There's a tank as you might say at the back o'
that big hotel up the hill--what do they call it?"
"The Molteno Reservoir," I suggested, and Hooper nodded.
"That was his limit o' drift. We walked there an' we come down through the
Gardens--there was a South-Easter blowin'--an' we finished up by the
Docks. Then we bore up the road to Salt River, and wherever there was a
pub Vickery put in sweatin'. He didn't look at what he drunk--he didn't
look at the change. He walked an' he drunk an' he perspired in rivers. I
understood why old Crocus 'ad come back in the condition 'e did, because
Vickery an' I 'ad two an' a half hours o' this gipsy manoeuvre an' when we
got back to the station there wasn't a dry atom on or in me."
"Did he say anything?" Pritchard asked.
"The sum total of 'is conversation from 7.45 P.M. till 11.15 P.M. was
'Let's have another.' Thus the mornin' an' the evenin' were the first day,
as Scripture says.
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