Page:Edgar Jepson--the four philanthropists.djvu/51

Rh a book on the diseases of the eye, and set about mastering all the symptoms which demand the use of that drug, that he might feign them, and have it prescribed for him. We needed, too, a good hocussing drug; and while Chelubai and I were debating how to find a doctor of sufficient scientific attainments to be able to give us the formula, Bottiger, in a somewhat shame-faced way, told us that he knew a doctor as able as he was drunken; and he was sure that for a couple of guineas he could get from him what he wanted.

It was an easy enough matter to buy false beards which would look like natural growths in the dusk or the dark; and we also bought noiseless boots, in the soles of which little pads of india-rubber had been fixed to deaden the foot-fall. It went rather against the grain to wear ready-made boots; but we had no time to have them made for us. Indeed, it seemed to me dangerous to have them made to measure, for neither a respectable barrister nor a respectable baronet really needs noiseless boots. These we bought from a strange bootmaker. Chelubai made no bones about it; he assured us that both in the United States and Shanghai it was the custom to wear ready-made boots.

Having thus equipped ourselves for our philanthropic enterprise, and having decided to use the sand-bag, we allowed Fortune to choose who should