Page:Rowland--The Mountain of Fears.djvu/159

  "This, as you can guess, Doctor, was valuable information. I changed the subject and we boarded the ship. I caught a glimpse of Rosenthal as we went up the ladder. His eye glinted as it met mine; then he turned his back until we had gone below.

"It was then three o'clock. For two hours I poured cocktails into my officer, and by five he was very drunk, so drunk that I was able to leave him long enough to tell Rosenthal to meet me by the fountain in the park in an hour. Then I returned to my officer, who was nodding over another glass of spirits. I got him upon his feet and managed to return with him to the hotel without being interrupted. There I poured into him another bottle of champagne, after which he quietly subsided into inertia, when, with the aid of the proprietor, whose disapproval I silenced with a fee which he put down to drunken generosity, we undressed and put him to bed.

"The next step was the crucial one. I quickly took off my clothes and put on those [ 143 ]