Page:The Master of Mysteries (1912).djvu/377

 nerves like a confounded pack of dogs, confound it! Thanks."

In reply, Astro had drawn up his water-pipe and inhaled a long whiff of the aromatic Russian tobacco that smoldered in the bowl. The colonel produced a cigar, bit off the end, and lighted it.

"I suppose you've seen the advertisements of 'Soothoid,' that chewing-gum stuff, all over the town, haven't you?" he began.

Astro nodded gravely.

"Biggest fake on earth," said the colonel, "and the most remunerative. My old uncle invented it, you know. Conceived the brilliantly vile idea of doping ordinary chicle with a tincture of opium and making chewing-gum of it. 'It soothes the nerves,'—I should say it did!—'Children cry for it,' and all that sort of thing! It's monstrous, of course. It ought to be suppressed by law, and it's only a question of time when this pure-food agitation will knock it out of business. It's a crime against civilization; but all the same it has made four millions for that disreputable old uncle of mine, and now the whole works belong to me. Brings me in eighteen thousand a year. I'm afraid to stop it, and more afraid not to. But that's not the point."

He rolled his cigar from one corner of his mouth to another, flicked a fleck of dust from his spotless trousers, and looked calmly at Astro. The Seer smiled, despite himself, waved his hand dispassionately for the other to proceed, and waited.

"The thing is this," the colonel went on. "I'm an expert on ordnance, and I've traveled all over the world for the government. Never at home from one year's end to another. I came back to find myself im-