My Uncle Oswald(8)

He laid his head on one side and considered this question carefully. “We buy it in tiny packets,” he said. “Quarter ounce each. Very expensive stuff.”

“I want five pounds,” I said. “In bulk.”

“Are you staying here in the hotel?” he asked me.

“Yes.”

“Then I see you tomorrow with the answer. I must go around asking some questions.”

I left it at that for the time being.

The next morning the tall black hall porter was in his usual place by the hotel entrance. “What news of the powder?” I asked him.

“I fix,” he said. “I find a place where I can get you five pounds in weight of pure powder.”

“How much will it cost?” I asked him.

“You have English money?”

“I can get it.”

“It will cost you one thousand English pounds, sahib. Very cheap.”

“Then forget it,” I said, turning away.

“Five hundred,” he said.

“Fifty,” I said. “I’ll give you fifty pounds.”

“One hundred.”

“No. Fifty. That’s all I can afford.”

He shrugged and spread his palms upward. “You find the money,” he said. “I find the powder. Six o’clock tonight.”

“How will I know you won’t be giving me sawdust or something?”

“Sahib!” he cried. “I never cheat anyone.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“In that case,” he said, “we will test the powder on you by giving you a little dose before you pay me. How’s that?”

“Good idea,” I said. “See you at six.”

One of the London banks had an overseas branch in Khartoum. I went there and changed some of my French francs for pounds. At six p.m., I sought out the hall porter. He was now in the foyer of the hotel.

“You got it?” I asked him.

He pointed to a large brown-paper parcel standing on the floor behind a pillar. “You want to test it first, sahib? You are very welcome because this is the absolute top class quality Beetle powder in the Sudan. One pinhead of this and you go jig-a-jig all night long and half the next day.”

I didn’t think he would have offered me a trial run if the stuff hadn’t been right, so I gave him the money and took the parcel.

An hour later, I was on the night train to Cairo. Within ten days, I was back in Paris and knocking on the door of Madame Boisvain’s house in the avenue Marceau. I had my precious parcel with me. There had been no trouble with the French customs as I disembarked at Marseilles. In those days, they searched for knives and guns but nothing else.





3





I ANNOUNCED to Madame B that I was going to stay for quite a while but that I had one request to make. I was a science student, I told her. She said she knew that. It was my wish, I went on, not only to learn French during my stay in France, but also to pursue my scientific studies. I would therefore be conducting certain experiments in my room which involved the use of apparatus and chemicals that could be dangerous or poisonous to the inexperienced. Because of this, I wished to have a key to my room, and nobody should enter it.

“You are going to blow us all up!” she cried, clutching her cheeks.

“Have no fear, madame,” I said. “I am merely taking the normal precautions. My professors have taught me always to do this.”

“And who will clean your room and make your bed?”

“I will,” I said. “This will save you much trouble.”

She muttered and grumbled a fair bit, but gave way to me in the end.

Supper with the Boisvains that evening was pigs’ trotters in white sauce, another repellent dish. Monsieur B tucked into it with all the usual sucking noises and exclamations of ecstasy, and the glutinous white sauce was smeared over his entire face by the time he had finished. I excused myself from the table just as he was preparing to transfer his false teeth from mouth to fingerbowl. I went upstairs to my room and locked the door.

For the first time, I opened my big brown-paper parcel. The powder had been packed, thank goodness, in two large biscuit tins. I opened one up. The stuff was pale grey and almost as fine as flour. Here before me, I told myself, lay what was probably the biggest crock of gold a man could ever find. I say “probably” because as yet I had no proof of anything. I had only the Major’s word that the stuff worked and the hall porter’s word that it was the genuine article.

I lay on my bed and read a book until midnight. I then undressed and got into my pyjamas. I took a pin and held it upright over the open tin of powder. I sprinkled a pinch of powder over the upright pinhead. A tiny cluster of grey powder grains remained clinging to the top of the pin. Very carefully, I raised this to my mouth and licked off the powder. It tasted of nothing. I noted the time by my watch, then I sat on the edge of the bed to await results.