(O Conscience, what a Adder art thou!)

Mrs. Pratchett allotted him the room, and took his bag to it.  He then went back before the fire, and fell a biting his nails.

“Waiter!” biting between the words, “give me,” bite, “pen and paper; and in five minutes,” bite, “let me have, if you please,” bite, “a”, bite, “Messenger.”

Unmindful of his waning soup, he wrote and sent off six notes before he touched his dinner.  Three were City; three West-End.  The City letters were to Cornhill, Ludgate-hill, and Farringdon Street.  The West-End letters were to Great Marlborough Street, New Burlington Street, and Piccadilly.  Everybody was systematically denied at every one of the six places, and there was not a vestige of any answer.  Our light porter whispered to me, when he came back with that report, “All Booksellers.”

But before then he had cleared off his dinner, and his bottle of wine.  He now—­mark the concurrence with the document formerly given in full!—­knocked a plate of biscuits off the table with his agitated elber (but without breakage), and demanded boiling brandy-and-water.

Now fully convinced that it was Himself, I perspired with the utmost freedom.  When he became flushed with the heated stimulant referred to, he again demanded pen and paper, and passed the succeeding two hours in producing a manuscript which he put in the fire when completed.  He then went up to bed, attended by Mrs. Pratchett.  Mrs. Pratchett (who was aware of my emotions) told me, on coming down, that she had noticed his eye rolling into every corner of the passages and staircase, as if in search of his Luggage, and that, looking back as she shut the door of 24 B, she perceived him with his coat already thrown off immersing himself bodily under the bedstead, like a chimley-sweep before the application of machinery.

The next day—­I forbear the horrors of that night—­was a very foggy day in our part of London, insomuch that it was necessary to light the Coffee-room gas.  We was still alone, and no feverish words of mine can do justice to the fitfulness of his appearance as he sat at No. 4 table, increased by there being something wrong with the meter.

Having again ordered his dinner, he went out, and was out for the best part of two hours.  Inquiring on his return whether any of the answers had arrived, and receiving an unqualified negative, his instant call was for mulligatawny, the cayenne pepper, and orange brandy.

Feeling that the mortal struggle was now at hand, I also felt that I must be equal to him, and with that view resolved that whatever he took I would take.  Behind my partition, but keeping my eye on him over the curtain, I therefore operated on Mulligatawny, Cayenne Pepper, and Orange Brandy.  And at a later period of the day, when he again said, “Orange Brandy,” I said so too, in a lower tone, to George, my Second Lieutenant (my First was absent on leave), who acts between me and the bar.