when you sent for Dr. Greaves at three in the morning."

Caldegard nodded.

"For three weeks after that," went on Amaryllis indignantly, "I thought you were horribly ill."

"That, my darling," answered her father, smiling at her, "was because I was getting better."

"I've been wondering, Caldegard," said Randal, "how often and how strongly the remembrance of that incommunicable bliss cries out for an epicurean repetition of those early stages of your scientific experiment."

Caldegard laughed. "Oh, she calls, and calls pretty loud sometimes," he said. "Let her call. It's all part of the experiment. Knowledge, you see, has the sweeter voice."

Amaryllis had tears in her eyes, and for a moment the others waited on her evident desire to speak.

"But do you think, father," she said at last, "that's it's really worth while to let the world know you have found a more delightful temptation than opium or cocaine, just for the sake of giving a few sick people a more comfortable medicine than they've been accustomed to. Ambrotox!" she sighed scornfully. "I wish I'd never given it that pretty name. I think it's horrid stuff!"

"That's what I was going to ask," said Dick.

"As for publicity, my dear boy," replied Caldegard, "Ambrotox will very probably do more harm than good if its properties become general knowledge. But the Home Office is drafting a comprehensive measure for State control of the manufacture and distribution of injurious drugs. You all know that the growth of the drug habit caused serious alarm in the early days of the war, and that even the amendment to the Defence of the Realm Act, forbidding the unauthorised sale and possession of cocaine and other poisons, did little to diminish the illicit traffic. Such contrabrand dealing is immensely lucrative, and prices rise in direct ratio with the danger. But the new Bill may contain a clause vesting in the State the formulæ and the manufacture of all newly-discovered drugs of this kind. The Government is relying in this matter greatly upon the experience and advice of Sir Randal, and if a sufficiently stringent clause can be devised, it is probable that never more than three living persons, in addition to the discoverer, will be acquainted with the processes necessary to the manufacture of a newly discovered chemical compound which has been brought under State control. In regard to the good which may be done by Ambrotox—do you remember, Amaryllis, the two pretty little old ladies who lived in the small grey house with the red blinds? Don't say names, my child, nor mention the town. They were sisters and devotedly attached."

The girl's face was a picture of curiosity.

"Yes, father," she said. "And they grew pale and anxious. One of them came to see you, and then the other, several times; and once, just before I went to Scotland, they both came together. I remember how dreadfully ill they looked. But when I came home, their cheeks were pink again, one always laughed when the other did, and their garden was full of roses."

"What about 'em?" asked Dick.

"This," said Caldegard: "For several years each of those old women had been taking morphia; each had been concealing it from the other; each had suffered in conscience the torture of the damned; each confessed to me her vice, and the dreadful failure of her struggle to overcome it. Experimentally I treated each with Ambrotox, in gradually decreasing doses. The return to health was quicker and more complete than I had dared to hope; the craving for morphia has not reappeared, and I do not think it will."

"Oh, you darling!" cried Amaryllis. "I always thought you'd something to do with it."

"It is the story of two cases only, I admit," continued Caldegard. "But I am convinced that I have found a means of releasing at least unwilling slaves from that bondage."

"But what do you gain by telling us?" asked Dick.

"Secrecy," said Caldegard. "You and my daughter know now the importance of my two years' work, and you cannot fail to see the danger of a rumour that 'Professor Caldegard, we understand, has achieved an epoch-making discovery in the history of science. An anodyne with more than all the charms and few of the dangers of opium will bring comfort with a good conscience to thousands of sufferers in this nerve-racked world.' Every chemist in the country that knows my line of work will be searching in a furious effort to forestall the new legislation by discovering and putting on the market new synthetic opiates. There is not, perhaps, much fear that chance shooting will achieve the actual bull's-eye of Ambrotox. But there is a greater danger than commercial rivalry—criminal! The illicit-drug interest is growing in numbers and wealth. Every threat of so-called temperance legislation stimulates it. We have lately heard much of crime as a policy. Soon, perhaps, the world will learn with startled disgust, that crime went into trade two years ago.

"There are men in every big city to whom thousands of pounds and the lives of many hirelings would be a small price to pay for the half-sheet of paper and the small bottle hidden in the safe in that alcove.

"Knowing a little," he concluded, turning to Dick, "you might have told too much. Knowing everything, you will tell nothing at all."

There was a silence in the room, so heavy that it seemed long. And then,

"Some dope," said Dick Bellamy.

CHAPTER VI.

AMARYLLIS.

A little after noon on the following day, Amaryllis and Dick Bellamy, followed by Gorgon with his tongue hanging out of his mouth, entered the hall by the front door, clamouring for drinks, to find Caldegard swearing over a telegram.

"What's the matter, dad?" she asked.

"Sir Charles Colombe," replied her father. "He will be deeply indebted if I will call at the Home Office at one-thirty p.m. I should think he would be! If the message had been sent in time I could have caught the twelve thirty-five. It's a quarter past now, and it can't be done."

"Yes, it can," said Dick. "Grab your hat and tie it on, while I get my car."

Randal, coming from his study, was in time to see the car vanish in a cloud of dust.

"Where are they going?" he asked.

"To catch the twelve thirty-five," replied Amaryllis. "Dick says he can do it in seven and a half minutes."

Randal not only noticed the christian name, but also the girl's unconsciousness of having used it.

"They want father at the Home Office. Who's Sir Charles Colombe, Sir Randal?" she asked.

"Permanent Under Secretary," he answered. "I suppose Broadfoot is making trouble again."

And he looked at her as if he were thinking of Amaryllis rather than of permanent or political chiefs of Home Affairs.

"This is Friday, you know," he said at last.

"Yes," replied the girl, and Randal thought her face showed embarrassment—but of what nature, he could not tell.

"I won't spoil your lunch, my dear child," he said, looking down at her with eyes curiously contracted. "But if you'll give me half an hour in the afternoon——"

"Of course I will," she replied, with frank kindness. "And, oh! may I have a lemon-squash?"

A little later, as he watched her drink it, he admired her more than ever before. Since he first met her he had taken increasing pleasure from the tall figure, of which the fine lines and just proportions hid the strength and energy he had seen her upon occasion display; and he had often asked himself in what attitude or action her inherent grace appeared most charming. Sometimes it was driving from the tee, at another taking a swift volley which she must run to meet; or, again, just pouring out his coffee. But now, lounging on the old leather sofa, with her head tipped well back for red lips and white teeth to capture the slip of ice sliding to them from the bottom of the long tumbler, he thought her the very perfection of innocent freedom and symmetry.

And when