soon enough, and sat
on the floor by my safe for some time looking at it.

"Look here," said I to Pyecraft next day, and snatched the slip away
from his eager grasp.

"So far as I--can make it out, this is a recipe for Loss of Weight.
("Ah!" said Pyecraft.) I'm not absolutely sure, but I think it's that.
And if you take my advice you'll leave it alone. Because, you know--I
blacken my blood in your interest, Pyecraft--my ancestors on that side
were, so far as I can gather, a jolly queer lot. See?"

"Let me try it," said Pyecraft.

I leant back in my chair. My imagination made one mighty effort and
fell flat within me. "What in Heaven's name, Pyecraft," I asked, "do you
think you'll look like when you get thin?"

He was impervious to reason. I made him promise never to say a word to
me about his disgusting fatness again whatever happened--never, and then
I handed him that little piece of skin.

"It's nasty stuff," I said.

"No matter," he said, and took it.

He goggled at it. "But--but--" he said.

He had just discovered that it wasn't English.

"To the best of my ability," I said, "I will do you a translation."

I did my best. After that we didn't speak for a fortnight. Whenever
he approached me I frowned and motioned him away, and he respected our
compact, but at the end of a fortnight he was as fat as ever. And then
he got a word in.

"I must speak," he said. "It isn't fair. There's something wrong. It's
done me no good. You're not doing your great-grandmother justice."

"Where's the recipe?"

He produced it gingerly from his pocket-book.

I ran my eye over the items. "Was the egg addled?" I asked.

"No. Ought it to have been?"

"That," I said, "goes without saying in all my poor dear
great-grandmother's recipes. When condition or quality is not specified
you must get the worst. She was drastic or nothing.... And there's one
or two possible alternatives to some of these other things. You got
FRESH rattlesnake venom."

"I got a rattlesnake from Jamrach's. It cost--it cost--"

"That's your affair, anyhow. This last item--"

"I know a man who--"

"Yes. H'm. Well, I'll write the alternatives down. So far as I know
the language, the spelling of this recipe is particularly atrocious.
By-the-bye, dog here probably means pariah dog."

For a month after that I saw Pyecraft constantly at the club and as
fat and anxious as ever. He kept our treaty, but at times he broke
the spirit of it by shaking his