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Page 4
* * * * *
THE INSOMNIAC.
Miss Brown announced her intention of retiring to roost. Not that she was
likely to sleep a blink, she said; but she thought all early-Victorian old
ladies should act accordingly.
She asked Aunt Angela what she took for her insomnia. Aunt Angela said she
fed it exclusively on bromides. Edward said he gave his veronal and
SCHOPENHAUER, five grains of the former or a chapter of the latter.
They prattled of the dietary and idiosyncrasies of their several insomnias
as though they had been so many exacting pet animals. Miss Brown then asked
me what I did for mine.
Edward spluttered merrily. "He rises with the nightingale, comes bounding
downstairs some time after tea and wants to know why breakfast isn't ready.
Only last week I heard him exhorting Harriet to call him early next day as
he was going to a dance."
They all looked reproachfully at me because I didn't keep a pet insomnia
too. I spoke up for myself. I admitted I hadn't got one, and what was more
was proud of it. All healthy massive thinkers are heavy sleepers, I
insisted. They must sleep heavily to recuperate the enormous amount of
vitality expended by them in their waking hours. Sleep, I informed my
audience, is Nature's reward to the blameless and energetic liver. If they
could not sleep now they were but paying for past years of idleness and
excess, and they had only themselves to blame. I was going on to tell them
that an easy conscience is the best anodyne, etc., but they snatched up
their candles and went to bed. I went thither myself shortly afterwards.
I was awakened in the dead of night by a rapping at my door.
"Who's there?" I growled.
"I--Jane Brown," said a hollow voice.
"What's the matter?"
"Hush, there are men in the house."
"If they're burglars tell 'em the silver's in the sideboard."
"It's the police."
I sat up in bed. "The police!--why?--what?"
"Shissh! come quickly and don't make a noise," breathed Miss Brown.
I hurried into a shooting-jacket and slippers and joined the lady on the
landing. She carried a candle and was adequately if somewhat grotesquely
clad in a dressing-gown and an eider-down quilt secured about her waist by
a knotted bath-towel. On her head she wore a large black hat. She put her
finger to her lips and led the way downstairs. The hall was empty.
"That's curious," said Miss Brown. "There were eighteen mounted policemen
in here just now. I was talking to the Inspector--such a nice young man, an
intimate friend of the late Sir CHRISTOPHER WREN, who, he informs me
privately, did _not_ kill Cock Robin."
She paused, winked and then suddenly dealt me three hearty smacks--one on
the shoulder, one on the arm and one in the small of the back. I removed
myself hastily out of range.
"Tarantulas, or Peruvian ant-bears, crawling all over you," Miss Brown
explained. "Fortunate I saw them in time, as their suck is fatal in
ninety-nine cases out of a million, or so GARIBALDI says in the _Origin of
Species_." She sniffed. "Tell me, do you smell blood?"
I told her that I did not.
"I do," she said, "quite close at hand too. Yum-yum, I like warm blood."
She looked at me through half-closed eyelids. "I should think you'd bleed
very prettily, very prettily."
I removed myself still further out of range, assuring her that in spite of
my complexion I was in reality an�mic.
She pointed a finger at me. "I know where those policemen are. They're in
the garden digging for the body."
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