All to Scale

The Thing was (said Antrobus upon his return from our Vulgarian Embassy) that Professor Regulus was sent to us by Protocol as the Embassy sawbones. He was a nice compact little man with pince-nez and a fine reputation for the full syringe. Moreover, he was very pro-British, unhealthily so, as it turned out. He kept closely in touch with Home Affairs, borrowed my Times and so on; and this was how he got to learn of the P. M.'s gout. I expect you remember the time it got so bad there was talk of a Day of National Temperance and Prayer, a special service in Paul's and so on. Well, Regulus took it much to heart, and one Monday he tapered up to the Mission holding a bottle of something called The Regulus Tincture--his own invention, he said. He set it down on my desk and gave me a brief insight into gout. It was, he said, just a sort of scale which collected on the big toe like the scale in a kettle. His Tincture, which was made of a mixture of arrowroot and henbane on a molasses base and macerated with borage--his Tincture simply dissolved the scale and liberated the shank. It had a funny sort of color; when you shook the bottle it kind of seethed. I took it in to show Polk-Mowbray, who was very touched by this proof of Anglophile concern. "By Gad," he said, "we shall pack it off to the P.M. Perhaps there's enough for the whole front bench. What a fine fellow Regulus is. Stap me, but I'll put him up for a gong."

I went down to have the bottle wrapped up; on the way I met Dovebasket, who was always keen on science and dazzled him a little with my grasp of things medical. "Just like scale?" he said with curiosity. "I think we ought to try a drop or two." I did not quite understand, but followed him into the garden, where his new sports car stood. Before I could bring to bear, he had tipped a cupful of the Tincture into the radiator. Talk about scale! There was a tinkle and a rain of scale fell out on the gravel. Smoke rose from the radiator tap.

"Stand back," I cried. It was heating up. There was a snap... My goodness, this was some mixture.

"We ought to try some on Drage the butler," he said moodily, but I did not want to experiment any further. The stuff was good on scale and that's as far as I wanted to go. I didn't wish to probe any further. I hoped it would bring great and lasting benefit to the nation and the party. I took the bottle down to Bag Room and sped it off.

Some time passed before we heard anything from London; then came a somewhat sullen response saying that the P.M. had tried it on one of his foodtasters, who had gone berserk and run the length of Ealing Broadway shouting "Thrope for Labor"--his name. The bottle was returned to us with this disquieting information and with the distinct order from the Foreign Office to try it out in the Mission and to report on its properties to the Foreign Secretary. Well, I mean to say: I have never been backward when it comes to self-sacrifice, but I did not fancy a dessertspoonful of this stuff after what I had seen it do to Dovebasket's radiator. Besides, the only one of us who was honestly scaly was Polk-Mowbray; he had, in fact, been rather proud of his gout and inclined to boast about it. Here was his chance, you would have said; but no, he did not seem to see it in this light. He sat, a somewhat pale individual in his heather mixture, and glared at the bottle on his desk. "I don't want to be cured of my gout," he wailed. "It's the one proof I have that the blood of the fourteenth earl runs, though in somewhat (continued on page 194) Allto Scale (continued from page 159) tributary fashion, through my veins."

We debated the whole matter at length; the Foreign Secretary's order could not be lightly set aside. Someone would have to report. Finally it was decided to try a control experiment on Drage and see how that went. It was not hard, for Drage used to drink an occasional glass of Gaskin's Imperial Ginger Wine; in fact, he was allowed whenever we had a Royal Toast with lowered lights, etc., to join us in pledging his Sovereign with a sip of the cordial muck. What easier than to insert a normal dose of the Tincture into his bottle? We watched with intense scientific curiosity that night as Polk-Mowbray doused the glims and raised his glass while Drage padded across the room to his cordial and poured out a medium-sized firkin of the stuff.

It was impressive, even riveting. The fellow appeared to have swigged off a glassful of molten lead. A high screech rang out, and he seized his own ears as if he were about to pull them off. Then he started to shadowbox, upsetting the candles, and incidentally setting himself alight. What with trying to restrain and comfort him and at the same time to beat out his burning waistcoat, there was a vast amount of confusion. What an impartial observer would have made of the scene I know not. Drage vaulted onto the window sill and, still screeching, raced off into the night like a hare, tearing off burning articles of clothing as he ran. He left us, a sobered group of palish persons contemplating the ruins of the dinner and the fearful effects of the Regulus Syndrome. "By Gad, what cracking stuff!" said Polk-Mowbray. "I suppose we'd better tell the police to look out for a flaming butler, what?" It was a pity, really, that the P.M. hadn't had the benefits of this terrific tonic; he might have galvanized the party on it. But our hearts were heavy, for we loved Drage; and there he was galloping across Vulgaria tracing a comet's path.

It was three days before the police found him and brought him back to us on a stretcher looking pale but sentient. He told us that the stuff had turned him into a werewolf for 24 hours. At this Polk-Mowbray, always capricious, suddenly flew into a temper with Regulus. "Imagine it," he cried, "this man solemnly urging on us stuff capable of turning a Head of Mission into a werewolf, however harmless. By Gad, it is not in nature. It might have happened to me anywhere. Suppose I had bitten Hasdrubal or some other member of the Central Committee? I must speak to Regulus and sharply."

But the next morning the O.B.E. that Polk-Mowbray had secured for Regulus came through on the wire. "It's a bitter pill to swallow," he said. "Just as I was about to berate the man, here comes this blasted decoration; what possessed me to do it?" How was I to know what possessed him? One could only say that at the best of times Polk-Mowbray's sense of cause and effect was jolly sketchy. "And the final annoyance," he said, giving rein to his mean side, "is that we'll have to toast him in champagne and it's gone up a pound a case." By custom, Heads of Mission paid for this out of their own frais. It was Dovebasket who suggested that we should touch up the professor's drink with the Tincture as a sort of revenge, and on the purely superficial plane the idea had charm. But the risks were great. We could not have werewolves cantering about the Embassy grounds yelling "Thrope for Labor" in Vulgarian and perhaps dishing out septic bites. No. We debated the matter from every angle, but finally agreed that Regulus should drink of the true, the blushful, in a state of nature; if there were any beaded bubbles winking at the brim, it wouldn't be the Tincture. So grave was the danger, however, that I did not dare to leave the bottle lying about. Not with people like Dovebasket and De Mandeville in the Mission. So we trotted solemnly out onto the lawn in the presence of each other, and there I uncorked and poured away the Tincture. Everything smoked and turned blue for a minute. Then we walked back through the clouds to the buttery for a Bovril. If ever you revisit the Vulgarian Mission, you will see that there is a huge circle burned in the lawn; despite every effort, nothing has ever managed to grow in that place. Some Tincture, what?