Now Conroy's trouble, which had lasted for years, was this:

On a certain night, while he lay between sleep and wake, he would be
overtaken by a long shuddering sigh, which he learned to know was the
sign that his brain had once more conceived its horror, and in time--in
due time--would bring it forth.

Drugs could so well veil that horror that it shuffled along no worse
than as a freezing dream in a procession of disorderly dreams; but over
the return of the event drugs had no control. Once that sigh had passed
his lips the thing was inevitable, and through the days granted before
its rebirth he walked in torment. For the first two years he had striven
to fend it off by distractions, but neither exercise nor drink availed.
Then he had come to the tabloids of the excellent M. Najdol. These
guarantee, on the label, 'Refreshing and absolutely natural sleep to the
soul-weary.' They are carried in a case with a spring which presses one
scented tabloid to the end of the tube, whence it can be lipped off in
stroking the moustache or adjusting the veil.

Three years of M. Najdol's preparations do not fit a man for many
careers. His friends, who knew he did not drink, assumed that Conroy had
strained his heart through valiant outdoor exercises, and Conroy had
with some care invented an imaginary doctor, symptoms, and regimen,
which he discussed with them and with his mother in Hereford. She
maintained that he would grow out of it, and recommended nux vomica.

When at last Conroy faced a real doctor, it was, he hoped, to be saved
from suicide by a strait-waistcoat. Yet Dr. Gilbert had but given him
more drugs--a tonic, for instance, that would couple railway
carnages--and had advised a night in the train. Not alone the horrors of