"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