"It's this vegetarian diet that I can't stick. Fancy living on beans
and potatoes, and only milk and aerated water to wash them down. It
was bad enough in San Francisco, when we hadn't the means even to
smell meat cooking--but with the money literally burning a hole in
one's pocket, it's ten times worse! Whatever the Unknown has in store
for us it can't be a worse Hell than what I've got now. What say you,
Matt?"
"The same! Precisely the same!" Kelson said. "Only it's love--not
potatoes and beans that worries me. In the old days when I was
penniless, I did get some consolation from knowing it was all
hopeless--but now--now, when, as Ed says, 'the money's literally
burning a hole in one's pocket,' and everything might go
swimmingly--not to be allowed even to buy a bracelet--is more than
human nature can endure. I certainly can't conceive a Hell to beat
it."
"Don't be too sure," Hamar said, "and for goodness' sake don't let the
Unknown give you an opportunity of comparing."
The night succeeding this conversation, Hamar, Curtis and Kelson
introduced their new properties into the programme of their
entertainment in Cockspur Street, and London got another big thrill.
Hamar exhibited such startling proofs of his power of invisibility,
that not only was the whole audience convinced, but from amongst
certain prominent members of the Council of the Psychical Research
Society, who were attending with the express purpose of unmasking
Hamar, two had epileptic fits on the spot, and several, before they
could get home, became raving lunatics.
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