Laughing Gas by P. G. Wodehouse

wayside stations. But, oh boy! Wait till you hit that terminus." '
    'Terminus?'
    'He meant when he would begin to see things —' 'Don't talk about seeing things I' '- and hear voices —'
    'And don't,' said Eggy, 'talk about hearing voices!'
    'That's just what I am going to talk about. Somebody's got to do something to snap you out of it. I'm being your best friend, really. You ought to be thanking me on your knees for warning you. Yes, sir, unless you pull up mighty quick, you're slated to get yours. I know the symptoms. What made Pop see the light was meeting a pink rabbit that asked him for a match, and something like that's going to happen to you if you don't take a brace on yourself. So think it over. Well, I mustn't stay here all afternoon, talking to you. I've my subscriptions to collect. How do you feel about a small donation to the cause?'
    'Pshaw I' said Eggy, rather cleverly coming back at her with her own stuff.
    'Well, I wasn't counting on it,' said the female. 'But you just remember what I've told you.'
    She apparently popped off at this point, for the armchair gave a scrunch as Eggy dropped into it again. I could hear him breathing heavily.
    Now, during this conversation, though I had been listening attentively to every word, I suppose what they call my subconscious mind must have been putting in a lot of solid work without my knowing it. Because when I turned to my personal affairs once more, I found that my whole mental outlook had changed. I had switched completely round from my former view of things and now saw that in avoiding Eggy I had been making a strategic error.
    That frightful hunger for doughnuts and the rest of the outfit was still gnawing me, and I now perceived that something constructive might be done about it. Eggy, instead of being a pest, might prove a life-saver. He wasn't a millionaire, of course, but he had a comfortable income and would surely, I felt, be good for the price of an all-day sucker, if properly approached. I rose, accordingly, with the intention of making a touch.
    Mark you, I can see now, looking back, that the moment was ill-chosen. But this didn't occur to me at the time. All I was thinking about was getting the needful. And so, as I say, I rose.
    The prospect whom I was planning to contact, as they call it in America, was leaning back in the arm-chair, still breathing in that rather stertorous manner, and my head came up just behind his. I was thus nicely placed for addressing my remarks to his left ear.
    'Eggy,' I said.
    I remember once, when a kid - from what motive I cannot recall, but no doubt just in a spirit of clean fun -hiding in a sort of alcove on the main staircase at Biddle ford Castle and saying 'Bool' to a butler who was coming up with a tray containing a decanter, a syphon, and glasses. Biddleford is popularly supposed to be haunted by a Wailing Lady, and the first time the butler touched ground was when he came up against a tiger-skin rug in the hall two flights down. And I had always looked on this as the high spot in emotional expression until, as I have related, I rose quietly from behind the arm-chair and said: 'Eggy.'
    The old boy's reaction wasn't quite so immediate as the butler's had been. The latter had got off the mark instantly, as if he had had the wings of a dove, but Eggy for perhaps six seconds just sat in a frozen kind of way, staring straight in front of him without moving a muscle. Then his head came slowly round and our eyes met.
    This was the point at which he really buckled down to it. It was now that after a leisurely start he showed a genuine flash of speed. One piercing scream escaped his lips, and it was still ringing in the air when I found myself alone. Despite the fact that he had been lying back in an arm-chair when the idea of moving occurred to him, Egremont Mannering was through the front door in - I should say - considerably under a second and a quarter. He was just a blur and a whizzing noise.
    I hurried to the window and