Page 145 - BraveNewWorld

IDPH 145

“Listen, I beg of you,” cried the Savage earnestly. “Lend me your ears .” He
had never spoken in public before, and found it very difficult to express what
he wanted to say. “Don’t take that horrible stuff. It’s poison, it’s poison.”
“I say, Mr. Savage,” said the Deputy Sub-Bursar, smiling propitiatingly. “Would
you mind letting me .”
“Poison to soul as well as body.”
“Yes, but let me get on with my distribution, won’t you? There’s a good fellow.”
With the cautious tenderness of one who strokes a notoriously vicious animal,
he patted the Savage’s arm. “Just let me .”

“Never!” cried the Savage.
“But look here, old man .”
“Throw it all away, that horrible poison.”
The words “Throw it all away” pierced through the enfolding layers of incom-
prehension to the quick of the Delta’s consciousness. An angry murmur went
up from the crowd.

“I come to bring you freedom,” said the Savage, turning back towards the twins.
“I come .”

The Deputy Sub-Bursar heard no more; he had slipped out of the vestibule and
was looking up a number in the telephone book.
“Not in his own rooms,” Bernard summed up. “Not in mine, not in yours. Not
at the Aphroditaum; not at the Centre or the College. Where can he have got
to?”
Helmholtz shrugged his shoulders. They had come back from their work ex-
pecting to find the Savage waiting for them at one or other of the usual meeting-
places, and there was no sign of the fellow. Which was annoying, as they had
meant to nip across to Biarritz in Helmholtz’s four-seater sporticopter. They’d
be late for dinner if he didn’t come soon.

“We’ll give him five more minutes,” said Helmholtz. “If he doesn’t turn up by
then, we’ll .”

The ringing of the telephone bell interrupted him. He picked up the receiver.
“Hullo. Speaking.” Then, after a long interval of listening, “Ford in Flivver!”
he swore. “I’ll come at once.”
“What is it?” Bernard asked.
“A fellow I know at the Park Lane Hospital,” said Helmholtz. “The Savage is
there. Seems to have gone mad. Anyhow, it’s urgent. Will you come with me?”

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