“Then tell me.”
“They are tonic pills for men,” I said. “Pick-me-ups, that’s all.”
“Why not for women also?”
“They’re only for men.”
“I shall try one,” she said, unscrewing the bottle top and tipping out a pill. She popped it into her mouth and washed it down with champagne. Then she continued putting on her clothes.
She was fully dressed and was adjusting her hat in front of the looking-glass when suddenly she froze. She turned and faced me. I lay where I was, sipping my drink, but I was now watching her closely and with some trepidation.
She remained frozen for maybe thirty seconds, staring at me with a cold hard dangerous stare. Then all at once, she reached both hands up to her neckline and ripped her silk dress clean off her body. She tore off her underclothes. She flung her hat across the room. She crouched. She began to move forward. She came softly across the room toward me with the slow deliberate tread of a tigress stalking an antelope.
“What’s up?” I said. But by now I knew very well what was up. Nine minutes had gone by and the pill had hit her.
“Steady on,” I said.
She kept coming.
“Go away,” I said.
Still she kept coming.
Then she sprang, and all I could see in those first few moments was a blurred flurry of legs and arms and mouth and hands and fingers. She went quite mad. She was wild with lust. I hauled in my canvas and lay there trying to ride out the storm. That wasn’t good enough for her. She began to throw me around all over the place, snorting and grunting as she did so. I didn’t like it. I’d had my fill. This must stop, I decided. But I still had a terrific job pinning her down. In the end, I got her wrists locked behind her back and I carried her kicking and screaming into my bathroom and held her under the cold shower. She tried to bite me but I gave her an uppercut to the chin with my elbow. I held her under that freezing shower for at least twenty minutes while she went on yelling and swearing in Russian all the time.
“Had enough?” I said at last. She was half-drowned and pretty cold.
“I want you!” she spluttered.
“No,” I said. “I’m going to keep you here until you cool down.”
Finally she gave in. I let her go. Poor girl, she was shivering terribly and she looked a sight. I got a towel and gave her a good rub down. Then a glass of brandy.
“It was that red pill,” she said.
“I know it was.”
“I want some of them to take home.”
“Those are too strong for ladies,” I said. “I will make you some that are just right.”
“Now?”
“No. Come back tomorrow and they’ll be ready.” Because her dress was ruined, I wrapped her in my overcoat and drove her home in the De Dion. Actually, she had done me a good turn. She had demonstrated that my pill worked just as well on the female as it did on the male. Probably better. I immediately set about making some ladies’ pills. I made them half the strength of the men’s pills, and I turned out one hundred of them, anticipating a ready market. But the market was even more ready than I had anticipated. When the Russian woman came back the next afternoon, she demanded five hundred of them on the spot!
“But they cost two hundred and fifty francs each.”
“I don’t care about that. All my girl friends want them. I told them what happened to me yesterday and now they all want them.”
“I can give you a hundred, that’s all. The rest later. Do you have money?”
“Of course I have money.”
“May I make a suggestion, madame?”
“What is it?”
“If a lady takes one of these pills on her own, I fear she may appear unduly aggressive. Men don’t like that. I didn’t like it yesterday.”
“What is your suggestion?”
“I suggest that any lady who intends taking one of these pills should persuade her partner also to take one. And at exactly the same time. Then they’ll be all square.”