And that, my friends, is almost exactly what happened. I went back to the Sudan. I stayed there for a little over two years, and I don’t mind telling you that although I learned a great deal about the Blister Beetle, I also learned a thing or two about the ladies who inhabit those regions. The tribes were sharply divided and they seldom mixed. But I mixed with them all right, with the Nubians, the Hassanians, the Baggaras, the Shilluks, the Shukrias, and the curiously light-colored Niam-Niams, who live west of the Blue Nile. I found the Nubians especially to my taste and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was where the word nubile originated.
By the end of 1923, my little factory was going full blast and turning out a thousand pills a day.
By 1925, I had agents in eight cities. I had chosen them carefully. All, without exception, were retired army generals. Unemployed generals are common in every country, and these men, I discovered, were cut out for this particular type of job. They were efficient. They were unscrupulous. They were brave. They had little regard for human life. And they lacked sufficient intelligence to cheat me without being caught.
It was an immensely lucrative business. The profits were astronomical. But after a few years I grew bored with running such a big operation and I turned the whole thing over to a Greek syndicate in exchange for one half of the profits. The Greeks were happy, I was happy, and hundreds of thousands of customers have been happy ever since.
I am unashamedly proud of my contribution to the happiness of the human race. Not many men of business and certainly very few millionaires can tell themselves with a clear conscience that the accumulation of their wealth has spread such a high degree of ecstasy and joy among their clients. And it pleases me very much to have discovered that the dangers to human health of Cantharis vesicatoria sudanii have been grossly exaggerated. My records show that not more than four or five dozen a year at the most suffer any serious or crippling effects from the magic substance. Very few die.
Just one more thing. In 1935, some fifteen years later, I was having breakfast in my Paris house and reading the morning paper when my eye was caught and held by the following item in one of the gossip columns (translated from the French):
La Maison d’Or at Cap Ferrat, the largest and most luxurious private property on the entire Cóte d’Azur, has recently changed hands. It has been bought by an English couple, Professor Arthur Woresley and his beautiful wife, Yasmin. The Woresleys have come to France from Buenos Aires where they have been living for many years, and very welcome they are. They will add great lustre to the glittering Riviera scene. As well as buying the magnificent Maison d’Or, they have just taken delivery of a superb ocean-going yacht which is the envy of every millionaire on the Mediterranean. it has a crew of eighteen and cabin accommodation for ten people. The Woresleys have named the yacht SPERM. When I asked Mrs. Woresley why they had chosen that rather curious name, she laughed and said, “Oh, I don’t know. I suppose because it’s such a whale of a ship.”
Quite a girl, that Yasmin. I have to admit it. Though what she ever saw in old Woresley with his donnish airs and his nicotine-stained moustache I cannot imagine. They say a good man is hard to find. Maybe Woresley was one of those. But who on earth wants a good man? Who, for that matter, wants a good woman?
Not me.