The great clock in the Black House struck nine. The night had grown deep.
Philpott's room was still lit, the dim kerosene lamp giving off the scorched, rancid smell unique to poor-quality lamp oil.
"A bunch of things with no sense of the bigger picture!"
The events of the day made him furious whenever he thought of them. He shoved the ledgers and dunning letters aside, picked up the already-opened whiskey beside him, and poured it over the opium powder.
As the amber liquor slid into his stomach, he finally let out a long breath, as though all the exhaustion in his body had vanished like smoke.
Philpott belonged to the generation heavily influenced by Britain. His way of life leaned toward British habits, though in many matters he merely copied the cat by looking at the tiger, which was how he came to commit such a heaven-defying act as washing down opium powder with whiskey.
Although Britons of the time also drank opium mixed with alcohol, they either drank laudanum directly or mixed laudanum into other liquors as though making a cocktail.
Of course, cocktails were still an exceedingly fashionable drink in the German lands at the time. Ordinary people truly had no chance to drink them and had no idea what they were; only a handful of pioneers like Philpott drank them.
Yet Germans of the time generally believed that mixing together red, white, and yellow liquor made a cocktail.
Austrian cocktails were even more heaven-defying. They usually mixed alcohol, coffee, and tea together, then added sugar and apple cider vinegar; sometimes they even added sauce or cream.
In short, whenever British or American people tasted this wilder mixed spirit, they invariably felt it was bizarre and absurd.
In Austria, this drink should actually have been called wild