Slowly, A. R. Woresley turned his head and stared at her. The powder was hitting him hard and there was a glimmer of madness in his eyes.

“I . . . er . . . I . . . I . . .”

“Is something wrong, Mr. Woresley?” Yasmin said sweetly. “Are you feeling all right?”

He went on clutching the bench and staring at her. The sweat was all over his face now and running onto his moustache.

“Can I do something to help?” Yasmin said.

A funny gurgling noise came out of his throat.

“Can I get you a glass of water?” she asked. “Or some smelling-salts perhaps?”

And still he stood there, clutching the bench and waggling his head and making those queer gurgling noises. He reminded me of a man who’d got a fishbone stuck in his throat.

Suddenly he let out a great bellow and made a rush at the girl. He grasped her by the shoulders with both hands and tried to push her to the floor but she skipped back out of his reach.

“Ah-ha!” she said. “So that’s what’s bothering you, is it? Well, it’s nothing to be ashamed about, my darling man.” Her voice as she spoke to him was as cool as a thousand cucumbers.

He came at her again with hands outstretched, pawing at her, but she was too nimble for him. “Hold on a sec,” she said, flipping open her purse and taking out the rubbery thing I had given her the night before. “I’m perfectly willing to have a bit of fun with you, Mr. W, but we don’t want anyone around here to get preggers, now do we? So be a good boy and stand still for a moment while I put your little mackintosh on.”

But A. R. Woresley didn’t care about the little mackintosh. He had no intention of standing still. I don’t think he could have stood still if he’d wanted to. From my own point of view, it was instructive to observe the curious effect a double dose had upon the subject. Above all, it made him hop. He kept hopping up and down as though he were doing calisthenics. And he kept making these absurd bellowing noises. And he kept waving his arms round and round windmill fashion. And the sweat kept trickling down his face. And there was Yasmin, dancing around him and holding out the ridiculous rubbery thing with both hands and shouting, “Oh, do keep still, Mr. Woresley! I’m not letting you come near me till I get this on!”

I don’t think he even heard her. And although he was clearly going mad with lust, he also gave the impression of a man who was in great discomfort. He was hopping, it appeared, because excessive irritation was taking place. Something was stinging him. It was stinging him so much he couldn’t stand still. In greyhound racing, to make a dog run faster, they frequently insert a piece of ginger up its rectum, and the dog runs flat out in an effort to get away from the terrible sting in its backside. With A. R. Woresley, the sting was in a rather different part of his body, and the pain of it was making him hop, skip, and jump all over the lab, and at the same time he was telling himself, or so it seemed, that only a woman could help him to get rid of that terrible sting. But the wretched woman was being too quick for him. He couldn’t catch her. And the stinging feeling kept getting worse all the time.

Suddenly, using both hands, he ripped the front of his trousers and half a dozen buttons scattered across the room with little tinkling sounds. He dropped the trousers. They fell around his ankles. He tried to kick them off, but couldn’t do so because he still had his shoes on.

With the trousers now around his ankles, A. R. Woresley was temporarily but effectively hobbled. He couldn’t run. He couldn’t even walk. He could only hop. Yasmin saw her chance and took it. She made a dive for the erect and quivering rod that was sticking out through the slit in his underpants. She grabbed it in her right hand and held onto it as tightly as if it were the handle of a tennis racquet. She had him now. He began to bellow even louder.

“For God’s sake, shut up,” she said, “or you’ll have the whole university in here! And keep still so I can get this damn thing on you!”

But A. R. Woresley was deaf to everything except his fierce and fundamental desires. He simply could not stand still. Hobbled as he was by the trousers round his ankles, he went on hopping about and waving his arms and bellowing like a bull. For Yasmin, it must have been like trying to thread a needle on a sewing machine while the machine was still in motion.

Finally, she lost patience and I saw her right hand, the one which was grasping, as it were, the handle of the tennis racquet, I saw it give a wicked little flick. It was as though she were making a sharp backhand return to a half volley with a quick roll of the wrist at the end of the shot to impart topspin. A vicious wristy little flick it was, and it was certainly a winner, because the victim let out a howl that rattled every test tube in the lab. It stopped him cold for five seconds, which gave her just enough time to get the rubbery thing on and then to jump back out of reach.

“Couldn’t we calm down just a teeny weeny little bit?” she said. “This isn’t a bullfight.”

He was tearing off his shoes now and throwing them across the room, and when he kicked off his trousers and became fully mobile again, Yasmin must have known that the moment of truth had arrived at last.

It had indeed. But there is no profit in describing the coarse rough and tumble that followed. There were no intermissions, no pauses, no half-time. The vigour that my double dose of Blister Beetle had imparted to that man was astounding. He went at her as though she were an uneven road surface and he was trying to flatten out the bumps. He raked her from stem to stern. He raked her fore and aft, and still he kept reloading and firing away although his cannon must by then have been scorching hot. They say that the ancient Britons used to make fire by rotating the point of a wooden stick very fast and for a long time on a wooden block. Well, if that made fire then A. R. Woresley was about to start a raging conflagration any moment, wood or no wood. It wouldn’t have surprised me in the least to see a puff of smoke come up from the wrestlers on the floor.

While all this was going on, I took the opportunity of making a few notes with pad and pencil for future ref erence.

Note one: Endeavour always to arrange for Yasmin to confront the subject in a room where there is a couch or an armchair or at the very least a carpet on the floor. She is undoubtedly a strong and resilient girl, but having to work on a hard wooden surface in exceptionally severe circumstances as she is doing now is asking rather a lot. The way things are going, she could easily suffer severe damage to her lumbar region or even a pelvic fracture. And where would our clever little scheme be then, tra-la-la?

Note two: Never again prescribe a double dose for any man. Too much powder causes excessive irritation in the vital regions and gives the victim a sort of St. Vitus’s dance. This makes it almost impossible for Yasmin to roll on the sperm collector without resorting to foul play. An overdose also makes the victim bellow, which could be embarrassing if the wife of the victim, the Queen of Denmark, for example, or Mrs. Bernard Shaw, happened to be sitting quietly in the next room doing needlepoint.

Note three: Try to think of a way of helping Yasmin to get out from under and to do a bunk with the precious sperm as soon as possible after the stuff is in the bag. The devilish powder, even when sparingly administered, might easily keep a ninety-year-old genius bashing away for a couple of hours or more. And quite apart from any discomfort Yasmin might be suffering, it is vital to get the little squigglers into the freezer quickly, while they are still fresh. Look, for example, at old Woresley right now and how he’s still grinding away although he’s obviously delivered the goods at least six times in succession. Perhaps a sharp jab in the buttocks with a hatpin would do the trick in the future.