Barry Pain

“ Without the least delay he must meet a finer liar than himself. His spirit must be broken; his pride in his lies humbled; his joy in his best stories turned to bitterness. As I have said I feared a relapse. I also prepared for it. Within the last two months your son has made the acquaintance of a Mr. Watchet. To your son Mr. Watchet is a barrister and a very good fellow, with no practice, and with private means. As a matter of fact Mr. Watchet is in receipt of an annual salary of seven hundred pounds from myself. ”

“ The son, Harold Bitterwood Spotter, had more natural dignity than one often finds in so young a man. He was tall and handsome, with tired melancholy eyes. There was none of the vulgar liar's attempt to collar the conversation, and no trace of a noisy and boastful manner. He just waited until the occasion arose and then took it. Quietly and unostentatiously he told lie after lie, without hesitation and without hurry, smooth, massive, effortless lies. But his complaint was confined to bicycling ”

“ The liar who lies by implication frequently gives me far more trouble. There is more chance for the wild golfing liar, for instance, than for the careful snob liar. In the latter case the disease tends to become chronic. The man who by some accident to his social apex has met a duke once and only once, and ever afterwards speaks of that duke as only the duke's intimate friends have a right to speak, that man is far more ill than he probably supposes. ”

“ Then, in addition to the material prosperity and the gratitude, I have my scientific interest in my work and my happy consciousness that it is a good work. Compared with that, the mere money is nothing. ”

“ One of my cures for lying is on the same principle; the patient is sent to a little country inn, chiefly frequented by anglers and golfers, the local talent being secretly reinforced by my own assistants, professional liars, acting under my direction. In both cures the aim is the same—by monotony to produce disgust. For hardened cases I have a more severe method, also involving the use of assistants. Here also strict secrecy is observed. The patient does not even know that he is being treated, and regards the assistants as the natural product of the society in which he happens to be moving. ”

“ Mr. McAnderson's was, I remember, a very obstinate case, though it yielded to treatment. There was a bad history: his uncle on the mother's side had been a journalist, and his paternal grandfather had been engaged in the manufacture of gas-meters. Naturally, as soon as Algernon McAnderson took to golf, the taint showed itself.
In addition to the testimonial the golf club paid my fees, which in this instance were considerable. There are many conversational liars in the world, and they make other people sick and weary, and then the other people are glad to pay me to intervene. ”

“ The material prosperity that has rewarded me is some compensation, and to the gratitude of my fellow-men I attach an even greater value. This gratitude comes more often from the friends of patients than from the patients themselves. ”

“ I told you the wind was in my cousin's favour. You can't do a mile in a minute without a wind to help you, you know."
I consider it greatly to Watchet's credit that he struggled on after this, lying as best he could, until two o'clock in the morning. But I accepted his resignation. I cannot afford to pay seven hundred a year to a man who fails.
I drove on to Mrs. Spotter's house. ”

“ The roads were lonely, and you might ride for miles without coming across a house or a human being. When Johnson essayed his ginger-beer the cork broke off about half-way down. He found himself unable to force the lower half of the cork into the bottle, and he had no corkscrew with which to draw it out. Johnson was disappointed, but he rode on in search of humanity and the chance to borrow a cork-screw. ”

“ Therefore if you ride quite straight the first half punctures the tyre with the point and the second half plugs the hole up again with the head, and you go on as if nothing had happened. A really first-rate man will do the trick twenty times running without missing."
At this juncture Watchet confidently expected that Spotter would give up. ”

“ A man at the club—one of my assistants, of course—mentioned that he had a first-class railway pass to the village in question, could not use it, and would gladly give it away. On the following night Harold Bitterwood Spotter was safe in the smoking-room of that inn hearing two of my experts discuss trick bicycling. He little knew that he was undergoing a course of treatment, but he was. He remained there for a week, and when he returned to London he appeared to be perfectly cured. Mrs. ”