Tales of the Unexpected

got better and better.’
    ‘You mean there’s some sort of an art in mixing the feeds?’
    ‘Apparently there is.’ She was knitting away and smiling quietly to herself, thinking how funny men were.
    ‘I’ll tell you a secret,’ he said. ‘You’re absolutely right. Although, mind you, it isn’t so much
how
you mix it that counts. It’s what you put in. You realize that, don’t you, Mabel?’
    Mrs Taylor stopped knitting and looked up sharply at her husband. ‘Albert,’ she said, ‘don’t tell me you’ve been putting things into that child’s milk?’
    He sat there grinning.
    ‘Well, have you or haven’t you?’
    ‘It’s possible,’ he said.
    ‘I don’t believe it.’
    He had a strange fierce way of grinning that showed his teeth.
    ‘Albert,’ she said. ‘Stop playing with me like this.’
    ‘Yes, dear, all right.’
    ‘You haven’t
really
put anything into her milk, have you? Answer me properly, Albert. This could be serious with such a tiny baby.’
    ‘The answer is yes, Mabel.’
    ‘
Albert Taylor!
How could you?’
    ‘Now don’t get excited,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you all about it if you really want me to, but for heaven’s sake keep your hair on.’
    ‘It was beer!’ she cried. ‘I just know it was beer!’
    ‘Don’t be daft, Mabel, please.’
    ‘Then what was it?’
    Albert laid his pipe down carefully on the table beside him and leaned back in his chair. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘did you ever by any chance happen to hear me mentioning something called royal jelly?’
    ‘I did not.’
    ‘It’s magic,’ he said. ‘Pure magic. And last night I suddenly got the idea that if I was to put some of this into the baby’s milk…’
    ‘How
dare
you!’
    ‘Now, Mabel, you don’t even know what it is yet.’
    ‘I don’t care what it is,’ she said. ‘You can’t go putting foreign bodies like that into a tiny baby’s milk. You must be mad.’
    ‘It’s perfectly harmless, Mabel, otherwise I wouldn’t have done it. It comes from bees.’
    ‘I might have guessed that.’
    ‘And it’s so precious that practically no one can afford to take it. When they do, it’s only one little drop at a time.’
    ‘And how much did you give to our baby, might I ask?’
    ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘that’s the whole point. That’s where the difference lies. I reckon that our baby, just in the last four feeds, has already swallowed about fifty times as much royal jelly as anyone else in the world has ever swallowed before. How about that?’
    ‘Albert, stop pulling my leg.’
    ‘I swear it,’ he said proudly.
    She sat there staring at him, her brow wrinkled, her mouth slightly open.
    ‘You know what this stuff actually costs, Mabel, if you want to buy it? There’s a place in America advertising it for sale at this very moment for something like five hundred dollars a pound jar!
Five hundred dollars
! That’s more than gold, you know!’
    She hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about.
    ‘I’ll prove it,’ he said, and he jumped up and went across to the large bookcase where he kept all his literature about bees. On the top shelf, the back numbers of the
American Bee Journal
were neatly stacked alongside those of the
British Bee Journal, Beecraft
, and other magazines. He took down the last issue of the
American Bee Journal
and turned to a page of small classified advertisements at the back.
    ‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘Exactly as I told you. “We sell royal jelly – $480 per lb. jar wholesale.” ’
    He handed her the magazine so she could read it herself.
    ‘Now do you believe me? This is an actual shop in New York, Mabel. It says so.’
    ‘It doesn’t say you can go stirring it into the milk of a practically new-born baby,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what’s come over you, Albert, I really don’t.’
    ‘It’s curing her, isn’t it?’
    ‘I’m not so sure about that, now.’
    ‘Don’t be so damn silly, Mabel. You know it is.’
    ‘Then why haven’t other people done it with
their
babies?’
    ‘I keep telling you,’ he said. ‘It’s too expensive. Practically nobody in the world can afford to buy royal jelly just for
eating
except maybe one or two multimillionaires. The people who buy it are the big companies that make women’s face creams and things like that. They’re using it as a stunt. They mix a tiny pinch of it into a big jar of face cream and it’s selling like hot cakes for absolutely enormous prices. They claim it takes