I replied.

"Those who were rich in the old days," said Perkins, "haven't two
sixpences to rub together, and the world's workers are rolling in
Royces and having iced meringues with every meal. What follows?"

"Indigestion," I said promptly.

"Everybody," he said, ignoring my _jeu d'esprit_, "feels like a fish
out of water, and discontent is rife. The newly-poor man wishes he had
in him the stuff of which millionaires are made, and the profiteer
sighs for a few pints of the true ultramarine Norman blood, as it
would be so helpful when dealing with valets, gamekeepers and the
other haughty vassals of his new entourage. And that is where my
scheme comes in. There are oceans of blue blood surging about in the
veins and arteries of dukes and other persons who have absolutely no
further use for such a commodity, and I'm sure lots of it could be had
at almost less than the present price of milk. So what is to prevent
the successful hosier from having the real stuff coursing through the
auricles and ventricles of his palpitating heart, since transfusion is
such a simple stunt nowadays?"

"And I suppose," I said, "that you would bleed him first so as to make
room for the new blood?"

"There you touch the real beauty of my idea," said Perkins. "The
plebeian sighs for aristocratic blood to enable him to hold his own in
his novel surroundings; the aristocrat could do with a little bright
red fluid to help him to turn an honest penny. So it is merely a case
of cross-transfusion; no waste, no suffering, no weakness from loss of
blood on either side."

I gasped at the magnitude of the idea.

"I'm drawing up plans," Perkins continued, "for a journal devoted
to the matter, in which the interested parties can advertise their
blood-stock for disposal, a sort of 'Blood Exchange and Mart.' The
advertisements alone would pay, I expect, for the cost of production.
See," he said, handing me a slip of paper, "these are the sort of ads.
we should get."

This is what I read:--

"Peer, ruined by the War, would sell one-third of arterial contents
for cash, or would exchange blood-outfits with successful woollen
manufacturer.--5016 Kensington Gore, W.

"To War Profiteers. Several quarts of the real cerulean for disposal.
Been in same family for generations. Pedigree can be inspected at
office of advertiser's solicitor. Cross-transfusion not objected to.
Address in first instance, BART., 204, Bleeding Heart Yard, E.C.

"Public School