'This is fantastic!' he cried. 'It is a brand-new flavour! Oh, Glosspan, my beloved Aunt, how I wish you were with me now so you could taste this remarkable dish! Waiter! Come here at once! I want you!'
The astonished waiter was now watching from the other end of the room, and he seemed reluctant to move any closer.
'If you will come and talk to me I will give you a present,' Lexington said, waving a hundred-dollar bill. 'Please come over here and talk to me.'
The waiter sidled cautiously back to the table, snatched away the money, and held it up close to his face, peering at it from all angles. Then he slipped it quickly into his pocket.
'What can I do for you, my friend?' he asked.
'Look,' Lexington said. 'If you will tell me what this delicious dish is made of, and exactly how it is prepared, I will give you another hundred.'
'I already told you,' the man said. 'It's pork.'
'And what exactly is pork?'
'You never had roast pork before?' the waiter asked, staring.
'For heaven's sake, man, tell me what it is and stop keeping me in suspense like this.'
'It's pig,' the waiter said. 'You just bung it in the oven.'
'Pig!'
'All pork is pig. Didn't you know that?'
'You mean this is pig's meat?'
'I guarantee it.'
'But... but... that's impossible,' the youth stammered. 'Aunt Glosspan, who knew more about food than anyone else in the world, said that meat of any kind was disgusting, revolting, horrible, foul, nauseating, and beastly. And yet this piece that I have here on my plate is without doubt the most delicious thing that I have ever tasted. Now how on earth do you explain that? Aunt Glosspan certainly wouldn't have told me it was revolting if it wasn't.'
'Maybe your aunt didn't know how to cook it,' the waiter said.
'Is that possible?'
'You're damned right it is. Especially with pork. Pork has to be very well done or you can't eat it.'.
'Eureka!' Lexington cried. 'I'll bet that's exactly what happened! She did it wrong!' He handed the man another hundred-dollar bill. 'Lead me to the kitchen,' he said. 'Introduce me to the genius who prepared this meat.'
Lexington was at once taken into the kitchen, and there he met the cook who was an elderly man with a rash on one side of his neck.
'This will cost you another hundred,' the waiter said.
Lexington was only too glad to oblige, but this time he gave the money to the cook. 'Now listen to me,' he said. 'I have to admit that I am really rather confused by what the waiter has just been telling me. Are you quite positive that the delectable dish which I have just been eating was prepared from pig's flesh?'
The cook raised his right hand and began scratching the rash on his neck.
'Well,' he said, looking at the waiter and giving him a sly wink, 'all I can tell you is that I think it was pig's meat.'
'You mean you're not sure?'
'One can't ever be sure.'
'Then what else could it have been?'
'Well,' the cook said, speaking very slowly and still staring at the waiter. 'There's just a chance, you see, that it might have been a piece of human stuff.'
'You mean a man?'