Part 50 (1/2)
For a moment Jimmie Dale's animation, mental and physical, seemed swept away from him in, as it were, a hiatus of hideous suspense. What was it to be like this pa.s.sing? Why did it not act at once, as it had acted on the rabbit they had showed him in the other room? Yes, he remembered!
It took more than one drop for a man; and besides, this was diluted.
One drop had no effect on a man; it required--Good G.o.d, ONE DROP EVEN OF THIS WAS ENOUGH? He strained forward in the chair until the sweat in great beads sprang from his forehead, strained and fought and tore at his bonds in a paroxysm of madness to free himself while there still remained a little strength. There was something filming before his eyes, a numbed feeling was creeping through his limbs, robbing them, sapping them of their vitality and power. He felt himself slipping away into a state of utter weakness, and his brain began to grow confused.
A voice seemed to float in the air near him: ”For the last time--will you answer?”
With a supreme effort, Jimmie Dale strove to rally his tottering senses.
Did they not understand the stupendous mockery of their questions? Did they not understand that he did not know? He had told them so--perhaps he had better tell them so again.
”I--” He tried to speak, and found the words thick upon his tongue.
”I--do not--know.”
The gla.s.s itself was thrust abruptly between his lips. Some of the contents spilled and trickled upon his chin, and then a flood of it, burning, fiery, poured down his throat. A flood of it--and it needed but THREE drops and there had been TEN in the gla.s.s!
So this was death--a hazy, nebulous thing! There was no pain. It was like--like--nothingness. And out of the nothingness SHE came. Strange that she should come! Alone she had fought these fiends and outwitted them for--how long was it? Three years! She would be more than ever alone now. Pray G.o.d she did not finally fall into their clutches!
How it burned now, that fatal draught they had forced down his throat, and how it gripped at him and seemed to eat and bore its way into the very tissues! It was the end, and--no! It was STIMULATING him! Strength seemed to be returning to his limbs; it seemed as though he were being carried, as though the bonds about him were being loosened; and now his brain seemed to be growing clearer.
He roused up with a startled exclamation. He was back in the same room in which he had first returned to consciousness after the accident. He was on the same couch. The same masked figure was at the same desk. Had he been dreaming? Was this then only some horrible, ghastly nightmare through which he had pa.s.sed?
No, it had been real enough; his clothes, rent and torn, and the blood upon his hands, where the skin had been sc.r.a.ped from his knuckles in the fight, bore evidence to that. He must then have lost consciousness for a while, though it seemed to him that at no moment, hazy, irrational though his brain might have been, had he become entirely oblivious to what was taking place around him. And yet it must have been so!
The eyes from behind the mask were fixed steadily upon him, and below the mask there was the hard, unpleasant set to the lips that Jimmie Dale had grown accustomed to expect.
The man spoke abruptly.
”That you find yourself alive, Mr. Dale,” he said grimly, ”is no confession of weakness upon the part of those with whom you have had to deal here. To bear witness to that there is one who is not alive, as you have seen. That man we knew. With you it was somewhat different. Your presence in the taxicab was only suspicious. There was always the possibility that you might be one of those ubiquitous 'innocent bystanders.' Your name, your position, the improbability that you could have anything in common with--shall we say, the matter that so deeply interests us?--was all in your favour. However, presumption and probability are the tools of fools. We do not depend upon them--we apply the test. And having applied the test, we are convinced that you have told the truth--that is all.”
He rose from his chair brusquely. ”I shall not apologise to you for what has happened. I doubt very much if you are in a frame of mind to accept anything of the sort. I imagine, rather, that you are promising yourself that we shall pay, and pay dearly, for this--that, among other things, we shall answer for the murder of that man in the other room. All this will be quite within your province, Mr. Dale--and quite fruitless.
To-morrow morning the story that you are preparing to tell now would sound incredible even in your own ears; furthermore, as we shall take pains to see that you leave this place with as little knowledge of its location as you obtained when you arrived, your story, even if believed, would do little service to you and less harm to us. I think of nothing more, Mr. Dale, except--” There was a whimsical smile on the lips now.
”Ah, yes, the matter of your clothes. We can, and shall be glad to make reparation to you to the slight extent of offering you a new suit before you go.”
Jimmie Dale scowled. Sick, shaken, and weak as he was, the cool, imperturbable impudence of the man was fast growing unbearable.
The man laughed. ”I am sure you will not refuse, Mr. Dale--since we insist. The condition of the clothes you have on at present might--I say 'might'--in a measure support your story with some degree of tangible evidence. It is not at all likely, of course; but we prefer to discount even so remote a possibility. When you have changed, you will be motored back to your home. I bid you good-night, Mr. Dale.”
Jimmie Dale rubbed his eyes. The man was gone--through a door at the rear of the desk, a door that he had not noticed before, that was not even in evidence now, that was simply a movable section of the wall panelling--and for an instant Jimmie Dale experienced a sense of sickening impotence. It was as though he stood defenceless, unarmed, and utterly at the mercy of some venomous power that could crush what it would remorselessly and at will in its might.
The place was a veritable maze, a lair of h.e.l.lish cleverness. He had no illusions now, he laboured under no false estimate of either the ingenuity or the resources of this inhuman nest of vultures to whom murder was no more than a matter of detail. And it was against these men that henceforth he was to match his wits! There could be no truce, no armistice. It was their lives, or hers, or his! Well, he was alive now, the first round was over, and so far he had won. His brows furrowed suddenly. Had he? He was not so sure, after all. He was conscious of a disquieting, premonitory intuition that, in some way which he could not explain, the honours were not entirely his.
He was apparently--the ”apparently” was a mental reservation--quite alone in the room. He got up from the couch and walked shakily across the floor to the desk. A revolver lay invitingly upon the blotting pad.
It was his own, the one they had taken from him after the accident.
Jimmie Dale picked it up, examined it--and smiled a little sarcastically at himself for his trouble. It was unloaded, of course. He was twirling it in his hand, as a man, masked as every one in the house was masked, and carrying a neatly folded suit over his arm, entered from the corridor.
”The car is ready as soon as you are dressed,” announced the other briefly. He laid the clothes upon the couch--and settled himself significantly in a chair.
Jimmie Dale hesitated. Then, with a shrug of his shoulders, recrossed the room, and began to remove his torn garments. What was the use! They would certainly have their own way in the end. It wasn't worth another fight, and there was nothing to be gained by a refusal except to offer a sop to his own exasperation.