“Enjoying yourself?” he remarked. “Wondering what is going to happen? Wondering where dear Phyllis is?”
He gave a short laugh.
“Excellent drug that, isn’t it? The first man I tried it on died—so you’re lucky. You never felt me put a pin in the back of your arm, did you?”
He laughed again; in fact, the Reverend Theodosius seemed in an excellent temper.
“Well, my friend, you really asked for it this time, and I’m afraid you’re going to get it. I cannot have someone continually worrying me like this, so I’m going to kill you, as I always intended to some day. It’s a pity, and in many ways I regret it, but you must admit yourself that you really leave me no alternative. It will appear to be accidental, so you need entertain no bitter sorrow that I shall suffer in any way. And it will take place very soon—so soon, in fact, that I doubt if you will recover from the effects of the drug. I wouldn’t guarantee it: you might. As I say, you are only the second person on whom I have tried it. And with regard to your wife—our little Phyllis—it may interest you to know that I have not yet made up my mind. I may find it necessary for her to share in your accident—or even to have one all on her own: I may not.”
The raving fury in Drummond’s mind as his tormentor talked on showed clearly in his eyes, and Peterson laughed.
“Our friend is getting quite agitated, my dear,” he remarked, and the girl came into sight. She was smoking a cigarette, and for a while they stared at their helpless victim much as if he was a specimen in a museum.
“You’re an awful idiot, my Hugh, aren’t you?” she said at length. “And you have given us such a lot of trouble. But I shall quite miss you, and all our happy little times together.”
She laughed gently, and glanced at the clock.
“They ought to be here fairly soon,” she remarked. “Hadn’t we better get him out of sight?”
Peterson nodded, and between them they pushed Drummond into the bathroom.
“You see, my friend,” remarked Peterson affably, “it is necessary to get you out of the hotel without arousing suspicion. A simple little matter, but it is often the case that one trips up more over simple matters than over complicated ones.”
He was carefully inserting a pin into his victim’s leg as he spoke, and watching intently for any sign of feeling.
“Why, I remember once,” he continued conversationally, “that I was so incredibly foolish as to replace the cork in a bottle of prussic acid after I had—er—compelled a gentleman to drink the contents. He was in bed at the time, and everything pointed to suicide, except that confounded cork. I mean, would any man, after he’s drunk sufficient prussic acid to poison a regiment, go and cork up the empty bottle? It only shows how careful one must be over these little matters.”
The girl put her head round the door.
“They’re here,” she remarked abruptly, and Peterson went into the other room, half closing the door. And Drummond, writhing impotently, heard the well-modulated voice of the Reverend Theodosius.
“Ah, my dear friend, my very dear old friend! What joy it is to see you again. I am greatly obliged to you for escorting this gentleman up personally.”
“Not at all, sir, not at all! Would you care for dinner to be served up here?”
Someone to do with the hotel, thought Drummond, and he made one final despairing effort to move. He felt it was his last chance, and it failed—as the others had done before. And it seemed to him that the mental groan he gave must have been audible, so utterly beyond hope did he feel. But it wasn’t; no sound came from the bathroom to the ears of the courteous sub-manager.
“I will ring later if I require it,” Peterson was saying in his gentle, kindly voice. “My friend, you understand, is still on a very strict diet, and he comes to me more for spiritual comfort than for bodily. But I will ring should I find he would like to stay.”
“Very good, sir.”
And Drummond heard the door close, and knew that his last hope had gone.
Then he heard Peterson’s voice again, sharp and incisive.
“Lock the door. You two—get Drummond. He’s in the bathroom.”
The two men he had previously seen entered, and carried him back into the sitting-room, where the whole scheme was obvious at a glance. Just getting out of an ordinary invalid’s chair was a big man of more or less the same build as himself. A thick silk muffler partially disguised his face; a soft hat was pulled well down over his eyes, and Drummond realized that the gentleman who had been wheeled in for spiritual comfort would not be wheeled out.
The two men pulled him out of his chair, and then, forgetting his condition, they let him go, and he collapsed like a sack of potatoes on the floor, his legs and arms sprawling in grotesque attitudes.
They picked him up again, and not without difficulty they got him into the other man’s overcoat; and finally they deposited him in the invalid’s chair, and tucked him up with the rug.
“We will give it half an hour,” remarked Peterson, who had been watching the operation. “By that time our friend will have had sufficient spiritual solace; and until then you two can wait outside. I will give you your full instructions later.”
“Will you want me any more, sir?” The man whose place Drummond had taken was speaking.
“No,” said Peterson curtly. “Get out as unostentatiously as you can. Go down by the stairs and not by the lift.”
With a nod, he dismissed them all, and once again Drummond was alone with his two chief enemies.
“Simple, isn’t
