The man's voice had risen into a hoarse scream. "Have you got what you came to get?" he yelled. His eyes blazed, his mouth writhed.
There was a crash as the deal table was overturned, and he leapt at the doctor.
In a second the room was full of people. Dark figures held down something that yelled and struggled on the truckle bed.
It was done with wonderful deftness, quickness and experience. . . . Morton Sims stood outside the closed door of the condemned cell. A muffled noise reached him from within, the prison doctor was standing by him and looking anxiously into his face.
--"I can't tell you how sorry I am, Dr. Morton Sims. I really can't say enough. I had no idea that the latent toxic influence was so strong. . . ."
On the other side of the little glass-roofed hall the door was open. Another cell was shown, brilliantly lit. Two men, in their shirt-sleeves, were bending over a square, black aperture in the wooden floor. Some carpenters' tools were lying about.
An insignificant looking little man, with a fair moustache, was standing in the doorway.
"That'll be quite satisfactory, thank you," he was saying, "with just a drop of oil on the lever. And whatever you do, don't forget my chalk to mark where he's to stand."
From behind the closed door of the condemned cell a strangulated, muffled noise could still be heard.
"Not now!" said Dr. Marriott, as the executioner came up to him--"In half an hour. Now Dr. Morton Sims, please come away to my room. This must have been most distressing. I feel so much that it is my fault." . . .
The two men stood at the Prison gate, Sims was shaking hands with the younger doctor. "Thank you very much indeed," he was saying. "How could you possibly have helped it?--You'll take steps--?"
"I'm going back to the cell now. It's incipient delirium tremens of course--after all this time too! I shall inject hyoscene and he will know nothing more at all. He will be practically carried to the shed--Good-night! _Good_-night, sir. I hope I may have the pleasure of meeting you again."
The luxurious car rolled away from the Citadel of Death and Shadows--down the hill into London and into Life.
The man within it was thinking deeply, sorting out and tabulating his impressions, sifting the irrelevant from what was of value, and making a précis of what he had gained.