Heavy steps at once crossed the floor and paused beside her. She heard the doctor's breathing as he bent over her, she smelled the tobacco odour of his clothing, and felt her cheek burn as though seared beneath his scrutiny. Presently he spoke, in her ear, it seemed.
"I suppose you gave her the injection at the time I told you to?"
"Oh, God, yes; I gave it to her all right!"
Esther experienced a sharp shock. The second voice was that of Captain Holliday. How on earth did he come into this? Or had he been in it from the first? Somehow from his tone of frightened tension she thought he had not, yet she could not imagine what he was doing here now. Instinctively she knew that the doctor was still studying her closely, and she felt that if he kept it up much longer she would give herself away. Already she feared that in some way she had betrayed her astonishment of a moment ago. Had he noticed anything? She was ignorant of how to simulate a drugged sleep; she might be doing it all wrong.
Suddenly, without the least warning, she felt a cruel pinch on her shoulder. The doctor, to satisfy himself, had resorted to this crude but effectual method of finding out if she was quite unconscious or not. At least it might easily have proved effectual, only Providence intervened. She never knew how it was she did not shriek aloud, but instead managed to remain perfectly quiescent, unresisting. A second later she had her reward. She heard the huge man move away, his step creaking across the bare boards out into the main room. She breathed again, and listened.
For about two minutes there was silence, then Holliday spoke, bursting out with a sort of defiance that had terror in it, she thought.
"See here, Sartorius, I'm going to clear out. I've had enough. I didn't know what I was letting myself in for the other day, or I wouldn't have helped you out."
"You'll stay here."
This bald statement, uttered with peculiar emphasis, caused a shudder to run through Esther. There was something ominous in it, crushing. The young man may have thought so too, to judge by the nervous, uncertain fashion in which he strove to combat the command.
"The hell I shall! Who'll keep me if I want to go?"