I seized Stahl by the arm. “You must keep quiet,” I said. “Keep quiet at once.”
He turned to me a vacuous, bewildered face. I grasped his arm convulsively, clutching it with all my strength: “Keep still!”
Stahl sat down. “Right,” he said. “All right.”
He searched his pocket and drew out a small leather case.
Bozevsky moved and moaned. “I am thirsty,” he said. “Give me something to drink.”
I hurried to the bedside, and taking up a glass of sweetened water, I raised him on his pillow and held the glass to his lips. He drank eagerly. Then—horror!... horror! Even as he drank I perceived a spot of pale red color, wetting the gauze round his neck, oozing through it and spreading in an ever-widening stain. What—what could it be? It was the water he was drinking; he was not swallowing it ... it was trickling out through the wound in his neck. All the gauze was already wet—now the pillow as well.
“Stahl, Stahl!” I shrieked. “Look, look at this!”
Stahl, who seemed to have suddenly regained his senses, came quickly to the bedside. I had laid Bozevsky back on the pillow and he was looking at us with wide-open eyes.
“Yes,” said Stahl, contemplating him thoughtfully. “Yes.” Suddenly he turned to me. “Come here, come here. Why should I let you suffer?”
Then I saw that he had in his hand a small glass instrument—a morphia syringe. He seized my wrist as in a vice and with the other hand pushed back the loose sleeve of my gown.