Of a sudden, a triumphant smile broke out on her face; she laughed low: "Oh, it is too good," she thought, "what a capital idea—what a scene we will have!"
She looked around her stealthily to see that no one was by; then she drew a small hypodermic syringe from her pocket, and standing under the lamp by the Temple gate carefully filled it from a bottle of straw-coloured fluid. After another careful look up and down the two streets, and at all the windows that commanded a view of the scene, she approached the insensible man. She stooped down and bared his left arm, then with one hand she took up a bit of the fleshy part of it, with the other she pushed the fine tube under the skin, and slowly pressed down the piston.
She held it there for a few seconds, then withdrew it, and placed it again in her pocket.
"Number one!" she muttered to herself. "Ah, Mary! so quiet and yet so sly; I shouldn't have thought it of you. You have robbed me of this fool. I believe you are trying to rob me of that prig, Dr. Duncan. We shall see, my girl, who wins in this game. I never liked you; now I hate you, and that's bad for you. I flatter myself I'm a dangerous person to make an enemy of—subtle and unscrupulous enough anyhow. Yes, Susie dear, you are decidedly dangerous."
Then she walked up to Fleet Street and found a policeman. She informed him that there was a man who had been seized by a fit at the bottom of the court.
The policeman accompanied her to the spot, and examined the prostrate form by the light of his bull's eye.
"He's only drunk," he said at last. "He's fallen down and cut his face a bit; nothing serious. We'll take him to the lock up."
Susan stooped and pretended to feel the barrister's pulse. "Policeman," she cried, "you must do nothing of the kind. He is not drunk, but seriously ill. I am an hospital nurse, and understand this case. He must be removed to the hospital at once, and without delay; do you hear? It is a question of life and death! Get a cab and drive him to the —— hospital; it is my hospital. There will be a doctor in attendance there who will save him, if any one can."
The constable still hesitated; but when the sergeant came up her earnestness overcame the doubts of both, and her advice was followed.
She saw her lover carried off, and then she walked away to a lodging where she was known, and where they would put her up for the night. She was too excited to feel any fear for the consequences of her act as yet. "Yes, it will be too delightful," she said to herself as she went along. "I will send Miss Mary her old sweetheart."