"They'll be up here in five minutes," he whispered. "I can save you from hell! I can save you, Maisie! Will you have me?"
She summoned all the strength at her command to shake her head.
"Then keep quiet!"
There was a note of savagery in his voice which made her turn sick.
For a second she filled her lungs to scream, but at that instant a mass of cotton-wool was thrust over her face, and she began to breathe in a sickly sweet vapour. Somebody else was in the room now. They were holding her feet. The voice in her ear said:
"Breathe. Take a deep breath!"
She sobbed and writhed in an agony of mind, but all the time she was breathing, she was drawing into her lungs the chloroform with which the wool was saturated.
At two o'clock in the morning a uniformed constable, patrolling his beat, saw an ambulance drawn up outside a house in Doughty Street. He crossed the road to make inquiries.
"A case of scarlet fever," said the driver.