“Ah! Certainly! Thanks! You are too good to say so! Ah—the—enterprise I have in hand just now is one in which you will promptly and zealously give me all the help you possibly can—such effectual assistance, in point of fact, as shall insure its success.”
“And if I do not?”
“‘If you do not?’ I have already told you the consequences. But you are slow to believe them. You do not really believe me to be so thorough-going as you have been good enough to say that I am. You think that at the last there will be some relenting on my part. Disabuse yourself of that illusion. Friday, listen to me: No condemned criminal standing on the trapdoor of a scaffold ever occupied a more dangerous position than you do now. Refuse to co-operate with me in my purpose, and I give the signal that seals your fate—I spring the trap that lets you drop at once into perdition. That is all, my lady.”
“And yet,” groaned Elfrida Force, clasping her hands convulsively together—“and yet neither I nor any one related to me have ever broken any law of the land, or have ever been accused or even suspected of breaking one.”
“That should be a most precious and comforting reflection, Friday, especially if I should be obliged to spring that trap. Many unhappy victims have met their doom with fortitude and resignation under such circumstances.”
“Cease! you dastard, cease!” cried the lady, wringing her hands. “Be silent! or tell me what it is you want, so I may know the worst at once!”
“Quite so. I will not only be silent now, but I will be mute henceforth. Yea, I will be dumb forever!—that is, on certain conditions.”
“What conditions? Why can’t you name them? Are they so infamous that even you shrink from telling me? In a word, what do you want?”
“‘In a word,’ then: I want—Odalite,” coolly replied the colonel.
The lady gazed at the man with eyes slowly dilating with horror.