She subsided, trembling in every limb. Her eyes followed his every movement with the fascinated attention of a frightened animal.
The doctor came close to her, and from her point of view glanced up to the mantelpiece. Then, stepping back, he arranged the candles so that the face of the clock, seen from her position, was a disc of bright reflection.
Without a word but with a deliberation which awed even the watching officers by its inflexible though mysterious purpose, he turned to her once more, and, with the gently firm touch of a medical man, posed her head so that she looked straight before her. Paralyzed under his masterful dominance, she submitted plastically. She was too frightened to utter a sound. Only her eyes widened as she saw him produce a heavy revolver.
“Now, gnädige Frau!” he said, and his voice, though passionless, was intense in its expression of level will-power, “do not move your head! Look up—under your eyebrows. You see that clock? Look at it—continue to look at it!—If you take your eyes off it for one fraction of a second I shall shoot you dead! You are looking at it? It marks a quarter to eight. When it strikes eight you will tell me quite truthfully how you came by it!”
He ceased. The young woman, her face white with terror, her mouth twitching, her nostrils distended, sat motionless, staring up under her eyebrows at the face of the clock.
There was a dead silence in the room. The minutes passed. The young woman did not move a muscle. Her wide-open eyes fixed on the clock, she seemed to stiffen into a cataleptic rigidity.
The doctor put aside his revolver. He approached her, took one of her wrists and lifted her hand from her lap. It lay limply in his.
“You are feeling sleepy,” he said in his level, positive voice. “You are going to sleep. My voice is sounding muffled and far away—but you will still hear it. You are losing the sense of your surroundings—but you still see that clock face. You cannot help but see it. And when it strikes eight you are going to tell the truth.” He dropped the hand which fell lifelessly again upon her lap.
The young woman sat motionless as a statue. Her breathing changed to the deep respirations of sleep, although her eyes remained wide open.
The clock struck eight. At the last of its thin, silvery notes the young woman shuddered. Her lips moved.