And Janet! She was unconscious and lay gagged and strapped and bound to the bed. Her arms had been pulled back cruelly, her wrists tied behind her to the iron top. Her legs had been bound to the sides. A strap from one of the trunks passed over her waist and under the bed, and even in the dim light of the torch, I could see from where I stood how cruelly tight it had been pulled. Rags which had been stuffed into her mouth were held in position by a piece of cord, wound round her head and cutting across her mouth, pulling down her lower jaw.
“Do you know what she said, Francis, when I chloroformed her? Would you like to know? She said, ‘Fran-cis, where’s Fran-cis?’ And here you are to see her. Isn’t it shameless of her to let you look at her lying there like that?”
“You she-devil, take it away,” I cried, tortured beyond discretion.
“Ah! You would, would you? Fool, see what you’ve made me do. I’ve spilt some of it and missed her by a hair. Talk like that or move again and——”
Then she laughed and blasphemed in turns, while I stood horrified, peering out of my dark corner over the chest of drawers, perspiration gathering in beads on my forehead and streaming down my face. How short was the time since I had sat in the garden, breathing God’s free air, at the foot of God’s great church, the pleasant garden noises striking my listless ears as I dreamed and pondered of my love! And now I stood, trapped and tortured in this dark little chamber of hell, free yet afraid to move, while the dear one I loved lay helpless before me on the brink of blindness and death. On the sloping roof just over my head I could hear the sparrows chirping in the sun, while the dark stagnant attic air was filled with the jeers and obscenities of Satan—Heaven and Hell with a layer of tiles between them.
She tortured me. My God, how she tortured me!
She tilted the beaker till the liquid quivered on the lip.
I don’t know what I could have done. I thought of pushing over the chest of drawers and making a dash for it round the end of the bed, but nothing could prevent her if she really intended to carry out her fiendish threat.
I tried remonstrance and persuasion, but my efforts were met with nothing but laughter and jeers.
“That’s better, Francis, darling, now you begin to understand how clever stupid Margaret is. Why not try to enjoy the fun with me! Just think how it will burn her, death and decay all at once! With her face turned up like that, little pools of it will gather in the corners of her eyes. When the lids burn away how weird and funny they’ll look. And, Francis, think of the rags in her mouth! But the really priceless part of it all is, Francis, darling, that you haven’t yet seen the point of the joke!”