He reached out for her with savage eagerness.
“Claire!” he cried. “Claire!”
She pushed him back with both hands.
“Not yet!” she said, and tried to steady her voice. “There is another side to the bargain. The price is this man's life. If he lives I will marry you, and in that case, as you well know, I can say nothing of what you have done to-night; but if he dies, I am not only free, but I will do my utmost to make you criminally responsible for his death.”
“Ah!” Doctor Crang stared at her. His hands, still reaching out to touch her, trembled; his face was hectic; his eyes were alight again with feverish hunger—and then suddenly the man seemed transformed into another being. He was on his knees beside John Bruce, and had opened his handbag in an instant, and in another he had forced something from a vial between John Bruce's lips; then an instrument was in his hands. The man of a moment before was gone; one Sydney Angus Crang, of many degrees, professional, deft, immersed in his work, had taken the other's place. “More water! An extra basin!” he ordered curtly.
Claire Veniza obeyed him in a mechanical way. Her brain was numbed, exhausted, possessed of a great weariness. She watched him for a little while. He flung another order at her.
“Make that couch up into a bed,” he directed. “He can't be moved even upstairs to-night.”
Again she obeyed him; finally she helped him to lift John Bruce to the couch.
She sat down in a chair and waited—she did not know what for. Doctor Crang had drawn another chair to the couch and sat there watching his patient. John Bruce, as far as she could tell, showed no sign of life.
Then Doctor Crang's voice seemed to float out of nothingness: