I pulled him to his feet by his collar, and half marched, half carried him back into the cave. He was nothing more than a bundle of clothes in my hands.
"Now," I said, "take me at once to the place where Miss Shepherd is confined, and, though I make no promises, it may go less hardly with you than the rest."
He twisted his head and tried to look me in the face. "If I do, will you shoot me?" he whispered, fawning on me like a beaten dog. "For God's sake shoot me, or give me an opportunity to shoot myself."
"The hangman will save you the trouble," I answered brutally. "Now then, march!" He gave a great wail of despair.
"Ah, you don't know what I was once!" he cried, and there was such a horror of remorse, a damnation so profound in that cry of agony, that a fiend would have been moved.
"I heard you play the Third Ballade," I answered, and my voice was no longer firm.
"Death, please, Death."
"Take me quickly to Miss Shepherd. Then perhaps—I can't kill you myself, but ..."
It was as though my words poured a new life into his veins. His knees still knocked together in a loathsome paralysis, but he made effort to shamble forward.