“Be sensible, miss,” said Aird, with the air of one reasoning with a wayward child. “A pretty girl like you wouldn't want to be seen frothin' at the mouth and runnin' round bitin' people. It wouldn't be nice.”
His unctuous tone brought up all Cressida's reserves of strength.
“You'd never dare do it,” she gasped.
“You think so?” the faceless man inquired indifferently. “Well, you'll see in a moment or two.”
He rose with the hypodermic syringe in his hand and went out of the room. She could hear him doing something with a sink, and the sound of water. At that her nerve gave way.
“Oh, don't do it! Please, please don't! Anything but that! Please!”
For the first time she realised that this hideous scheme was seriously meant; and the pictures which flashed through her mind appalled her. To pass out of life was one thing; but to go out by the gate of madness—and such a form of madness—seemed an unbearable prospect. To die like a mad dog—anything would be better than that!
“Oh, don't!”
She gazed up at the faces of the two men who stood beside her in the hope that in this last moment they might flinch from carrying the foul business through. But there was no comfort in what she saw. Aird was evidently drinking in her torment with avidity. It was something which seemed to give him a positive pleasure. The stranger shrugged his shoulders, as though suggesting that the matter had been irrevocably settled. Neither of them made any answer to her hysterical pleading.
The man with the hypodermic came back into the room; and she hid her face as he crossed to the side of the bed. Her arm was roughly grasped, and she felt him pinch her skin before he drove the needle home. Then came a sharp pang as he injected the contents of the syringe.