Pickering again lifted his body. His face was convulsed with a spasm of pain, but the strong voice cried fearlessly:
“Write what I have said. I’ll swear it with my last breath. I’ll tell the same story to either God or devil. Write, I say, or shall I finish it with my own hand?”
They thought that by some superhuman effort he would rise forthwith to reach the table. The nurse, the policeman, leaped to restrain him.
Mr. Beckett-Smythe was greatly agitated.
“If I cannot persuade you—” he began.
“Persuade me to do what? To bolster up a lying charge against the woman I am going to marry? By the Lord, do you think I’m mad?”
They released him. The set intensity of his face was terrible. It is hard to say what awful power could have changed George Pickering’s purpose in that supreme moment. Yet he clenched his hands in the bedclothes, as if he would choke some mocking fiend that grinned at him, and his voice was hoarse as he murmured:
“Oh, man, if you have a heart, end your inquisition, or I’ll die too soon!”
Again the pen resumed its monotonous scrape. It paused at last. The fateful words were on record.