“Well, my dear,” began the man in an oily, insinuating voice, “you wished to see me, so Mrs. Carter says. What can I do for you, my dear?”
“What can you do? You can let me out of this place,” panted Violet, desperately. “Doctor Langley, if you are he”—the bald head bowed like a Chinese mandarin—“I have been brought to this place while in an unconscious state by the worst villain unhung!”
She might have added, “present company excepted,” had she felt in a facetious mood; but Violet had no thought for anything but her own desperate position, and her wild desire to escape from it as soon as possible. Doctor Langley bowed once more.
“Really now, is he, my dear? I am sure I would never have thought such a thing of Mr. Warrington. He has been a pleasant friend of mine for many a long year.”
A cold feeling of despair settled down upon the poor girl’s heart.
“That settles it, then!” she cried. “If you are Gilbert Warrington’s friend, then you are as bad as he. There is no help for me in this world!”
She sunk upon the iron cot once more, and hid her face in her hands. After a while she lifted her eyes to the shining, self-satisfied countenance before her.
“Doctor Langley, will you not help me?” she pleaded in a broken voice. “If you will, there is nothing within my power that I will not do to repay you. Only let me out of this place, and give me money enough to pay my fare home, and I will leave in your hands a written guarantee to pay to you on your order, within a week, any sum of money that you may name.”
His beady eyes glistened with a greedy light, and Violet’s heart leaped up from zero to fever heat, only to go down again to the very depths of despair, as the oily insinuating voice fell upon her ears once more.
“Impossible, my dear young lady, quite impossible,” he returned, blandly. “You forget that you are a minor, and no written or verbal guarantee of yours would be legal. I would have to trust to your honor to furnish the sum you refer to, which would have to be a good round figure, I assure you. And then, besides, you would be more than apt to give away the secret of this institution—and its existence is a secret from the city authorities—though, of course, everything is carried on in a perfectly straight, square, and lawful manner. But I have reasons of my own—private and weighty reasons—for wishing its existence kept a profound secret from the authorities. So I am forced to decline your offer.”