"Doped, my child—most royally doped—with a kindly poison that he loathes."
He left her and took his seat beside the prisoner. Amaryllis, not a little vexed by the addition to their party, started the car.
As they glided down the wide bends of the descent, Dick plied the wretched Melchard with dose after dose of throat-rasping spirit. After the second half-tumbler the man wept, sobbing out entreaties for mercy. And Amaryllis felt a wave of cold fear run down her spine when she heard the voice and words of her lover's reply—words not meant for her hearing she knew for the voice was so low that it was only the precision of the speaker's passion which carried them, against the wind, to her ears.
"Pity! Pity on a filthy creature that never felt it—not even for his own filthy servants! Pity for a lickspittle parasite that battens on the passions and vices of hopeless gaol-birds, abandoned women, jaded pleasure-hunters and terrified neurasthenics! Pity on a speculator calculating huge revenues from the festering putrefaction of human disease! I haven't hit you yet, because your flesh is foul to me—but—drink that down, or, by God! I'll smash every bone in your face."
A gasp, a spasmodic sound of gulping, another gasp—and silence.
Two-thirds of the bottle's contents was down the man's throat. Dick poured the remnant into his flask and sat watching the effects.
Satisfied at last that he had induced complete alcoholic coma, he touched Amaryllis on the shoulder.
"Stop her as soon as you can," he said. "I'll drive now."
When they were off again, she asked, in a voice none too steady, what he had been doing to the wretched man behind her.
"Made him absolutely blind—blotto," he answered.