now and then faintly groaning, bloodless, emaciated, a wrecked and martyred shell of a man, Wingate lay on his bed. He seemed almost in the pangs of dissolution.
Near him stood Jaccard. The level light of a setting sun, which flooded through the western window of the bungalow, revealed his hard and pitiless face. With his hands on his hips he stood there, regarding the sufferer, who dazedly blinked at him. An ugly grimace contorted his lips.
“Well, when are you coming back to the stuff?” the captain brutally demanded. His suavity of manner had quite departed. “You've got to, sooner or later, you know; so what's the use tormenting yourself like this? Only a damned fool would do it. When?”
“Get out!” Wingate flung at him. “You're poisoning the very air here!” Through all his martyrdom, more fiercely still his hate flared. “Oh, God, if I was only strong enough to get up and kill you!”
“Yes, but you're not,” gibed the captain. “You couldn't kill a flea—a poor, spineless wreck of a dope fiend like you!” He broke into an ugly laugh, and then checked it. “The idea of your killing anybody or anything—that's a good one! You can't kill anything but your fortune, and your wife's!”
“Here, you!” snarled the millionaire—or hardly a millionaire now, after the ravages of the past fortnight. “Don't you speak her name! I'll have the heart out of you for that!”
Jaccard chuckled maliciously.
“Hear him talk! A devil of a lot you care about her!”
Wingate reared up, made a desperate effort, and, racked in every wasted nerve and muscle, got to his feet. He staggered toward the captain, with his quivering fists up. Jaccard gave him a contemptuous little push that sent him reeling back, to collapse on the bed again.
“Lie down, you weakling!” he mocked. “Why, you couldn't even kill your own worthless self, let alone anybody else!”
“I—I'll kill you yet! My time will come yet!”
“Hop talk!” laughed Jaccard. “That's the way they all rave; but let me tell you this,” he added, in a sharper tone, as he glowered down at his victim. “You won't get any more chances to run amuck and kill yourself or try to hurt anybody. You nearly gave us the slip, four days ago—you and that damned snake. Zanelli made good as a guard, though. He got to it first, and winged it just in time.”
The victim bared teeth of hate at Jaccard, like a trapped wolf. The captain only sneered, and went on:
“You won't be let out of this bungalow again!” He waved his hand at the windows. All of them were now crisscrossed with iron bars. “There's a padlock on the outside of the door, too. We aren't taking any more chances on you. You're too valuable to lose. There's nothing here you can hurt yourself with, except the bedclothes, and we'll soon fix that. No hanging bee here! No metal, either—not even a spoon. From now on you'll claw up your grub out of a paper picnic plate, like a Chink, or a baby. You're here for keeps now; and here—here's your dope for this time!”
He pointed to a paper on the table, with two tablets on it. Save for books and magazines, the table was bare. The lamp had gone from it. Glass lamp chimneys make too fine weapons, when broken—weapons at least capable of slashing a man's wrists or cutting his throat. All the glass had likewise been removed from the windows, which were now like those of a jail.
Wingate's razor was gone, too. Every metal thing had been taken away. So far as the most careful thought of Jaccard and Zanelli had been able to manage it, nothing dangerous remained. The wicker furniture was too light to be used for assault and battery. Even if Wingate had possessed a rope, there was no place where he could tie it, to hang himself. The bungalow had become a cell.
“Here's your dope!” repeated Captain Jaccard.
Wingate made no answer, but lay panting, with the smolder of an immense hatred in his feverish eyes. Like tiny sentinels of fate the tablets lay there on the table.
“As if you could cure yourself of the habit, you poor, broken wreck of a man!” Jaccard mocked. “Why, the best sanitariums have failed, and the most skillful doctors. You're all gone. Your will power's gone—there's nothing left. Will power—pooh! You're a joke, Wingate—nothing but a joke, to reat men! Come on, now, admit it! You are, aren't you?”
Wingate made no reply. Not thus should his enemy badger-draw and bait him. Seeing that no more was to be got out of the victim, by way of diversion, Jaccard turned to the door.
“Well, you know where to find your dope, anyhow,” was his parting shot. “You've been without it four days, now. I guess you're about ready to take a shot or two!”
