Sometimes I have not seen Fo-Hi for six months at a time, but a tiny
flask, one draught, of the green liquid, always comes to me wherever
I am, every week ... and twice each year I see him--Fo-Hi ... and
he ..."
Her voice quivered and ceased. Moving back, she slipped a soft
shoulder free of it s flimsy covering.
Stuart looked--and suppressed a groan.
Her arm was dotted with the tiny marks made by a hypodermic syringe!
"You see!" she whispered tremulously. "If I go, I die, and I am
buried alive ... or else I live until my body ..."
"Oh, God!" moaned Stuart--"the fiend! the merciless, cunning fiend!
Is there _nothing_ ..."
"Yes, yes!" said Miska, looking up. "If I can get enough of the green
fluid and escape. But he tell me once--it was in America--that he
only prepares one tiny draught at a time! Listen! I must stay, and if
he can be captured he must be forced to make this antidote ... Ah!
go! go!"
Her words ended in a sob, and Stuart held her to him convulsively,
his heart filled with such helpless, fierce misery and bitterness as
he had never known.
"Go, please go!" she whispered. "It is my only chance--there is no
other. There is not a moment to wait. Listen to me! You will go by
that door by which I come in. There is a better way, through a tunnel
he has made to the river bank; but I cannot open the door. Only _he_
has the key. At the end of the passage some one is waiting----"
"Chunda Lal!" Miska glanced up rapidly and then dropped her eyes again.
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