l all right," Fraser went on critically. "The first
dose of that serum lasts only three days. It's cumulative," he added
with his professional air. "In the beginning an injection every three
days. Then once a week and so on. There's a man who has been with me
for three years who needs treatment only once every three months.
Well, are you ready to talk?"

* * * * *

So that was it! He had put us down here till the supposed effects of
that serum had worn off; and now we were to talk; tell him everything
his agents had been risking their lives to find out! We were to sell
out our countries to him; betray all the secrets we had sworn by
eternity to keep! If we did as he demanded both France and the United
States would be at his mercy--and he had no mercy! He was not a man;
he was a cruel, power-loving, scientific machine. I clamped my teeth.
Never would I talk! I had sworn to protect my country's secrets with
my life--and my vow would be kept!

"You will talk?" Fraser asked again, his voice suddenly suave and
beseeching. "For those who talk there are--rewards."

"Let down the ladder," said Foulet, in a quiet, conversational tone.
"It will be easier to discuss this--"

Fraser's eyes narrowed to gleaming slits. He smiled craftily. "The
ladder will be let down--when you talk."

"And if," suggested Foulet, "we don't wish to talk?"

Fraser's lips stretched in a wider grin. His white teeth gleamed. His
shiny black eyes glittered. In that warm, rosy light he looked like a
demon from hell. He held out his hand. In it shone a long, slender
instrument.

"This knife," he said softly, "Will cut the steel cables that connect
you to this platform--as if they were cheese! You will talk?" Beside
me I heard Foulet gasp. Swiftly my imagination conjured up the picture
of our fate. Our determined refusal to divulge the secrets of our
respective countries; the severing, one by one, of the four cables
holding us to the platform; the listing of our swinging cell; the
tipping, the last, terrible plunge two thousand feet. But it would be
swift. The power of the magnetic ray would give us no time to
think--to suffer. It would be a merciful end....

"Let us up," bargained Foulet. "We will talk." Fraser laughed.

"None of that," he said slyly. "You talk from there and if your
information doesn't dove-tail with what I already know--" he
flourished the steel knife suggestively.

* * *