c. But even there curious things
happen. And you're going to marry me--you will say 'Yes' to the sleek
English clergyman when he asks you whether you will take this man to be
your married husband, to love and cherish and all that sort of thing,
you'll say 'Yes.'"

"I shall say 'No!'" she said steadily.

"You will say 'Yes,'" he smiled. "I had hoped to be able to give
sufficient time to you so that I might persuade you to act sensibly. I
could have employed arguments which I think would have convinced you
that there are worse things than marriage with me."

"I cannot think of any," she replied coldly.

"Then you are singularly dense," said the doctor. "I have already told
you the conditions under which that marriage will take place. There
might be no marriage, you know, and a different end to this adventure,"
he said, significantly, and she shivered.

He said nothing more for five minutes, simply sitting biting at the
cigar between his teeth and looking at her blankly, as though his
thoughts were far away and she was the least of the problems which
confronted him.

"I know it is absurd to ask you," he said suddenly, "but I presume you
have not devoted any of your studies to the question of capital
punishment. I see you haven't; but there is one interesting fact about
the execution of criminals which is not generally known to the public,
and it is that in many countries, my own for example, before a man is
led to execution he is doped with a drug which I will call 'Bromocine.'
Does that interest you?"

She made no reply, and he laughed quietly.

"It should interest you very much," he said. "The effect of Bromocine,"
he went on, speaking with the quiet precision of one who was lecturing
on the subject to an interested audience, "is peculiar. It reduces the
subject to a condition of extreme lassitude, so that really nothing
matters or seems to matter. Whilst perfectly conscious the subject goes
obediently to his death, behaves normally and does just what he is
told--in fact, it destroys the will."

"Why do you tell me this?" she asked, a sudden fear gripping her heart.

He half-turned in his chair, reached out his hand and took a little
black case from the table near the window. This he laid on the bed and
opened, and she watched him, fascinated. He took a tiny bottle
containing a colourless liquid, and with great care laid it on the
coverlet. Then he extracted a small hypodermic syringe and a
needle-pointed no