o worry very much about
affidavits and sworn statements, and he's not going to take you before a
magistrate before he hands you over to the coroner."

Crewe jumped to his feet.

"What have I done?" he asked harshly.

"What have you done? Well, you know that best," said the colonel with a
wave of his hand. "You say the police haven't got you and haven't a case
against you. Maybe you're right. That Greek was saying the same sort of
thing to me. He was here this afternoon squealing about taking the girl
to the Argentine, and wanted us to send the doctor, and he'll be waiting
to meet us when we land. There's no evidence against him either. Maybe
there's more evidence than you imagine. I wouldn't bank too much upon
the police passing you by, if I were you, Crewe. There's something about
Mr. Stafford King that I don't like. He's got more brains in his little
finger than that dude commissioner has in the whole of his body. He
doesn't say much, but I guess he thinks a lot, and I'd give something to
know what he's thinking about me just now."

CHAPTER XXI

THE BRIDE OF DEATH

Time had long ceased to have any significance for Maisie White. There
was daylight and nightlight. She seemed to remember that she had made a
great fight on the day she arrived at this strange house when the
hard-faced nurses had strapped her to the bed, and an old man, with
trembling fingers, had pushed a needle into her arm. She remembered it
hurt, and then she remembered very little else. She viewed life with a
dull apathy and without much understanding. She ceased to resent the
presence of the women who came and went, and even the uncleanly old
doctor no longer filled her with a sense of revulsion. She just wanted
to be left alone to sleep, to dream the strangest dreams that any girl
had ever had. She did not know that this was the action of bromide of
potassium, consistently administered in every drink she took, in every
morsel of food she ate. Bromide in bread, in coffee, in mashed potatoes,
in rice, in all the vehicles by which the drug could be administered.

Sometimes by reason of her sheer vitality she flung off the effects of
the dope, and was keenly conscious of her surroundings. There was one
girl who came and went, a pretty girl with fluffy golden hair, who
looked at her dispassionately and made no reply to the questions with
which Maisie plied her. And once she had seen Pinto and would have
screamed, but they stopped her in ti