Page:The Death-Doctor.djvu/340

328 veneer of morality, and we laid our plans carefully, and without reserve on either side.

"And after?" said she.

After—I hardly knew. I was desperately in love with her for the time; I'll defy any man with an eye to the artistic, and a mind, a soul, an inner consciousness of sex, call it what you like, untrammelled by artificial laws and customs, to be anything else. I am positive there are some women whom no man can resist—that is, if the woman is in real dead earnest. Rita was one of those.

"You must manage to put a small narcotic dose into his food or drink to-morrow morning at breakfast time. You can manage that—can't you, Rita?" I inquired. "I will give you a little phial when I see you to-night. It will be a very tiny dose."

I intended to give the doomed man—for doomed he was as soon as my plans were laid—enough of a concentrated preparation of belladonna to send him off into a sound sleep for some hours.

That being accomplished, I proposed to make my daily call in the afternoon, because the "dragon" and her daughter invariably drove for an hour or two after lunch, visiting and shopping. So I had then only one enemy to deal with.