use of drugs is what has brought Professor Sevier to this condition. I cannot be party to any such action.”
“Aw, let him have his dose,” put in Friskens. “What’s the difference? He’ll feel better, and come along peaceable. He’s bughouse all right, anyhow; and when they get that way they have to have a dose to steady ’em.”
With sparkling eyes, Alice ran to do her lover’s bidding. As she put vial and syringe into the young man’s hand, “You can’t take a dose of that infernal stuff that has led to your ruin here in my presence!” thundered Professor William unexpectedly.
“If I had a rabbit—or a dog,” sighed Robert, instantly dejected at this check.
“You can try it on me,” said the young girl bravely, though her cheek paled a little. She looked appealingly to her father. The old gentleman was game and uttered no demur.
But the ordinarily peaceable William, who seemed to have reached a stage of irritation which rendered him absolutely unmanageable, came charging into the situation again, with “You shall torture no more animals—nor shall you risk the life or reason of Miss Alice.”
In his extremity, the good practical sense which always lay fast asleep under Robert Sevier’s absent-minded dreaminess came to his rescue. His eye fell upon Friskens. He remembered what Tate had said about the Seviers paying for this man’s services.
“Alice,” he suggested hopefully, “you go down and ask my sister-in-law to give you ten dollars. These men have taken all my money. They packed it in the trunk—it has already gone; but she’ll have that much by her—Laura always has.”
Alice was out of the room instantly. Laura herself answered the call with two five-dollar bills in her hand.
“Now, then, Friskens, this stuff won’t hurt you a bit, except to make you float in the air. There are positively no evil after-effects, and I’ve got an antidote that will bring you down whenever you say you want to come. Here’s the money—ten real dollars, out of a perfectly sane woman’s pocketbook—to pay you for being experimented upon. Is it a go?”
Friskens, who had been fretting himself and mumbling, “Nobody ought ever to trust ’em with good money, or they’re liable to throw it out o’ the winder,” promptly agreed to the arrangement.
“I ’m going to throw this money away—on you,” Robert observed gaily, as he pushed up the sleeves on the big, powerful fore-arms.
Friskens grinned. He winked as he slowly dipped his finger into the fluid and tasted it to see whether it was any drug with which he was familiar. Its flavor suggested rain water, and he decided he would
