Afterwards

"Yet the deadly thing is fascinating, isn't it? Else why do so many fall under its sway?"

"Fascinating?" With an inward shudder Anstice recalled those months after Hilda Ryder's death--those horrible, chaotic months when, in a vain endeavour to stifle thought, to deaden remorse, he had invoked the aid of the poppy, and by so doing had almost precipitated a moral catastrophe which should have been more overwhelming than the first. "For God's sake, Mrs. Carstairs, don't become obsessed by that idea. The morphia habit is one degrading slavery of mind and body, and only the miserable victims know how delusive are its promises, how unsatisfactory its rewards. What can you expect from a cult whose highest reward--the only thing, indeed, it has to offer you, is--oblivion?"

Chloe Carstairs did not reply. Instead, she turned away and moved across the room to a small black escritoire which stood against the white wall. Bending down she opened it, and after pressing a spring, released what appeared to be a secret drawer. From this she lifted out a little packet wrapped in white paper and sealed with red wax, and holding it in her hand she came slowly back to where Anstice stood, made vaguely uncomfortable by her curious, almost secretive manner.

"Dr. Anstice"--she held out the packet--"will you take charge of this for me? It is the key--what you called the devil's key just now--to the Paradise I have never had the courage to enter."

Anstice took the little parcel from her with something of sternness in his face.

"Yes, Mrs. Carstairs. But what, exactly, is this thing?"

"An hypodermic syringe and a supply of morphia," she informed him tranquilly. Then, as he pursed his lips into an involuntary whistle, she went on, with more than a hint of mockery in her manner: "Oh, I came by it quite honestly, I assure you! I didn't steal it from a doctor's surgery--I bought it at a chemist's shop in London."

"You did?"

"Yes, and I made the young man show me how to use it." She smiled rather ironically. "Naturally I was ignorant in the matter, and I didn't want to make a blunder in its use."

"Really? Well, Mrs. Carstairs, this is your property, but I wish I might persuade you to leave it in my keeping for the present."

"You think it would be safer there?" She looked at him as though considering the matter. "Well, I wonder?"

"You wonder--what?" He spoke dryly.