"Let me stay till you are better," pleaded Joan. But he gave such a choking oath that, remembering she could feign leaving him and return, she pretended to obey. "You will write and tell me when to come again, won’t you?" she said; then, as he staggered into a sitting position and stammered out another terrifying oath, she fled, with a backward glance of terror and misery over her shoulder. Down the narrow stairs, along the hall she went. Unchaining the door, she opened it for an instant or two, then closed it with a slight bang, as one might do from the outside. Then she leant up against the door silently and listened. There was not a sound in the house into which she was shut, alone, with the man she had drugged. She could hear her quickened pulses as they ebbed back into a more normal beat. From below came a steady ticking--a kitchen clock, she thought, sounding loud in the empty, sparsely-carpeted dwelling. Then it struck; listening, fascinated, she counted eleven strokes. CHAPTER XVII "Merciful Heaven--it can’t be that!" mentally exclaimed the unhappy girl. "Why--people will surely be coming in--I shall be found--and he--like that--with the drugged brandy in the bottle--and I shall not even have got my letters out of that desk!" She silently wrung her hands; then, determined to dare or lose all, she crept slowly, cautiously back, along the hall, up the stairs, and peeped in at the half-opened door. He was lying almost prone on the sofa--his head thrown back--slowly, slowly snoring. She stole in and gazed fearfully at him. He looked corpse-like, but she thought he would naturally do that after that dose of morphia. Insensible! Peering into his face, she saw his eyes, filmy, fishy, between the half-closed lids. She touched his breast pocket, cautiously--her heart beating fast and strong. Nothing there but the white handkerchief, arranged in dandified fashion. As she stooped the scent of the flower in his buttonhole turned her deadly sick. All seemed to surge around. "This won’t do!" she told herself, wildly. Then, with a violent effort, she lifted the hand that lay limply upon his knee across his trouser pocket. It moved easily. She laid it down with a light, almost tender touch, as she remembered she had seen him return his keys to the very pocket where she now saw them bulging, and putting her fingers gingerly into the pocket, she drew them out. "Thank God!" she murmured, almost hysterically, and, telling herself that if only she could hold witnesses in her hands to that absurd, so-called marriage of him with her, and could dictate terms, every farthing she might inherit from her uncle should be his, and more--she went to the table, found the tiny key in the bunch, and opened the desk.