He made a resolution. He said to himself: “Whether later I enter upon the straight path, as I hope to do, or whether, as is more probable, I keep on the path of adventure, I will equip myself with this indispensable organization! Woe to those who work by themselves! It is only leader of gangs who attain their ends. I mastered Josephine. Nevertheless, it is she who to-night will lay hands on the precious casket, while Ralph is groaning in his prison cell.” He had reached this point in his meditations when he found that an inexplicable torpor was invading him. It was accompanied by a feeling of general discomfort. He struggled against this unusual drowsiness, but his brain became clouded very quickly. At the same time he felt sick, and his stomach began to ache. By a strong effort he shook off his drowsiness and walked across the room. But the heaviness increased. Of a sudden he threw himself down on the bed, a prey to a horrible thought. He remembered that in the cab Josephine had taken from her pocket a little gold sweetmeat box which she always carried, and as she ate two or three chocolates had, with an apparently mechanical gesture, offered him one. “She has poisoned me!” he murmured, breaking into a cold sweat. “That sweet she gave me was poisoned!” He had no time to consider the truth of this suggestion. In an access of giddiness he seemed to topple into a great hole, and sank into oblivion. Such a strong belief that he was dying had taken possession of him that, when he opened his eyes, he was not sure that he was alive. He took several deep and rather painful breaths, pinched himself, and spoke out loud. He was alive. The distant noises of the street confirmed him in his belief. “Certainly I’m not dead,” he said to himself. “But what a high opinion I’ve got of the woman I love! On account of a wretched narcotic she administered to me, as she had every right to do, I accuse her of poisoning me.” He could not tell how long he had been asleep--one day, or two, or more? His head was heavy; his mind was wandering; and his limbs were aching with a violent cramp. At the bottom of the wall he saw a basket of food which must have been let down through the loophole. No rifle was visible. He was hungry and thirsty. He ate and drank. Such was his lassitude that he did not take the trouble to consider what might be the consequences of that meal. A narcotic? Poison? What did it matter? A passing sleep, or the sleep eternal, it made no difference to him. He went back to bed and fell asleep again for hours, for nights, for days.