Guy sat crumpled down in the chair like an empty sack.  His head was on his clenched hands.  He swayed as if in pain.

Burke stood looking down at him for a moment or two.  Then he turned and went away, leaving the door ajar behind him.

When he came back, Guy was on his feet again, prowling uneasily up and down, but he had not crossed the threshold.  He gave him that furtive, hunted look again as he entered.

“What dope is that?  Not the genuine article I’ll wager my soul!”

“It is the genuine article,” Burke said.  “Drink it, and go to bed!”

But Guy stood before him with his hands at his sides.  The smouldering fire in his eyes was leaping higher and higher.  “What’s the game?” he said.  “Is it a damned ruse to get me into your power?”

Burke set down the glass he carried, and turned full upon him.  There was that about him that compelled the younger man to meet his look.  They stood face to face.

“You are in my power,” he said with stern insistence.  “I’ve borne with you because I didn’t want to use force.  But—­I can use force.  Don’t forget that!”

Guy made a sharp movement—­the movement of the trapped creature.  Beneath Burke’s unsparing regard his eyes fell.  In a moment he turned aside, and muttering below his breath he took up the glass on the table.  For a second or two he stood staring at it, then lifted it as if to drink, but in an instant changed his purpose and with a snarling laugh swung back and flung glass and contents straight at Burke’s grim face.

What followed was of so swift and so deadly a nature as to possess something of the quality of a whirlwind.  Almost before the glass lay in shivered fragments on the floor, Guy was on his knees and being forced backwards till his head and shoulders touched the boards.  And above him, terrible with awful intention, was Burke’s face, gashed open across the chin and dripping blood upon his own.

The fight went out of Guy then like an extinguished flame.  With gasping incoherence he begged for mercy.

“You’re hurting me infernally!  Man, let me up!  I’ve been—­I’ve been—­a damn’ fool!  Didn’t know—­didn’t realize!  Burke—­for heaven’s sake—­don’t torture me!”

“Be still!” Burke said.  “Or I’ll murder you!”

His voice was low and furious, his hold without mercy.  Yet, after a few seconds he mastered his own violence, realizing that all resistance in the man under him was broken.  In a silence that was more appalling than speech he got to his feet, releasing him.

Guy rolled over sideways and lay with his face on his arms, gasping painfully.  After a pause, Burke turned from him and went to the washing-stand.

The blood continued to now from the wound while he bathed it.  The cut was deep.  He managed, however, to staunch it somewhat at length, and then very steadily he turned back.

“Get up!” he said.