George Allan England

“ Mighty is the driving power of King Morphine, as all his subjects know!
“You rang, sir?” Zanelli mocked.
“Yes.” No longer did the millionaire rage, storm, abuse, threaten. Meekly suppliant was his tone. “Send Captain Jaccard here.”
“The captain's busy, sir.”
With calculating eyes Zanelli observed his titular master, the most miserable of humans.
“It's very important,” Wingate forced himself to articulate with pale lips. He felt himself on the ragged edge of collapsing again—this time perhaps for good. Every fiber and every nerve were shrieking for morphine. ”

“ Jaccard laughed easily.
“Just a little fiction of mine,” he explained, “like the shaft being broken. I handed you that story to get the game started in some kind of way that wouldn't give you apoplexy. You're too valuable a man to take chances with, you see. When you get the note written to the bank, I'll connect with the tender, all right enough.”
Wingate stared with growing rage. The veins on his thin temples began to knot, to protrude. A gleam as of madness inflamed his eyes, which once more were narrowed by the contracting power of the drug. ”

“ The tormentors could deny their plot, could say that the engine had broken down, could allege that Wingate had gone mad, or had been stricken with a fever.
The hellish cleverness of the trap vaguely dawned on the victim. Through all his pain and hate, somewhere from deep recesses of his mind uprose a sort of saturnine admiration for such well planned and perfectly executed strategy. More than once he himself had trapped and beaten a competitor, had been merciless and hard ”