Free The vampire nemesis and other weird stories of the China coast by Dolly

handed me the glass, and I drained it as I had drained the others, handing it back to be refilled. He took the empty glass with a laugh.
    "What, more? I say, be careful, you know. I appreciate the flattery, but it won't do for you to go home drunk every time. Consider how shocked dear Mrs. Keith would be. You owe your wife some consideration, you know. Never mind; here you are."
    "You fiend! You hell-hound! " I longed to tell him, but my tongue refused to utter a sound. Instead, I seized the glass and drank off the contents in large gulps.
    Rawdon sent me home in much the same state as I had been before. No, worse, for I was morose and aggressive instead of being maudlin. And I struck my wife. O God! I struck her, my sweet, patient Ethel! Struck her because she was sitting there with drawn, haggard face, looking at me so sadly, so appealingly.
    I felt I was going mad. No mind could support this intolerable horror and live. And there was no relief for me; turn where I would there was no relief. The law? What could the police do for me ? Had I gone to them and told them that a man was making me drink against my will and ill-treat my wife, they would have laughed at me. They would have scouted the idea and recommended me to see a doctor, not a magistrate. And they would not have been to blame. Had anyone told me two short months before, that such a thing was possible—that in this twentieth century, here in this city of Shanghai, with all its boasted civilisation, a man could be ridden to destruction by the will of another man or fiend, call it what you will—like them I would have laughed derisively and recommended chloral to the one who feared so absurd a contingency.

    Then intervened another three days of calm and comparative peace. But I had never regained my spirits; that shadow, I felt, was still hanging over me, watching me, ready to swoop down again and whirl me away whither it willed.
    Oh, the agonising suspense of that first day! That horrible waiting with bated breath for something to happen—something that seemed vivid and clear enough, yet that the mind could not frame.
    It was no wonder that my bodily health began to give way under the fearful strain. My nerves were all gone. My hand shook so that I could hardly raise a spoonful of soup to my lips without its spilling—I who but a short time before had made a boast of my steady nerves.
    Ethel saw me with alarm growing paler and more haggard every day, and on the morning of the third insisted on my seeing a doctor. I could read in her eyes what it was she feared. She thought my mind was tottering, and God knows it was, but from a cause she never guessed.

    The doctor came, and, as I had anticipated, told me it was nerves. I had been overworking myself, and he recommended a rest. He left me an opiate, and that night I enjoyed the first unbroken slumber that had been my lot for many a day.
    On that morning of the fourth day I arose more refreshed and at ease, and went down to my office. The long day's work helped to restore a little the mental equilibrium that had been so pitiably disturbed, and thus afternoon came.
    The paper was nearly ready for striking off, there remained but a few more proofs to be corrected for the third and last time.
    I touched my bell and told the boy to get me some from the hand-press; I would help correct them. They were second proofs, but, for a Chinese compositor, remarkably clear that day. As I ran my eye down the column hardly a misspelt word did I see. At last I picked out a mistake and seized my pen to make the necessary correction in the margin; but a couple of minutes after I found myself drawing circles and squares in red ink on the margin of the proof sheet, and the correction was still unmade.
    Then suddenly I dropped the pen and reached for my hat, resolved upon going home. It was fully an hour before my usual time of departure. I rarely left the office until the evening's issue was well under way. But this afternoon I felt