Take
care man. I'm quite helpless in this po----
VALENTINE (deftly stopping him with the gag, and snatching up the
mouthpiece of the gas machine). You'll be more helpless presently. (He
presses the mouthpiece over Crampton's mouth and nose, leaning over his
chest so as to hold his head and shoulders well down on the chair.
Crampton makes an inarticulate sound in the mouthpiece and tries to lay
hands on Valentine, whom he supposes to be in front of him. After a
moment his arms wave aimlessly, then subside and drop. He is quite
insensible. Valentine, with an exclamation of somewhat preoccupied
triumph, throws aside the mouthpiece quickly: picks up the forceps
adroitly from the glass: and ---the curtain falls.)
END OF ACT I.
Act II
On the terrace at the Marine Hotel. It is a square flagged platform,
with a parapet of heavy oil jar pilasters supporting a broad stone
coping on the outer edge, which stands up over the sea like a cliff.
The head waiter of the establishment, busy laying napkins on a luncheon
table with his back to the sea, has the hotel on his right, and on his
left, in the corner nearest the sea, the flight of steps leading down to
the beach.
When he looks down the terrace in front of him he sees a little to
his left a solitary guest, a middle-aged gentleman sitting on a chair of
iron laths at a little iron table with a bowl of lump sugar and three
wasps on it, reading the Standard, with his umbrella up to defend him
from the sun, which, in August and at less than an hour after noon, is
toasting his protended insteps.
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