Sidney’s face drew closer and closer to that of the renderer. His lips then brushed against the nailed man’s beard.

“What was the meaning of that, Sidney?” Roy questioned him.

“Does it have to have a meanin’?” Sidney answered huskily. He touched his face against that of the sufferer and held it there as light as a feather.

“Pull out the rest of the nails.”

“Can you take it?” Sidney wondered, his words propelled against the cheek of Sturtevant.

“Well, let me see,” Roy said. He began to hemorrhage from his mouth, and Sidney wiped away the blood with his hand.

They both waited a lengthy time. Then Roy began again, “Go in the house and in the big kitchen cupboard in the second drawer from the top you will find some medi­cine with a pink label on it. It’s marked Emergency only, dangerous.”

“But it ain’t poison is it, Roy?” Sidney was touching Roy’s damp hair which now covered almost entirely one eye. His hair too was wet with blood.

“What do you care what it is? . . . No, it ain’t poison, but even if it was I have already drunk all the poison even old Doc Ulric could prescribe for me . . . So go and get it, or pull out the rest of the nails without you get it. Suit yourself.”

Sidney acted as if he could not pull his face away from Roy’s, like an insect which has fallen on some intoxicating slippery surface.

Suddenly their lips met, and remained pressed together.

Then they kissed several times. The renderer let out a groan, and pulled away. His head fell down again.

Sidney ran in the back door and rummaged through the commode. He could not lay his hands on any such bottle for many minutes. Then clear behind some heavy lace napkins yellowed with age, it was visible. He looked at it gloomily, took off the stopper and smelled it. He drew away from the odor, gagging. He picked up a glass from the kitchen sink and was about to take it along, then decided the wounded man could drink better from the bottle itself, and put the glass down.

Roy was unconscious, and his entire body swam with gore. Sidney studied him and watched his breathing, took his pulse, and finally opened his left eye and looked at the pupil.

He drank a swallow from the bottle first, and choked on it, but kept it down. Then he managed to waken Roy and had him drink several swallows, but he vomited out the first two. Then he made a renewed effort and this time drank thirstily, and kept the liquid down.

Sidney’s eyes moved down to where Roy’s cock hung in almost purple folds of flesh, bleeding also as if he had put nails in it, and his testicles which appeared to be naturally large had begun to shrivel up in consonance with the damage and pain done to his arms and legs.