Part 33 (1/2)

His fleshy face went pale, and I saw by its contortions that the left side had become paralysed. But with a quick movement I pushed up his coat-sleeve, and ran the needle beneath the skin.

His teeth were closed tightly as he watched me.

”It is almost unaccountable,” he gasped in an awed voice, when I had withdrawn the needle after the injection. ”I was cold as ice--just as though my legs were in a refrigerator!”

”Your feet are benumbed?” I said.

”Yes,” he responded. ”The sensation is just exactly as you have described it. Like the touch of an icy hand.”

I felt his pulse; it was intermittent and feeble. I told him so.

”Look at your watch, and in three minutes give me the second injection.

There's ether there in the larger bottle.”

I glanced at the time, and, holding my watch in my hand, waited until the three minutes had pa.s.sed. We were silent, all three of us, until I took up a piece of cotton wool, and, saturating it with ether, nibbed it carefully on the flesh. Then I gave him the second injection.

”Good!” he said approvingly. ”It acts marvellously. I shall be better in a few moments. Did you feel your head reeling and your strength failing?”

I responded in the affirmative.

”And so did I,” he answered. ”The seizure is sharp and sudden, the brain becoming paralysed. That is the condition of the young lady: paralysis of the brain and heart, coma and collapse.”

”But the cause?” I asked.

He was pale as death, yet he took no notice of his own condition.

”The cause?” he echoed, in his deep guttural German. ”It is for us to discover that. I have never met a more interesting case than this.”

”Yes, it's interesting enough,” I admitted; ”but recollect the lady. We must not neglect her.”

”We are not neglecting her,” he responded reprovingly. ”Now that we know something of the symptoms, we may be able to save her. Before, we were working entirely in the dark.”

”But you are still ill,” I said.

”No, no,” he laughed; ”it is nothing.” And he pa.s.sed across the threshold and stood just within the room again.

Apparently he thought that the seat of the mystery lay in the doorway.

Then he rejoined us, but felt no further symptoms.

There was evidently some uncanny but unseen influence contained within that apartment, but what it was we could not discover. All that was plain to us was the fact that any person emerging from it must be struck down as by an ice-cold hand.

Together we returned to the boudoir, and, to our satisfaction, saw an unmistakable sign that life was not entirely extinct. My love had moved!

”Good!” exclaimed the old German. ”I go again to get something else.”

And, without further word, he crammed his shabby soft felt hat upon his head and hurried out.

”The mystery of that room is most extraordinary,” I remarked to her ladys.h.i.+p when we were alone. ”Has the influence ever been felt there before?”

”Not to my knowledge,” she responded. ”Never before to-night.”