My eyes wandered from the face of the trembling woman before me to the
blanched countenance of my love. In an instant I detected a change
there. While I had been speaking the muscles had relaxed until that
face I adored had become blank and quite expressionless. No deep
medical knowledge was necessary to detect the awful truth. It was the
exact counterpart of the photograph which had been in the Colonel's
possession.
With a cry of despair I sank upon my knees, touching her cheeks and
chafing her hands. I held the mirror against her mouth. But the jaw
had dropped, and when I looked eagerly for signs of respiration, there
were none. Beryl, my mysterious, unknown wife, was dead.
I pressed her hand, I called her by name, and, aided by her cousin Nora,
frantically tried the various modes of artificial respiration. But all
in vain. Her frail life had flickered out even while we had been
fencing with each other. All was useless. She had, as the Major had
predicted during that memorable interview at Whitton, been struck down
swiftly and secretly in some manner that was impossible to determine.
"She's dead!" I cried, still holding her thin, cold hand, and turning
to the woman who had brought me to her side. "Dead--dead!"
"Impossible!" she gasped. "No, don't tell me that. Do your best to
save her, Doctor. You must save her--you must!"
"But she is beyond human aid!" I declared. "Respiration has ceased.
She has been murdered!"
"By that woman in black!" she shrieked. "But how?"
"That I do not know," I responded very gravely. "There is no wound;
nothing whatever to account for death."
"Oh!" she cried in desperation, "I ought to have told you everything at
once, but I feared you would not believe it if I told you. A strange
thing has occurred in this house, something very uncanny. It is as
though the place is overshadowed by some evil influence."
"I don't understand you," I answered quickly interested; but ere the
words had left my mouth there was a tap at the door, and the servant,
ushered in my old friend and lecturer, Carl Hoefer.
"Ah, my dear Doctor!" I cried eagerly, rushing forward to welcome
him--"You will excuse me calling you so unexpectedly, and at this hour,
but something very unusual has transpired--a matter in which I require
your assistance."
"Ach!" he answered, shaking my hand, "I was surprised to get your kart,
my frient. But, you see, I haf come to you at once."
He was a stout, ill-dressed man, broad-shouldered, short-legged,
big-headed, heavy-jowled, about fifty-five, with scraggy yellowish hair
upon his furrowed face, a pair of big eyes which blinked through large
gold-rimmed spectacles, and a limp shirt-front secured by a couple of
common pearl studs. Typically German in figure and manner, he spoke
with a strong accent, his English grammar being often very faulty, but
he was nevertheless a burly, good-natured man, possessing a keen sense
of humour.
I introduced him briefly to the baronet's wife, and then, indicating the
inanimate body of my love, gave him a short, technical account of her
symptoms. He bent over her, examined her face, and grunted dubiously.
"It looks as though the young lady were dead," he said with his strong
accent, his great sleepy-looking eyes blinking at us through his
spectacles.
"I see no sign of life," I responded. "What is your opinion?"
He went down on his knees, grunting over the effort, and while I held
the lamp for him, examined her throat and neck carefully, as though
looking for some mark or other.
"And how did it all happen?" he inquired presently, after a long,
thoughtful silence.
I exchanged glances with her ladyship, and then related him the story
just as she had told it to me.
"Her ladyship wishes that it should be kept a profound secret," I added.
"Secret!" he snorted. "How are you going to hoodwink the coroner?"
"Then you think poor Beryl is really dead?" her cousin gasped.
"She is dead," the old fellow answered gruffly.
"But can you do nothing?" I urged in desperation.
"If she's dead, that's impossible," he declared.
"No," I said. "I refuse to believe that she is actually beyond your
aid. To us she may appear dead, but her state may be only a cataleptic
one."
He shook his great shaggy head dubiously, but made no response. This
man, one of the greatest chemists of the age, who had been recognised as
_private docent_ of pathological anatomy and bacteriology at the
University of Naples, and was renowned throughout the world for his
excursions into the queer byways of medicine, was a man of few words.
His grunts were full of expression, and his fleshy face with the dull
eyes was absolutely sphinx-like. The story he had heard regarding
Beryl's sudden seizure did not convince him. His expressive grunt told
me so. He had ripped up the tight sleeves of her dress, and was
examining the inside of the arms at the elbows, but what he saw did not
satisfy him.
I told him of the mirror-test, of the artificial respiration which I had
tried, and he listened to me in silence. With his finger he opened the
left eye and looked long and earnestly into the pupil. Then after a
long suspense he suddenly spoke.
"Ach! we have been meestake; she is not dead."
"Not dead?" I cried joyfully. "Thank God for that! Do your best to
restore her to us. Doctor--for my sake! How can I assist you?"
"By remaining quiet," he growled reprovingly.
And again he recommenced the examination of the inside of the elbows
after having ordered other lights to be brought. Then, without saying
where he was going, he left us, promising to return in a few minutes.
He was a queer old fellow, very eccentric, and with a method that was as
curious as the particular branch of the profession in which he was a
specialist.
Not more than ten minutes passed before he returned grunting, puffing,
and carrying a small packet in his hand. He had evidently been to the
nearest chemist's.
"Some water!" he commanded--"warm water."
This was at once brought, and, arranging several little packets on the
glass-topped table, he seated himself leisurely, and commenced to open
and examine the contents of each very slowly.
"You have a hypodermic syringe?" he inquired. I took it from my pocket
case and handed it to him. He grunted and made a disparaging remark
about the make--German needles were so much better, he declared. Then,
having cleaned the syringe, he mixed a solution with the utmost care,
and then administered a subcutaneous injection in Beryl's arm.
He took a chair and sat beside the cold, inanimate form, eagerly
watching the effects of the drug he had administered.
Her ladyship stood near, her dark eyes, framed by the white agitated
countenance, fixed immovably upon us.
Hoefer glanced at his cheap metal watch, and, grunting, crossed to the
table and mixed a second injection, grumbling all the time at the
inferior quality of my hypodermic syringe. So rough, unpolished in
manner, and unsparing in criticism was he, that her ladyship drew back
from him in fear.
The second injection proved of as little avail as the first, and from
the great man's grave expression I began to fear the worst. No sign of
life asserted itself. To all appearance my adored had passed away.