Chapter Eighteen. The Mystery of the Morning-Room.

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.

Suddenly he rose, and, turning to her ladyship, said in broken English—

“Now, madam, you will tell me, please, how this occurred.”

“I do not know. Doctor Colkirk has told you all I know about it.”

“But, just as Doctor Hoefer entered, you were telling me about something mysterious that had happened here. What was that?”

She pursed her lips for a moment, and glanced quickly at the old German.

“It is a most serious thing. I cannot make it out. There is some mystery in the morning-room.”

“Ach!” exclaimed Hoefer, with a grunt—“a mystery! The symptoms of the lady are in themselves mysterious. Please explain the mystery of the room.”

“Well,” she answered, “when I entered, after the departure of the visitor, and discovered my cousin lying on the floor unconscious, I was quite well; but when I left I experienced a most curious sensation, just as though all my limbs were benumbed. I, too, almost lost consciousness while in the cab in search of Doctor Colkirk. But the most curious part of the affair is that my maid and the housemaid, who rushed in when I raised the alarm, experienced the very same sensation. It was as though we were struck by an icy hand—the Hand of Death.”

“There is something very uncanny about that,” I observed, puzzled.

“To me it seems as though poor Beryl were struck down in the same way as myself.”

“But you say that you felt nothing on entering—only on leaving?” inquired Hoefer, his eyes seeming to grow larger behind his great glasses.

“Only on leaving,” she assured him.

“Strange!” he ejaculated. “Let us see the room. We may, perhaps, obtain a clue to this mysterious ailment from which your cousin is suffering.”

“But she is not dead?” I asked in doubt.

“No,” he responded. “The last injection must be given time to take effect. We can only hope for the best.”

“But the electric battery?” I suggested. “Could we not try that?”

“Useless, my dear friend,” he responded; “it would kill her. Let us see the room of mystery.”

The baronet’s wife conducted us along the hall to the further end, where she opened the door, herself drawing back.

“What!” I inquired. “You fear to enter?”

“Yes,” she faltered. “I will remain here.”

“Very well. We will go in,” I laughed, for the idea seemed so absurd that both Hoefer and myself put it down to her excited imagination.

What ill effect could the mere entry into a room have upon the human system, providing there were no foul gases? Therefore we both went forward, sniffing suspiciously, and walking to the window, opened it widely.

The half-dozen lights in the electrolier illuminated the place brightly, revealing a fine, handsome room furnished with taste and comfort. On looking round we certainly saw nothing to account for the extraordinary phenomena as described by the trembling woman who stood upon the mat outside.

While we made a careful examination of the place in which my love had met her strange visitor, the door, creaking horribly, swung slowly to, as doors often will when badly hung. Hoefer examined the floor carefully, seeking to discover whether the unknown woman in black had dropped anything that might give a clue to her identity, while I searched the chairs for the same purpose. We, however, found nothing.

What, I wondered, was the nature of the interview that had taken place there a couple of hours before? Who was the woman who had called and represented herself as Beryl’s dressmaker? Could it have been the woman whose vengeance was so feared, the woman whose very name had been uttered by that miscreant with bated breath—La Gioia?

With her ladyship standing in the hall watching us we searched high and low. Neither of us felt any curious sensation, and I began to think that the story was merely concocted in order to add mystery to Beryl’s unique seizure. Yet, from that woman’s face, it was nevertheless evident that she stood there in fear lest any evil should befall us.

“Do you experience any queer feeling?” she inquired of us at last.

“None whatever,” I responded.

“It is only on leaving,” she replied.

“Very well,” I answered with a laugh, scouting the idea, and then boldly passing out into the hall.

“Good Heavens?” I gasped a few moments later, almost as soon as I had reached her side. “Hoefer! come here quickly. There’s something devilish, uncanny in this. I’ve never felt like this before.”

The old German dashed out of the room and was in an instant beside me.

“How do you feel?” he inquired.

I heard his voice, but it sounded like that of some one speaking in the far distance. The shock was just as though an icy hand had struck me as I had emerged from the hall. I was cold from head to foot, shivering violently, while my lower limbs became so benumbed that I could not feel my feet.

I must have reeled, for Hoefer in alarm caught me in his arms and steadied me...

“Tell me—what are your symptoms?”

“I’m cold,” I answered, my voice trembling and my teeth chattering violently.

He seized my wrist, and his great fingers closed upon it.

“Ach!” he cried in genuine alarm, “your pulse is failing. And your eyes!” he added, looking into them. “You are cold—your legs are rigid—you have the same symptoms, exactly the same, as the young lady?”

“And you?” I gasped. “Do you feel nothing?”

“Nothing yet,” he responded—“nothing.”

“But what is it?” I cried in desperation. “The feeling is truly as though the Angel of Death had passed and struck me down. Cannot you give me something, Hoefer? Give me something—before I lose all consciousness!”

The woman near me stood rooted to the spot in absolute terror, while the old German placed me upon an oaken settle in the hall, and ran along to the boudoir, returning with the syringe filled with the same injection which he had administered to my love. This he gave me in the arm, then stood by breathlessly anxious as to the result.

The feelings I experienced during the ten minutes that followed are indescribable. I can only compare them to the excruciating agony of being slowly frozen to death.

Through it all I saw Hoefer’s great fleshy face with the big spectacles peering into mine. I tried to speak, but could not. I tried to raise my hand to make signs, but my muscles had suddenly become paralysed. Truly the mystery of that room was an uncanny one.

It ran through my mind that, the house being lit by electric light, the wires were perhaps not properly isolated, and any person leaving the place received a paralysing shock. This theory was, however, completely negatived by my symptoms, which were not in any way similar to those consequent on electric shock.

Hoefer looked anxiously at his watch, then, after a lapse of a few minutes, gave me a second injection, which rendered me a trifle easier. I could detect, by his manner and his grunts, that he was utterly confounded. He, who had sneered at the weird story, like myself was now convinced that some strange, unaccountable mystery was connected with that room.

To enter, apparently produced no ill effect; but to leave brought swiftly and surely upon the fated intruder the icy touch of death. I had laughed the thing to scorn, yet within a few seconds had myself fallen a victim. Some deep, inscrutable mystery was there, but what it was neither of us could tell.