When I
told him that his watch was over; that he might go to bed till I should
call him at six o’clock, he seemed relieved and went with alacrity. At
the door he turned and, coming back to me, said in a whisper:

“I sleep lightly and I shall have my pistols with me. I won’t feel so
heavy-headed when I get out of this mummy smell.”

He too, then, had shared my experience of drowsiness! I asked the Nurse if she wanted anything. I noticed that she had a
vinaigrette in her lap. Doubtless she, too, had felt some of the
influence which had so affected me. She said that she had all she
required, but that if she should want anything she would at once let me
know. I wished to keep her from noticing my respirator, so I went to
the chair in the shadow where her back was toward me. Here I quietly
put it on, and made myself comfortable. For what seemed a long time, I sat and thought and thought. It was a
wild medley of thoughts, as might have been expected from the
experiences of the previous day and night. Again I found myself
thinking of the Egyptian smell; and I remember that I felt a delicious
satisfaction that I did not experience it as I had done. The
respirator was doing its work. It must have been that the passing of this disturbing thought made for
repose of mind, which is the corollary of bodily rest, for, though I
really cannot remember being asleep or waking from it, I saw a
vision—I dreamed a dream, I scarcely know which. I was still in the room, seated in the chair. I had on my respirator
and knew that I breathed freely. The Nurse sat in her chair with her
back toward me. She sat quite still. The sick man lay as still as the
dead. It was rather like the picture of a scene than the reality; all
were still and silent; and the stillness and silence were continuous. Outside, in the distance I could hear the sounds of a city, the
occasional roll of wheels, the shout of a reveller, the far-away echo
of whistles and the rumbling of trains. The light was very, very low;
the reflection of it under the green-shaded lamp was a dim relief to
the darkness, rather than light. The green silk fringe of the lamp had
merely the colour of an emerald seen in the moonlight. The room, for
all its darkness, was full of shadows. It seemed in my whirling
thoughts as though all the real things had become shadows—shadows
which moved, for they passed the dim outline of the high windows. Shadows which had sentience. I even thought there was sound, a faint
sound as of the mew of a cat—the rustle of drapery and a metallic
clink as of metal faintly touching metal. I sat as one entranced. At
last I felt, as in nightmare, that this was sleep, and that in the
passing of its portals all my will had gone. All at once my senses were full awake. A shriek rang in my ears. The
room was filled suddenly with a blaze of light. There was the sound of
pistol shots—one, two; and a haze of white smoke in the room. When my
waking eyes regained their power, I could have shrieked with horror
myself at what I saw before me. Chapter IV

The Second Attempt


The sight which met my eyes had the horror of a dream within a dream,
with the certainty of reality added. The room was as I had seen it
last; except that the shadowy look had gone in the glare of the many
lights, and every article in it stood stark and solidly real. By the empty bed sat Nurse Kennedy, as my eyes had last seen her,
sitting bolt upright in the arm-chair beside the bed. She had placed a
pillow behind her, so that her back might be erect; but her neck was
fixed as that of one in a cataleptic trance. She was, to all intents
and purposes, turned into stone. There was no special expression on
her face—no fear, no horror; nothing such as might be expected of one
in such a condition. Her open eyes showed neither wonder nor interest. She was simply a negative existence, warm, breathing, placid; but
absolutely unconscious of the world around her. The bedclothes were
disarranged, as though the patient had been drawn from under them
without throwing them back. The corner of the upper sheet hung upon
the floor; close by it lay one of the bandages with which the Doctor
had dressed the wounded wrist. Another and another lay further along
the floor, as though forming a clue to where the sick man now lay. This was almost exactly where he had been found on the previous night,
under the great safe. Again, the left arm lay toward the safe. But
there had been a new outrage, an attempt had been made to sever the arm
close to the bangle which held the tiny key. A heavy “kukri”
knife—one of the leaf-shaped knives which the Gurkhas and others of
the hill tribes of India use with such effect—had been taken from its
place on the wall, and with it the attempt had been made. It was
manifest that just at the moment of striking, the blow had been
arrested, for only the point of the knife and not the edge of the blade
had struck the flesh. As it was, the outer side of the arm had been
cut to the bone and the blood was pouring out. In addition, the former
wound in front of the arm had been cut or torn about terribly, one of
the cuts seemed to jet out blood as if with each pulsation of the
heart. By the side of her father knelt Miss Trelawny, her white
nightdress stained with the blood in which she knelt. In the middle of
the room Sergeant Daw, in his shirt and trousers and stocking feet, was
putting fresh cartridges into his revolver in a dazed mechanical kind
of way. His eyes were red and heavy, and he seemed only half awake,
and less than half conscious of what was going on around him. Several
servants, bearing lights of various kinds, were clustered round the
doorway. As I rose from my chair and came forward, Miss Trelawny raised her eyes
toward me. When she saw me she shrieked and started to her feet,
pointing towards me. Never shall I forget the strange picture she
made, with her white drapery all smeared with blood which, as she rose
from the pool, ran in streaks toward her bare feet. I believe that I
had only been asleep; that whatever influence had worked on Mr.
Trelawny and Nurse Kennedy—and in less degree on Sergeant Daw—had not
touched me. The respirator had been of some service, though it had not
kept off the tragedy whose dire evidences were before me. I can
understand now—I could understand even then—the fright, added to that
which had gone before, which my appearance must have evoked. I had
still on the respirator, which covered mouth and nose; my hair had been
tossed in my sleep. Coming suddenly forward, thus enwrapped and
dishevelled, in that horrified crowd, I must have had, in the strange
mixture of lights, an extraordinary and terrifying appearance. It was
well that I recognised all this in time to avert another catastrophe;
for the half-dazed, mechanically-acting Detective put in the cartridges
and had raised his revolver to shoot at me when I succeeded in
wrenching off the respirator and shouting to him to hold his hand.