Your impulse was correct; though of course in
the half-somnolent condition in which you were, and perhaps partly
affected by the same influence—whatever it may be—which made me sleep
and which has put the Nurse in that cataleptic trance, it could not be
expected that you would pause to weigh matters. But now, whilst the
matter is fresh, let me see exactly where you stood and where I sat. We shall be able to trace the course of your bullets.”  The prospect of
action and the exercise of his habitual skill seemed to brace him at
once; he seemed a different man as he set about his work. I asked Mrs.
Grant to hold the tourniquet, and went and stood where he had stood and
looked where, in the darkness, he had pointed. I could not but notice
the mechanical exactness of his mind, as when he showed me where he had
stood, or drew, as a matter of course, the revolver from his pistol
pocket, and pointed with it. The chair from which I had risen still
stood in its place. Then I asked him to point with his hand only, as I
wished to move in the track of his shot. Just behind my chair, and a little back of it, stood a high buhl
cabinet. The glass door was shattered. I asked:

“Was this the direction of your first shot or your second?”  The answer
came promptly. “The second; the first was over there!”

He turned a little to the left, more toward the wall where the great
safe stood, and pointed. I followed the direction of his hand and came
to the low table whereon rested, amongst other curios, the mummy of the
cat which had raised Silvio’s ire. I got a candle and easily found the
mark of the bullet. It had broken a little glass vase and a tazza of
black basalt, exquisitely engraved with hieroglyphics, the graven lines
being filled with some faint green cement and the whole thing being
polished to an equal surface. The bullet, flattened against the wall,
lay on the table. I then went to the broken cabinet. It was evidently a receptacle for
valuable curios; for in it were some great scarabs of gold, agate,
green jasper, amethyst, lapis lazuli, opal, granite, and blue-green
china. None of these things happily were touched. The bullet had gone
through the back of the cabinet; but no other damage, save the
shattering of the glass, had been done. I could not but notice the
strange arrangement of the curios on the shelf of the cabinet. All the
scarabs, rings, amulets, &c. were arranged in an uneven oval round an
exquisitely-carved golden miniature figure of a hawk-headed God crowned
with a disk and plumes. I did not wait to look further at present, for
my attention was demanded by more pressing things; but I determined to
make a more minute examination when I should have time. It was evident
that some of the strange Egyptian smell clung to these old curios;
through the broken glass came an added whiff of spice and gum and
bitumen, almost stronger than those I had already noticed as coming
from others in the room. All this had really taken but a few minutes. I was surprised when my
eye met, through the chinks between the dark window blinds and the
window cases, the brighter light of the coming dawn. When I went back
to the sofa and took the tourniquet from Mrs. Grant, she went over and
pulled up the blinds. It would be hard to imagine anything more ghastly than the appearance
of the room with the faint grey light of early morning coming in upon
it. As the windows faced north, any light that came was a fixed grey
light without any of the rosy possibility of dawn which comes in the
eastern quarter of heaven. The electric lights seemed dull and yet
glaring; and every shadow was of a hard intensity. There was nothing
of morning freshness; nothing of the softness of night. All was hard
and cold and inexpressibly dreary. The face of the senseless man on
the sofa seemed of a ghastly yellow; and the Nurse’s face had taken a
suggestion of green from the shade of the lamp near her. Only Miss
Trelawny’s face looked white; and it was of a pallor which made my
heart ache. It looked as if nothing on God’s earth could ever again
bring back to it the colour of life and happiness. It was a relief to us all when Doctor Winchester came in, breathless
with running. He only asked one question:

“Can anyone tell me anything of how this wound was gotten?”  On seeing
the headshake which went round us under his glance, he said no more,
but applied himself to his surgical work. For an instant he looked up
at the Nurse sitting so still; but then bent himself to his task, a
grave frown contracting his brows. It was not till the arteries were
tied and the wounds completely dressed that he spoke again, except, of
course, when he had asked for anything to be handed to him or to be
done for him. When Mr. Trelawny’s wounds had been thoroughly cared
for, he said to Miss Trelawny:

“What about Nurse Kennedy?”  She answered at once:

“I really do not know. I found her when I came into the room at
half-past two o’clock, sitting exactly as she does now. We have not
moved her, or changed her position. She has not wakened since. Even
Sergeant Daw’s pistol-shots did not disturb her.”

“Pistol-shots? Have you then discovered any cause for this new
outrage?”  The rest were silent, so I answered:

“We have discovered nothing. I was in the room watching with the
Nurse. Earlier in the evening I fancied that the mummy smells were
making me drowsy, so I went out and got a respirator. I had it on when
I came on duty; but it did not keep me from going to sleep. I awoke to
see the room full of people; that is, Miss Trelawny and Sergeant Daw,
being only half awake and still stupefied by the same scent or
influence which had affected us, fancied that he saw something moving
through the shadowy darkness of the room, and fired twice. When I rose
out of my chair, with my face swathed in the respirator, he took me for
the cause of the trouble. Naturally enough, he was about to fire
again, when I was fortunately in time to manifest my identity. Mr.
Trelawny was lying beside the safe, just as he was found last night;
and was bleeding profusely from the new wound in his wrist. We lifted
him on the sofa, and made a tourniquet. That is, literally and
absolutely, all that any of us know as yet. We have not touched the
knife, which you see lies close by the pool of blood. Look!” I said,
going over and lifting it. “The point is red with the blood which has
dried.”

Doctor Winchester stood quite still a few minutes before speaking:

“Then the doings of this night are quite as mysterious as those of last
night?”

“Quite!” I answered. He said nothing in reply, but turning to Miss
Trelawny said:

“We had better take Nurse Kennedy into another room. I suppose there
is nothing to prevent it?”

“Nothing!