The mirror showed me a head floating
apparently in mid-air and a pair of hands hanging mysteriously from
nothing. My eyes were curiously goggled with a thin, gelatinous-like
film, with a glassy surface that was bound about my head. This I
tore off forthwith and curiously examined. It was actually composed
of gelatine. Tossing it aside, I ran my fingers over my clothing and
discovered, from the sense of touch, that I was clad to the neck in one
unbroken combination suit of rubber overalls, which included footgear. I soon made out the secret of its fastening, and tearing it open, I
stepped forth into the light of day and perfect visibility, to find
that I still had on all the clothes I had worn when Dr. Belleville
trapped me, except my boots. The overalls, however, remained visible,
or rather partially so, for their inner surface viewed from the opening
was discernible. I put them carefully aside for future investigation
and proceeded to make a toilet. My first care was a hot bath. The hall
porter, whom I had frightened so desperately a little while before,
answered my ring. He was astounded to see me, but I did not choose to
make him any explanations, and he was too overcome to ask me for any. A little later I was luxuriating in a steaming bath, which removed the
last vestige of my Parisian disguise. Most of the paint, however, had
worn off before, so it was the easier to become myself again. But not
quite my old, familiar self. My experiences had permanently aged me. There were lines upon my face that I was stranger to, and with which I
made reluctant acquaintance. And my hair was liberally streaked with
grey. I had put on ten years, at least. I felt old, too, that was the
worst of it--old, ill and thick-blooded and infinitely world-weary. I felt a hunger for the desert and big open spaces; a need to hasten
from the grinding, selfish life of cities, with their secret crimes
and gilded vices and dull-herded groping after sordid happiness. But
I did not wish to go alone. At a little after eight o'clock I entered
the Walsingham and demanded to see Miss Ottley's head nurse. She was
at breakfast, but the waiter told me that Miss Ottley had spent a good
night and was still asleep, so I was content to wait. Afterwards, I had
to lie to the nurse in order to be permitted to see the invalid. I told
her that I was Miss Ottley's nearest living relative, and I suppressed
the fact of my medical qualifications. The woman, otherwise, would
have referred me to the physicians, who had employed her, and I should
have been put off for hours. As it was, it required all my powers of
persuasion to induce her to admit me to the sick room. But I prevailed
on her at last, with a show of stern authority, and a curt intimation
that her position depended on my complaisance. The falsehood is not
one that I feel any shame at, for I knew what an effect my appearance
would make in the patient, and I was determined, at all costs, to be
with her at the moment of her waking. I shall pass over the preliminary
period that I spent beside her bed. It is too full of sorrow to recall
with anything but misery. The poor girl was as frail and wan as any
spirit. They had cut off all her glorious hair, and the hand I kissed,
which lay so weakly on the coverlid, was whiter than a snowflake, and
almost as destitute of vigour. She slept as gently as a weary babe, and
it was hard at first to believe thoroughly she lived. But at length she
sighed and her great eyes slowly opened and looked up questioningly
into mine. She thought that she was dead and that my ghost had sought
her out. "Hugh!" she whispered, and a soft smile lighted her face and
made it infinitely lovely, though so wan. "I knew that I should find
you, dear," she sighed. "And so I could not help but pray to die. Will
God punish us for that?" But I kissed her on the lips--the first long kiss of love that I had
known--or she--and she came back warm with quickened hope and will to
live within my arms. And all was well with us. There is little more to tell. As soon as she was strong again we
married quietly, and now we live in a place where crowded cities are
unknown--far from old England's shores. I never again saw Belleville's
Arab servant, who so marvellously resembled the old High Priest of
Amen-Ra; nor his companion, the Nubian, Uromi. They disappeared
after the fire, and not all the efforts of the police could trace
their hiding-place. The invisible suit of overalls is still in my
possession--but it had lost its old mysterious properties, and although
I expended months of patient labour to explore its secret, it was all
in vain. To this day I cannot tell who released me from the chair in
which Belleville had bound me in the murderer's laboratory. And I
am still unable to explain the many other little mysteries that so
involved us in the period of our contention with the wretch, the fatal
termination of whose wicked scheming I have set forth in these pages. The greater part of Sir Robert Ottley's fortune has been given to the
poor. The rest we settled on my wife's sole living blood relation,
the old bed-ridden aunt, whom she has never seen. We both felt that
we should be doing well to dispose of riches that--to an extent, at
least--must have been acquired by arts of sinister significance. Still,
we have never wanted, and we are not likely to. My profession yields
us a comfortable living in these grand but sparsely settled wilds. And, although we sometimes think regretfully upon the delight we once
experienced in searching out the lettered past of long-dead centuries,
we have other interests now to fill our lives and banish vain regrets. We have our growing children to attend to and provide for. We are
of real service to the people who surround us, for my wife is the
schoolmistress of the district, and I am the only surgeon in a radius
of one hundred miles. Then, we have our books and our long evenings
together in the splendid twilight of the endless plains. We have given
up the past for the future. And we are happy in our labour and our love.