Miss Ottley sat up and withered me with a glance. "I—I am. It—it's not hysteria," she stammered, between gasps. "Besides—you—confessed—it—overcame—you, too."
Then she fainted. I sprang up, but even as I moved I heard a loud sigh in the cavern. "The sick man first," I muttered, and let the girl lie. But at the door of the cavern chamber I stood transfixed. A dark shape bent over the patient's cot, hiding Sir Robert Ottley's face from view. It seemed to be a man, but its back was presented to my gaze. "What the deuce are you doing here, whoever you are?" I cried out, and started forward. The shape melted on the instant into thinnest air. "Nothing but a shadow," I said to myself. It was necessary to say something. I was shocked to my soul. I stood for a moment shaking and dismayed. The shadow had been so thick and bodily and had fled so like a spirit that I had work to do to readjust my scattered faculties. Of course a shadow—and my eyes, dazzled by the sunlight without, had momentarily failed to pierce it. A reasonable and quite ample scientific explanation. But what had cast the shadow? Pish—what but myself? And yet: and yet: I was shivering like a blancmange. Never had my nerves used me so ill. Perhaps, however, that accursed perfume had affected them. Ah! there was a reassuring solution of the puzzle. Reassuring to my reason, be it understood, for the fleshy part of me was taken with an ague and refused for many seconds to return to its subjection to my will. Sometimes now I doubt but that the flesh has an intelligence apart from the brain cells and nerve structures that usually control it. Indeed, I have never met a man of intellect whose memory does not register experience of some occasion in which his flesh took independent fright—like a startled hare—at some bogie which made his sober reason subsequently smile; nay, contemptuously at times. "Well, well," I said at length and pushed forward—to receive another shock. Sir Robert Ottley was almost nude. The bed clothes had been pushed down past his waist. His fingers convulsively gripped the paillasse. His face was livid. His eyes were open and upturned. His whole form was stiff and rigid. A fit? It seemed so. His pulse was still. He did not breathe. But a cataleptic fit then, for at a lance prick the blood flowed. I forced him to his right side and tried massage. No use. Strychnine and nitro-glycerine equally refused to act. Finally I saturated a cloth with amyl nitrate, placed it over his open mouth and tried artificial respiration. A whole hour had passed already, but I refused to give in. It was well. In another twenty minutes my efforts were rewarded with a sigh. I kept on and the man began to breathe. When it seemed safe to leave off, I disposed him easily and watched events. First his normal colouring returned. Then his mouth closed. Finally his eyes revolved. The lids closed and opened several times, then rested closed. His pulse beat feverishly, but in spite of that he slept. I walked to the door. Miss Ottley—whom I had completely forgotten—still lay insensible where she had fallen. I picked her up and brought her into the cavern. She awoke to consciousness in transit. I forced her to drink a stiff nobbler of brandy, and very soon she was in her old, cold, bright, proud, self-reliant state—armed cap-a-pie with insolence and egotism.
"Is your father subject to fits?" I asked.
"He has never had, till this, a day's illness in his life," she responded—with a touch of indignation.
I nodded. "Well, his period of disease indemnity has passed. While you swooned he had a fit. I use the expression colloquially. You would probably have so described his condition had you seen him. As for me I don't know. The symptoms were unique. I restored him by treating him as a drowned man. He was in a sort of trance. From this moment he must never be left, even for a second."
"He was insensible?"
"He was inanimate."
"That perfume!" she cried.
I shrugged my shoulders. "No doubt."
We glanced at the sarcophagus, then at each other.