“Wh-where am I? What happened?” I gasped, feeling still a suffocating sensation in the throat and chest, my mouth parched, dry and irritated, and my nose tingling as though afire.
“Here in the garage,” replied Craig, holding a peculiar rubber face mask in one hand, while Burke stood beside a sort of box about the size of a suit-case from which rubber tubes ran to the mask. “I thought the pulmotor would do the trick.”
“It’s lucky you are that there was a gas company in town that’s up-to-date and has one of the things,” returned Burke, breaking back into a vernacular more natural than that veneered on his honest tongue. “Praise be that he’s all right. A night’s sleep will do him good, don’t you say, Mr. Kennedy?”
“But—but what is it all about?” I choked, striving to get my feet, but finding myself still a bit weak. My eye caught the motors and pumps and tubes in the pulmotor, but that conveyed no idea to me. “Tell me—Craig—who was it?”
“I wish I could, old fellow,” replied Craig, smoothing back my hair. “We were just a bit late for that—heard the shot—dashed in, and found you, of all people. How did you come here?”
Propped up gently by Craig, I told what I could of the story, though there was next to nothing to tell.
“Whoever it was,” I concluded, pressing my aching temples ruefully, “he had just time to get away. You heard a shot? Am I wounded? What’s that pulmotor for?”
“Not wounded,” Craig returned. “But you can be thankful we had that thing and that the gas in this asphyxiating pistol was not chlorine. I don’t know what it was—possibly sabadilla veratrine, some of those things they’re using abroad in asphyxiating bombs.”
“Whoever it was, he was prepared for us here,” called Burke, who, now that I was out of danger, had turned his attention to the garage itself. “He’s removed whatever might be incriminating. It’s all as clean as a whistle here. Some one expected us.”
“I knew that all along,” returned Craig, quietly. “Walter blundered into a trap that was set for me.”