It brought Dr. Hansen, who, it may be remembered, was closely identified with the Chick Watson disappearance. He made a rapid but very careful examination.
“It has all the appearance of a mild electric shock. What caused it, Fenton?”
I told him. His eyes narrowed when I mentioned Avec, then widened in astonishment and incredulity as I related the man's inexplicable effect upon the girl, and his strange immunity to the poison gas. But the doctor asked nothing further about our situation, proceeding at once to apply several restoratives. All were without result. As a final resort, he even rigged up an electrical connection, making use of some coils which I had upstairs, and endeavoured to arouse the girl in that fashion. Still without result.
“Good Lord, Hansen!” I finally burst out, when he stood back, apparently baffled. “She's simply GOT to be revived! We can't allow her to succumb to that scoundrel's power, whatever it is!”
“Why not a blood transfusion?” I asked eagerly, as an idea came to me. “I'm in perfect condition. What about it? Go to it, doc!”
He slowly shook his head. And beyond a single searching glance into my eyes, wherein he must have read something more than I had said, he regretfully replied:
“This is a case for a specialist, Fenton. Everything considered, I should say that she is suffering from a purely mental condition; but whether it had a physical or a psychic origin, I can't say.”
In short, he did not feel safe about going ahead with any really heroic measures until a brain specialist was called in.
I had a good deal of confidence in Hansen. And what he said sounded reasonable. So we agreed to his calling in a Dr. Higgins—the same man, in fact, who was too late in reaching the house to save Chick on that memorable night a year before.
His examination was swift and convincingly competent. He went over the same ground that Hansen had covered, took the blood pressure and other instrumental data, and asked us several questions regarding Ariadne's mentality as we knew it. Scarcely stopping to think it over, Higgins decided: