“At length I finished my notes of the will, and started to draft it out on to the proper form. There were no signs of the servant’s return, and I began to be really anxious. Also the extreme cold—or something else—added to the fact that it was now long past my bed-time, was making me appallingly sleepy. I poured out another stiff little dose of the brandy to warm me up, and went on writing out the will.
“When I had finished I said:
“‘How about signing this? We need another witness to make it legal.’
“She said, ‘My servant must be here in a minute or two. I can’t think what has happened to her.’
“‘I expect she has missed her way in the fog,’ I said. ‘However, I will wait a little longer. I can’t go and leave you like this.’
“She thanked me feebly, and we sat for some time in silence. As time went on, I began to feel the situation to be increasingly uncanny. The sick woman breathed heavily, and moaned from time to time. The desire for sleep overpowered me more and more. I could not understand it.
“Presently it occurred to me, stupefied though I felt, that the most sensible thing would be to get the taxi-man—if he was still there—to come in and witness the will with me, and then to go myself to find a doctor. I sat, sleepily revolving this in my mind, and trying to summon energy to speak. I felt as though a great weight of inertia was pressing down upon me. Exertion of any kind seemed almost beyond my powers.
“Suddenly something happened which brought me back to myself. Mrs. Mead turned a little over upon the couch and peered at me intently, as it seemed, in the lamp-light. To support herself, she put both her hands on the edge of the table. I noticed, with a vague sense of something unexpected, that the left hand bore no wedding-ring. And then I noticed something else.
“Across the back of the fingers of the right hand went a curious scar—as though a chisel or some such thing had slipped and cut them.”
Parker sat upright in his chair.