Cynthia turned to look around the audience. They too were beginning, unconsciously, to reflect the professor’s concern. Quietly, three times now, he had given his command, Cynthia’s ears were abnormally keen, in spite of the cold.
She glanced back again at the stage, then decided what she would do. Evading Nancy she slipped out of her seat, past the two old ladies who sat on the aisle. It was just a step to the stage, a step or two across it. Leonie’s blank stare did not turn to follow her, but Cynthia knew that she had the attention of every other soul in the house.
She smiled briefly at the bewildered professor and crossed to the child. From her pocket she drew a clean handkerchief soaked with the over-powering scent of “Breathex.”
“I wonder,” Cynthia spoke in English in the hope that the professor, being from Paris, knew a little of that tongue, “if the petite enfant would like to smell this.” And before the hypnotist could protest, had clapped the handkerchief to Leonie’s little snub nose.
It was like a double dose of smelling salts. The American makers would have been proud of their preparation, though perhaps no such strange application of it had ever been suggested to them.
Leonie choked, coughed, strangled a moment. But the blank left her eyes and she struggled to escape the handkerchief. Bewildered, for a moment she gazed at Cynthia, then smiled shyly in a perfectly human, understanding fashion.
Tactfully Cynthia withdrew. “Merci, Professor,” she murmured and backed down the steps.
She heard little of what followed. The Professor’s florid explanation of this occurrence, of the American’s interference with his demonstration, but his willingness to let that pass ... and so on and so on. The audience murmured polite amazement, stared at Cynthia, clapped at the end of Reynaldo’s speech, and began to rise from their benches. The door swung open into the sweet, starlit night.
“Well ...!” stated Nancy. “You certainly distinguished yourself. Gosh, but that was a close call for Leonie. Wonder what would have happened ...”
Cynthia shook her head. “But I knew something must happen if she got a whiff of this. It would have pulled a mummy back to life. Ah, here’s Leonie.”