One look was enough for the examining doctor.
"Put on rubber gloves," he said to his assistant, "take off every stitch he has and burn the clothes. Don't let them touch anything. Burn the canvas of that stretcher. Get the 'phone instruments out of that shelter and burn the shelter. Tell the operator who is there now to change his clothes and burn them, too, and tell him to come here for treatment, quickly!"
"Why, Doctor, what is it?" the assistant asked.
"Blister gas," the doctor answered, "the newest horror of those German fiends.[25] You can't see it, can't smell it, don't know it's there, but ten minutes after you've been near it, the vile stuff raises a thousand blisters on the skin. The poison will sometimes stay in the clothes for weeks. Even the wood of a chair will hold the venom."
"But is it fatal?"
"Victims die from the pain, sometimes," the doctor answered. "Take this boy here. He's had an awful dose, because, as I understand, the shell burst right in the shelter and he soaked it in. He'll be unconscious for quite a while and in about three days all those blisters will break. His body will be nothing but a sheet of raw flesh. We'll have to keep him under morphine and we'll be lucky if he pulls through."
For two long awful weeks Horace lay in a drugged state which left him dulled and yet conscious of pain. The agony rose above the anæsthetic.
At last, exhausted, weak and still in acute torment, he came to himself, to find the hunchback standing beside his bed.
The lad looked up feebly.
"Oh, Croquier," he said, speaking with a still raw throat, "I've been having such a queer dream."