“No, no,” he moaned, shaking his head. “Julie, Julie!” Further than this I could get nothing intelligible out of him.
Another paroxysm of that awful pain came on, and I was obliged to resort to another hypodermic. This paroxysm left him almost pulseless. His skin grew cold and damp, and his eyes assumed that glazed and set appearance which means but one thing to the professional eye. My patient was sinking fast.
I quickly administered stimulants hypodermically and then called the sick man’s friends to his bedside.
“This man is dying,” I said quietly to the landlady. “He has but a few minutes longer to live. See if you can get him to say anything about himself.”
The woman spoke to the dying man and shook him gently, in a vain effort to arouse his attention. He revived a little for a fleeting moment and shook his head feebly, muttering in barely audible tones, “Tired—so tired—sleepy.”
This was the last flicker of his candle of life. I could no longer find the pulse at the wrist. The heart sounds grew feebler and feebler and finally ceased altogether. The face grew gray and ghastly. The eyes were set and dully staring and the jaw relaxed. There was a last convulsive expansion and contraction of the chest and a gasping, strident, laryngeal sound as the breath finally left the poor fellow’s body forever. My unfortunate patient was dead!
“What was the matter with him, Doctor?” asked in chorus the people about the bedside.
Long years of experience had brought discretion to this particular warhorse, and so I replied,
“Acute gastritis.”
I did not propose to tell all I thought I knew, or to issue premature bulletins. I wanted time to think. I scented mystery here, and perhaps crime, and let him who will condemn my taste as a depraved one, such things have always had an overpowering fascination for me.