CHAPTER X
THE SAMARITAN
When Jim Horton came to his senses after his rescue, he found himself in a small room overlooking a pleasant façade of gray stone, tinted softly by the pale morning sunlight. It was some moments before he managed to gather his scattered wits together and out of the haze and darkness in which he had been groping for two nights and a day, recall the incidents of his escape. Piquette! He remembered.... But what was this room? There had been a cab-drive late in the night—he had been carried up a flight of stairs ... As he turned in the bed he was aware of a figure which rose from the corner of the room and approached him. It was an oldish woman in the neat uniform of a maid.
She smiled. "Monsieur is awake?" And then, moving toward the door, "Madame shall come at once."
But when Piquette entered the small room, attired in a gorgeous pink lounging robe of silk and lace and wearing a boudoir-cap embroidered with silken flowers and golden thread, she dazzled him for a moment with her splendor, and he did not recognize her. She came forward to him quickly and laid her cool hand on his brow.
"Ah, mon petit, c'est mieux." And then, in English, "'Ow do you feel?"
"Better. But everything doesn't seem—very clear to me yet."
"Naturellement. You mus' 'ave some food and de doctor will be 'ere soon."
Jim Horton glanced about the small room.
"Would you mind telling me where I am?" he asked.