Volume Three—Chapter Eighteen.
One Way of Escape.
North drew a deep breath as one of the men stationed himself at the study window and looked in.
He strode towards him, and the man smiled and beckoned to him to come out; but the smile became a scowl as the cord was seized and the blind drawn down.
Just then the door cracked as some one pressed it hard, and then a whispering penetrated to where North stood looking round before crossing to the surgery, entering, and locking himself in.
His first act was to go to the window, where he expected to find that there was another sentry; but window and outer door faced in another direction, and were shut off from the part of the garden where the man stood by a dense patch of ancient shrubbery and a tall yew hedge.
North felt perfectly calm now, but his soul was full of a terrible despair.
He told himself that for him hope was dead; that in dealing with the occult secrets of Nature he had nearly mastered that which he wished to discover, but had failed, and must pay the penalty; while in the future some more fortunate student would profit by that which he had done; and, avoiding the pitfall into which he had fallen, take another turning and triumph.
To this end in the hours of his misery—when it had seemed to him that the strange essence which pervaded him slept—he had committed to paper the whole history of his experiments, from the first start to the time when he had awakened to the fact that he could no longer arrest the decomposition of the important organs, or do more than make a kind of mummy of his subject; but the essence or spirit was, as it were, taken captive, and at the same time held him in thrall.