For a moment or two I lay there in a waking swoon of puzzled but entire bliss. Then I tried to move my position slightly upon the bed, for I was lying upon a bed in a large and airy room, and groaned aloud. Every muscle in my body seemed stretched as if upon the rack, and there was a pain like a red-hot iron in one ankle.
"It will hurt for a few hours," said Pu-Yi, "but you will shortly be massaged, Sir Thomas, and then—"
"You!" I cried, "but you are dead! Zorilla got you on the tower before—before—"
My mind leapt up into full activity. I was once more swaying upon the edge of infinity with my fingers locked in the bull neck of the assassin, and my voice died away into a whisper of horror.
"He stunned me, that was all, Sir Thomas. His bullet glanced away from my head. I came to myself just in time to see you struggling with him and gripped you just as you were falling off into space. The spirits of my ancestors were with me."
"And he—Zorilla?"
"Will never trouble us more. But you are not well enough yet to talk. You are in my hands for the present."
"Do exactly as Pu-Yi says, dear, and remember that all is well."
"Your father?" I gasped—why hadn't I thought of Morse before?
"All is well," she repeated in her low, musical voice, and as I lay back, trembling once more upon the edge of unconsciousness, her face left the circle of my vision.