"Do you mean—beyond your skill?" suggested the Coroner.
"Skill?" retorted the witness, with a queer, twisting grimace. "Beyond my understanding! I am a quick observer—I saw within a few seconds that here was a man who had literally been struck down in the very flush of life as if—well, to put it plainly, as if some extraordinary power had laid a blasting finger on the very life-centre within him. I was—dumfounded!"
The Coroner sat up and laid aside his pen.
"What did you do?" he asked quietly.
"Bade the policeman get help, and an ambulance, and hurry the man to St. Mary's Hospital, all as quickly as possible," answered Dr. Mirandolet. "While the policeman was away, I examined the man more closely. He was dying then—and I knew very well that nothing known to medical science could save him. By that time he had become perfectly quiet; his body had relaxed into a normal position; his face, curiously coloured when I first saw it, had become placid and pale; he breathed regularly, though very faintly—and he was steadily dying. I knew quite well what was happening, and I remarked to Mr. Gardiner that the man would be dead within half-an-hour."
"I believe you got him to the hospital within that time?" asked the
Coroner.
"Yes—within twenty-five minutes of my first seeing him," said the witness. "I went with the ambulance. The man died very soon after admission, just as I knew he would. No medical power on earth could have saved him!"
The Coroner glanced at the little knot of professional men in the rear of the witness-box and seemed to be debating within himself as to whether he wanted to ask Dr. Mirandolet any more questions. Eventually he turned again to him.
"What your evidence amounts to, Dr. Mirandolet, is this," he said. "You were called to the man and you saw at once that you yourself could do nothing for him, so you got him away to the hospital as quickly as you possibly could. Just so!—now, why did you think you could do nothing for him?"
"I will tell you—in plain words," answered Dr. Mirandolet. "Because I did not recognize or understand one single symptom that I saw! Because, frankly, I knew very well that I did not know what was the matter! And so—I hurried him to people who ought to know more than I do and are reputedly cleverer than I am. In short—I recognized that I was in the presence of something—something!—utterly beyond my skill and comprehension!"