“No. I was stunned, I think, when the explosion took place.” Dr. Priestley’s senses were returning rapidly. The whole scene flashed back to him, the feeble glimmer of the little hand-lamp, the figure of the Black Sailor, formidable, immense, swaying towards him——
Before the supporting arms could prevent him, he had struggled to his feet. Something about his head felt unfamiliar, and he passed his hand over it. Every particle of hair had disappeared. He was bald, clean-shaven, without eyebrows or eyelashes.
“Steady, steady,” came a voice soothingly. “We’ll soon get you out of this. Here, sit down in this chair, or what remains of it.”
He let himself be guided to the chair. The outlines of the room, illuminated by the rays of two or three bulls-eye lanterns, began to be visible to him. He hardly recognized it. Everything it had contained was swept into inextricable confusion, as though a tornado had passed through it. Where the window had been was a square of dim grey light, the distant reflection of a street lamp. A whitish gritty dust covered everything, the debris of the fallen ceiling. And stretched out in front of the fireplace was the dim outline of a man’s figure, prone and motionless.
One of the men in the room came up to him. “Feeling better, eh? Narrow shave you’ve had, I should say. Do you remember who you are?”
“I am Dr. Priestley, of Westbourne Terrace,” replied the Professor.
The man gave a low whistle of incredulity. “Dr. Priestley? Well, you don’t look it.”
“I have letters in my pocket which will serve to identify me,” replied the Professor shortly.
He put his hand in his pocket and produced a packet of papers. The man took them, glanced through them and handed them back. “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said respectfully. “But—I didn’t know you without your hair, and with your face blackened like that. Perhaps you could tell us who this is, sir?”
He flashed his lamp upon the features of the figure lying upon the floor. The Professor leant forward in his chair and gazed at them in silence. This man, too, was hairless as he was himself, as though he had been shaved by some expert barber. Beneath the grime which covered his face, beneath the lines which age and suffering had graven upon him, the Professor recognized the features which had graven themselves upon his memory so many years ago. He saw again the prisoner in the dock, the handsome clean-shaven face with its look of awful anxiety. And he knew where he had seen before those eyes which had stared into his before he had lost consciousness.