The delirium increased. Now the words began to come, but they were wild and wandering.
“Will she answer me?” whispered the nurse. “Not yet.”
She waited some minutes longer. Then again she bent over the sufferer.
“Who did this? who did this?” the nurse repeated over and over.
“Helstone, Helstone,” murmured the patient.
“Tell me, quick. What is his real name, his real name?”
There was no answer. With a gesture of impatience, the nurse turned away for an instant from the patient whom she was so barbarously torturing.
Then she screamed. It was not a loud cry, but a scream stifled by suddenly closed lips.
She had turned to meet the gaze of sharp eyes which, for some minutes, had rested upon her, though she was far from suspecting that she was observed.
Nick Carter had crept quietly into the room.