‘No nonsense, my man! Do you think that this is a performance in a booth, and that I am to be taken in by all the humbug of the professional mesmerist? Do as I tell you,—come into the room.’
There was a repetition, on Mr Holt’s part, of his previous pitiful struggle; this time it was longer sustained than before,—but the result was the same.
‘I can’t!’ he wailed.
‘Then I say you can,—and shall! If I pick you up, and carry you, perhaps you will not find yourself so helpless as you wish me to suppose.’
Sydney moved forward to put his threat into execution. As he did so, a strange alteration took place in Mr Holt’s demeanour.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE SINGULAR BEHAVIOUR OF MR HOLT
I was standing in the middle of the room, Sydney was between the door and me; Mr Holt was in the hall, just outside the doorway, in which he, so to speak, was framed. As Sydney advanced towards him he was seized with a kind of convulsion,—he had to lean against the side of the door to save himself from falling. Sydney paused, and watched. The spasm went as suddenly as it came,—Mr Holt became as motionless as he had just now been the other way. He stood in an attitude of febrile expectancy,—his chin raised, his head thrown back, his eyes glancing upwards,—with the dreadful fixed glare which had come into them ever since we had entered the house. He looked to me as if his every faculty was strained in the act of listening,—not a muscle in his body seemed to move; he was as rigid as a figure carved in stone. Presently the rigidity gave place to what, to an onlooker, seemed causeless agitation.
‘I hear!’ he exclaimed, in the most curious voice I had ever heard. ‘I come!’
It was as though he was speaking to someone who was far away. Turning, he walked down the passage to the front door.
‘Hollo!’ cried Sydney. ‘Where are you off to?’