“I was led down a thickly carpeted hall and up a single long flight of stairs, to a door just at its head. We entered; the door closed softly behind us; and the bandage was whipped from my eyes. There was only a low night-light burning in the room, but I made out the outlines of the furniture. There was a great bed over in the corner, with a motionless figure lying upon it.
“‘There’s your patient, Doc; go ahead,’ my burly friend said, and accordingly I approached the bed, asking at the same time for more light. The young man was unconscious, and in answer to a question of mine the attendant who had sat at the head of the bed as we entered informed me that he had been in a complete state of coma since he had been brought there, several days before.
“I remembered the description in your letter of the subject for whom you were searching, and I fancied, in spite of the bandages which swathed his head, that I recognized him in the young man before me. The lights flashed on full in answer to my request, and on a sudden decision I drew the watch camera from my pocket, took the patient’s wrist between my thumb and finger as if to ascertain his pulse, and snapped his picture. The result was a fortunate chance, for I did not 233 dare focus deliberately, with the eyes of the attendant and the three men who had accompanied me, all directed at my movements.
“Then I gave the patient a thorough examination. I found a fracture at the base of the brain––not necessarily fatal, unless cerebral meningitis sets in, but quite serious enough. He was still bleeding a little from the nose and ears. I washed them out, and packed the ears with sterile gauze, leaving instructions that a specially prepared ice cap be placed at once upon his head and kept there. That was all which could be done at that time, but the patient should have constant, watchful attention. He must either have suffered a severe backward fall, or received a violent blow at the base of the skull, to have sustained such an injury.
“When I had finished, they blindfolded me again, led me from the room, and conveyed me home in the same manner in which I had come, with the possible exception that the car in returning seemed to take a different and more direct route; the journey appeared to be a much shorter one, with fewer twists and turns. The same three men came back to the house with me, and entered my office, where the burly one turned over to me ten five-hundred-dollar bills. They left almost immediately, and although it was close on to dawn, I went into my dark room, and developed the negative of the thumbnail photograph I had taken.
“The events of the night had been so extraordinary that when I did retire, it was long before I could sleep. In the morning, I made a couple of prints from the negative, then took the five thousand dollars down and deposited it to my account in the bank.”
“When I decided to come here, I ran over in my 234 mind every moment of the previous night’s adventure, to catalogue my impressions. The habit of years has made me methodical in all things, and I jotted them down in the order in which they occurred to me, that I might not forget to relate them to you. Memory plays one sad tricks, sometimes, when one reaches my age. These notes may be of no assistance to you, sir, but they are entirely at your service.”
“I am eager to hear them, Doctor. I only wish all witnesses were like you––my tasks would be lightened by half,” Blaine said, heartily.
The elderly physician drew from his pocket a paper, at which he peered, painstakingly.
“I have numbered them. Let me see––oh, yes. First, the burly man walks with a slight limp in the right leg. Second, of the two men with him, all I could note was that one spoke with a decided French accent and had a hollow cough, tuberculous, I think; the other, who scarcely uttered a word, was short and stocky, and of enormous strength. He fairly lifted me into and out of the car when I was blindfolded at the entrance of the place they called a sanitarium. Third, the car had a peculiar horn; I have never heard one like it before. Its blast was sharp and wailing, not like a siren, but more like the howl of a wounded animal. I would know it again, anywhere. Fourth, there is a railroad bridge very near the house to which I was taken––I distinctly heard two trains thunder over the trestles while I was attending my patient. Fifth, I should judge the place to be more of a retreat for alcoholics or the insane, than for those suffering from accident, or any form of physical injury. A patient in some remote part of the house was undoubtedly a maniac or in the throes of an attack of delirium tremens. 235 I heard his cries at intervals as I worked, until he quieted down finally.