“Chut!” she said, flitting noiselessly to my side. “You mustn't talk.” And then she poured something down my throat. I lay back, wondering what it all meant. Presently a grizzled and tanned man, wearing a narrow black tie, came into the room. His face seemed oddly familiar. The nurse whispered to him. He came up to the bed, and asked me in French how I felt.
“I don't know at all,” said I.
He laughed. “That's a good sign. Let me see how you are getting on.” He stuck a thermometer in my mouth and held my pulse. These formalities completed, he turned up the bedclothes and did something with my body. Only then did I realise that I was tightly bandaged. My impressions grew clearer, and when he raised his face I recognised the doctor who had sat on the sofa with Anastasius Papadopoulos.
“Nothing could be better,” said he. “Keep quiet, and all will be well.”
“Will you kindly explain?” I asked.
“You've had an operation. Also a narrow escape.”
I smiled at him pityingly. “What is the good of taking all this trouble? Why are you wasting your time?”
He looked at me uncomprehendingly for a moment, and then he laughed as the light came to him.
“Oh, I understand! Yes. Your English doctors had told you you were going to die. That an operation would be fatal—so your good friend Madame Brandt informed us—but we—nous autres Francais—are more enterprising. Kill or cure. We performed the operation—we didn't kill you—and here you are—cured.”
My heart sickened with a horrible foreboding. A clamminess, such as others feel at the approach of death, spread over my brow and neck.