“There!” he said, and drew the doctor forward and motioned to the others to remain.
Together they bent down over Quong Ho. “If he’s dead,” Baltazar whispered in a hoarse voice, “it’s I who have murdered him.”
“He’s not dead yet,” replied the doctor.
“Thank God!” said Baltazar.
Sergeant Doubleday, surveying the scene of ruin with the eye of the policeman and the Briton, turned to Mr. Pillivant.
“This sort of thing oughtn’t to be allowed,” said he.
CHAPTER VIII
BALTAZAR awoke a couple of mornings afterwards to find that certain vague happenings which he had regarded as dreams were true. He really lay in a comfortable bed, in a pleasant room; the soft-voiced woman in grey, whose ministrations he had been unable to divine, stood smiling at the foot of his bed, an unmistakable nurse. Conscious of discomfort, he raised his hand and felt his head swathed in a close-fitting, scientific bandage. He remembered now that he had lain there for a considerable time. What he had taken for outrageous assaults on his brain for the purpose of extracting the secrets of his mathematical researches, had been the doctor dressing his wounds.
“How are you this morning?” asked the nurse.
“Perfectly well, thank you,” said Baltazar. “I should feel better if you would tell me where I am.”