My hands were trembling as though palsied, just as my legs had done a few minutes before, yet strangely enough I felt compelled to clench my fingers into my palms. All my muscles seemed slowly to contract, until even my jaws worked with painful difficulty.
An appalling fear fell upon me. I was suffering from tetanus.
Resolved not to allow my jaws to close tightly, I opened and shut my mouth, knowing that if it became fixed I should die a slow, lingering death as so many thousands had done. If I could only keep my jaws working the seizure might, perhaps, pass.
I longed for Dick’s return. At that hour there was no one I could summon to call a doctor. I glanced at the clock. He had been already gone nearly half an hour. Would he never come back?
The sickening dizziness increased, and seemed to develop into an excruciating pain in my throbbing temples. I placed my hand to my head and felt that the veins were standing out hard and knotted, just as though I were exerting every muscle in some feat of strength. Then almost at that very instant I was gripped by a fearful pain in the stomach, as though it were being torn by a thousand needles. A cold sweat stood upon my brow until it rolled down my cheeks in great beads. I tried to shout for help, but my tongue clave to the roof of my mouth, and my voice was thin and weak as a child’s. My throat seemed to have contracted. I was altogether helpless.
My agony was excruciating, yet I could only await Dick’s return. Perhaps he had met a friend, and was lounging in some bar ignorant of my peril. The only doctor I knew in the vicinity was a hospital surgeon who lived a little way down Chancery Lane, over the Safe Deposit Company’s vaults. I clenched my teeth to endure the racking, frightful pains by which my body was tortured, and in patience awaited my friend’s home-coming.
My eyes were closed, for the gas-light was too strong for them. Perhaps I lost consciousness. At any rate I was awakened from a kind of heavy stupor by Dick’s tardy entry.
“Good God, Urwin!” he gasped. “Why, what’s the matter? What’s occurred? You’re as white as a sheet, man!”
“I’m ill,” I managed to gasp with extreme difficulty. “Go and get Tweedie—at once!”
He stood for a moment looking at me with a frightened expression, then turned and dashed away down the stairs.