I have very little recollection of what occurred immediately afterwards, for I was far too confused and full of pain.
All I remember was that I rushed downstairs to old Nello, crying that I had been suddenly taken unwell; and he, seeing my pale, distorted features, was greatly alarmed. I recollected at the moment that I had an appointment with the wife of a wine-grower, with whom I was in treaty for the purchase of an exquisite little fourteenth-century picture of St. Francis of Assisi; and, telling my faithful man that if a lady called he was to ask her to wait, I dashed out, sprang into a cab, and drove along the sun-blanched sea-road into Leghorn, where, in a high, old palace in an unfashionable quarter, I discovered my friend, Doctor Pellegrini, a short, stout, round-faced Italian, with iron-grey hair and a pair of dark eyes which had a hard and severe expression.
“Why, my dear signore,” he cried in Italian as I entered his big, half-darkened study, the marble floor carpetless, and furnished barely in Tuscan style, “whatever ails you?”
“I’ve been poisoned, signor dottore!” I gasped.
“What are your symptoms? Tell me quickly,” he demanded, springing towards me and taking my wrist quickly, being convinced that there was no time to lose.
“I have great difficulty in breathing,” I managed to gasp. “And now there seems to be a strange, biting taste as though I’d swallowed some quinine. My neck aches and seems to be bending back, and I am in great agony.”
“Very likely it is strychnine,” the professor remarked. “How did you take it? Was it an accident?”
“I will explain later,” I responded. “Do give me something to relieve these terrible pains. The poison, I can explain, is not strychnia, but the fatal secret compound of the Borgias.”
“The Borgias! Rubbish!” he snapped. “All imagination, most probably.”
“But I tell you it is. I have been envenomed by a poison, the secret of which is unknown, and the antidote was lost ages ago.”