The doctor smiled in disbelief, probably remarking within himself that the English were a queer race, with all their fads, fancies, tea drinking, and smart tailoring.
“Well,” he said. “I’ll first give you a little chloroform, and then see what we can do. Don’t upset yourself, my dear signore. We shall find an antidote somehow.”
And he gave me some chloroform, which produced insensibility. Then, on recovering consciousness, I found myself on a bed in a room almost totally dark, with blankets piled upon me until they had reduced me to a state of profuse perspiration.
My head felt as though bound tightly with a band of steel, but I had no further difficulty in breathing. My limbs were no longer cramped, and my neck was again movable.
I was better, and told Pellegrini, who was seated patiently by my side watching me.
“Of course,” he said, with that cool, cynical air of his which caused one instinctively to dislike him on first acquaintance.
“But I was very bad,” I declared. “I’ve never experienced such excruciating pains before in all my life.”
“And I may tell you,” he said in the same calm tone, “that you’ve never been nearer death than you were an hour ago. I certainly thought you wouldn’t pull through. I telephoned to Cassuto at the hospital, and he rushed round and helped me. I didn’t believe you had really been poisoned. It certainly was not strychnia after all, although the symptoms were very like it. Tell me how it happened.”
I turned on my bed towards him and briefly related how I had purchased the curious volume, and how, on two separate occasions, I had been suddenly seized while examining the secret history written at the end.
“H’m!” he grunted dubiously; “very remarkable, especially as the record mentions the unknown poison used by Lucrezia Borgia and her brother. A matter for investigation, certainly. You must allow me to submit one of the vellum pages to analysis; and perhaps we might clear up forever the ingredients of the compound which has so long remained a mystery.”