I heard a footstep in the corridor, and emerging from the room came face to face with the fussy old doctor in his rough tweeds.
My unexpected appearance caused him to utter an exclamation of surprise, but when I asked breathlessly for news of his patient, he looked very grave and said—
“A weak heart, and brain trouble, my dear Mr Kemball. To tell you frankly, alas! I fear the worst.”
“Come here a moment,” I said, taking him by the arm and pulling him into the disordered bedroom. “Now,” I added, as I pushed the door to as well as it would go. “Tell me truthfully. Doctor Redwood, what do you make of this affair?”
“Nothing at present,” he replied with a peculiar sniff, a habit of his, “Can’t make it out at all. But I don’t like the symptoms. Only once she has spoken. In her delirium she whispered something about a hand. She must have seen something or other—something uncanny, I think. And yet what can there be here?” he asked, gazing amazedly round the apartment.
“Look here, Redwood,” I exclaimed firmly, “the facts are very similar to those at Titmarsh. Poor Nicholson saw Something, you’ll recollect. And he had locked himself in—just as Miss Seymour did.”
The doctor stroked his ruddy, clean-shaven chin.
“I quite admit that in many of the details it is quite a parallel case. But I am hoping to get the young lady round sufficiently to describe what happened. The servants say that the screams were loud piercing ones of horror and terror. Shaw himself told me that he had the greatest difficulty in breaking down the door. They found her crouched down in fear—yonder, behind the ottoman. And she shrieked out something about a hand. To what could she have referred, do you think? She’s quite sane and of perfectly sound mind, or I should attribute the affair to some hallucination.”
“It was more than hallucination,” I assured him, recollecting my own experience, yet determined not to assist him towards the elucidation of the mystery. The dead man had evidently made a discovery immediately, before his fatal seizure. I recollected that brief urgent note of Asta’s. Had she, too, made a similar discovery?
Yes. There could be no evasion of the fact. The two cases were in every way identical.