I sat down again—heavily at that. Should we never come to an end of these mysterious attacks which were hurled at us in broad daylight from nowhere at all?
“I’m not sure that you hadn’t better rest before we go into this fully, Ewart,” Garnesk remarked doubtfully. “You’re not by any means as fit as you’ve ever been, in spite of your emphatic assurance.”
“Tell me what you think, why you think it, and what you feel we ought to do. Why, man, Myra might have been here alone, with no one to rescue her and—and——”
“Quite so,” said Ewart sympathetically. “So you must comfort yourself with the knowledge that it may be a great blessing that she has temporarily lost her sight. Now, I say you didn’t faint, because, medically, I know you didn’t. For the same reason I say you were suffocating as surely as if you had been drowning. Hang it, my dear chap, it’s my line of business, you know. I can’t account for it, but there is the naked fact for you.”
“How does this affect your previous conclusions?” I asked. “Before you tell me what you think brought on this suffocation I should like to hear why you give up your theory.”
“Simply because no wireless, or other electric current, could have that effect upon you. If you had had an electric shock in any of its many curious forms I could have said it bore me out; but, you see, it’s impossible. And, as I refuse to believe that we are continually bumping into new mysteries which have no connection with each other, it follows that if this suffocation was not caused by the supposed wireless experiments, the other can’t have been either.”
“I’m not making the slightest imputation on your medical knowledge,” I ventured, “but are you absolutely certain that you are not mistaken?”
“My dear fellow,” he laughed, “for goodness sake don’t be so apologetic. I can quite see that you find it difficult to believe. But I am prepared to swear to it all the same. For one thing, the symptoms were unmistakable; for another, it seems impossible that we should both faint at exactly the same time and place for no reason at all.”
“You didn’t faint too, surely?” I cried.