At first they would tell me nothing, even though, with a great effort, I asked what had happened. Bandages were around my throat and across my left shoulder, and I felt a nausea and a giddiness that I knew arose from chloroform, and therefore that some operation had been performed. I slowly struggled back to a knowledge of things about me.
"It's all right, Mr. Vidal," the youngest of the two doctors assured me. "Try and sleep. Don't worry. Everything is all right."
I felt uncommonly drowsy, and again slept, and not until night had fallen did I re-open my eyes.
A night-nurse was seated at my bedside, reading by a green-shaded lamp. The little room was in darkness, and I think I startled her when I suddenly spoke.
"Where am I, Nurse?" I inquired in a thin, weak voice, and with difficulty.
"This is the Cottage Hospital at Hounslow," was the reply. "You've been here two days, but you are much better now. Don't talk, however, for the doctor has forbidden it."
"But I want to know what has happened," I protested.
"Well, I don't exactly know," the dark-haired young woman answered. "I only know what I've been told. That is, that a taxi-driver who took you to some house beyond Spring Grove, grew tired of waiting for you, and on going to the house found you in one of the rooms, dying."
"Dying!" I gasped. "Ah! yes, I remember," I added, as recollections of that fateful night arose within my memory.