I took up the latter and glanced it over in order to pass the time, for my conductress seemed to be in consultation with her father. My eye caught an article that interested me, and I read it through, forgetting for a moment all about my call there. Fully ten minutes elapsed, when of a sudden I heard the voice of a man speaking somewhat indistinctly in a room above that in which I was sitting. He seemed to be talking low and gruffly, so that I was unable to distinguish what was said. At last, however, the girl returned, and, asking me to follow her, conducted me to a bedroom on the next floor.
The only illumination was a single night-light burning in a saucer, casting a faint, uncertain glimmer over everything, and shaded with an open book so that the occupant of the bed lay in deepest shadow. Unlike what one would have expected to find in such a house, an iron bedstead with brass rail, the bed was a great old-fashioned one with heavy wool damask hangings; and advancing towards it, while the girl retired and closed the door after her, I bent down to see the invalid.
In the shadow I could just distinguish on the pillow a dark-bearded face whose appearance was certainly not prepossessing.
“You are not well?” I said, inquiringly, as our eyes met in the dim half-light. “Your daughter is distressed about you.”
“Yes, I’m a bit queer,” he growled. “But she needn’t have bothered you.”
“Let me remove the shade from the light, so that I can see your face,” I suggested. “It’s too dark to see anything.”
“No,” he snapped; “I can’t bear the light. You can see quite enough of me here.”
“Very well,” I said, reluctantly, and taking his wrist in one hand I held my watch in the other.
“I fancy you’ll find me a bit feverish,” he said in a curious tone, almost as though he were joking, and by his manner I at once put him down as one of those eccentric persons who are sceptical of any achievements of medical science.
I was holding his wrist and bending towards the light, in order to distinguish the hands of my watch, when a strange thing happened.