The fellow had seized my wrists, and I saw that one of the men who had sprung from his place of concealment was pouring some liquid from a bottle upon a sponge. I caught a whiff of its odour—an odour too familiar to me—the sickly smell of chloroform.
Fortunately I am pretty athletic, and with a sudden wrench I freed my wrists from the fellow’s grip, and, hitting him one from the shoulder right between the eyes, sent him spinning back against the chest of drawers. To act swiftly was my only chance. If once they succeeded in pressing that sponge to my nostrils and holding it there, then all would be over; for by their appearance I saw they were dangerous criminals, and not men to stick at trifles. They would murder me.
As I sent down the man who had shammed illness, his two companions dashed towards me with imprecations upon their lips; but with lightning speed I sprang towards the door and placed my back against it. So long as I could face them I intended to fight for life. Their desire was, I knew, to attack me from behind, as they had already done. I had surely had a narrow escape from their bullets, for they had fired at close range.
At Guy’s many stories have been told of similar cases where doctors, known to wear valuable watches, diamond rings or scarf pins, have been called at night by daring thieves and robbed; therefore I always, as precaution, placed my revolver in my pocket when I received a night call to a case with which I was not acquainted.
I had not disregarded my usual habit when I had placed my thermometer and stethoscope in my pocket previous to accompanying the girl; therefore it reposed there fully loaded, a fact of which my assailants were unaware.
In much quicker time than it takes to narrate the incident I was again pounced upon by all three, the man with the sponge in readiness to dash it to my mouth and nostrils.
But as they sprang forward to seize me, I raised my hand swiftly, took aim, and fired straight at the holder of the sponge, the bullet passing through his shoulder and causing him to drop the anæsthetic as though it were a live coal, and to spring several feet from the ground.
“God! I’m shot!” he cried.
But ere the words had left his mouth I fired a second chamber, inflicting a nasty wound in the neck of the fellow with the black beard.
“Shoot! shoot!” he cried to the third man, but it was evident that in the first struggle, when I had been seized, the man’s revolver had dropped on the carpet, and in the semi-darkness he could not recover it.