In the centre of that handsome apartment I stood and gazed wonderingly around. My transition from that bizarre sitting-room in Chelsea to this house, evidently in the country, had been effected in a manner beyond comprehension. My surprising surroundings caused my weakened brain to reel again. I was without hat or overcoat, and as I glanced down at my trousers they somehow did not seem to be the same that I had been wearing on the previous night.
Instinctively I felt that only by some extraordinary and mysterious means could I have been conveyed from that close-smelling lodging in Chelsea to this country mansion. The problem uppermost in my mind was the identity of the place where I had thus found myself on recovering my senses, and how I got there.
My eyes fell upon the push of an electric-bell. My position, lying there injured upon the carpet, demanded explanation, and without further hesitation I walked across and pressed the ivory button.
I heard no sound. The bell must have rung far away, and this gave me the idea that the house was a large one.
Intently I listened, and a few minutes later heard a footstep. The door opened, and an elderly man-servant, with grey whiskers, appeared in the entry asking—“Did you ring, sir?”
“Yes,” I answered. “Will you kindly inform me where I am?”
He regarded me with a strange, puzzled expression, and then, in alarm, he rushed forward to me, crying—“Why, sir! You’ve hurt your head! Look! You’re covered with blood!”
His grey face was pale, and for an instant he stood regarding me open-mouthed.
“Can’t you answer my question?” I demanded hastily. “I know that I’ve injured my head. I didn’t call you in order to learn that. I want to know where I am.”
The man’s countenance slowly assumed a terrified expression as he regarded me, and then, without further word, he flew from the room as fast as his legs could carry him. I heard him shouting like a lunatic, in some other part of the house, and stood utterly dumbfounded at his extraordinary behaviour. He had escaped from my presence as though he had seen an apparition.