clink as of metal faintly touching metal. I sat as one entranced. At
last I felt, as in nightmare, that this was sleep, and that in the
passing of its portals all my will had gone.

All at once my senses were full awake. A shriek rang in my ears. The
room was filled suddenly with a blaze of light. There was the sound of
pistol shots--one, two; and a haze of white smoke in the room. When my
waking eyes regained their power, I could have shrieked with horror
myself at what I saw before me.

Chapter IV

The Second Attempt

The sight which met my eyes had the horror of a dream within a dream,
with the certainty of reality added. The room was as I had seen it
last; except that the shadowy look had gone in the glare of the many
lights, and every article in it stood stark and solidly real.

By the empty bed sat Nurse Kennedy, as my eyes had last seen her,
sitting bolt upright in the arm-chair beside the bed. She had placed a
pillow behind her, so that her back might be erect; but her neck was
fixed as that of one in a cataleptic trance. She was, to all intents
and purposes, turned into stone. There was no special expression on
her face--no fear, no horror; nothing such as might be expected of one
in such a condition. Her open eyes showed neither wonder nor interest.
She was simply a negative existence, warm, breathing, placid; but
absolutely unconscious of the world around her. The bedclothes were
disarranged, as though the patient had been drawn from under them
without throwing them back. The corner of the upper sheet hung upon
the floor; close by it lay one of the bandages with which the Doctor
had dressed the wounded wrist. Another and another lay further along
the floor, as though forming a clue to where the sick man now lay.
This was almost exactly where he had been found on the previous night,
under the great safe. Again, the left arm lay toward the safe. But
there had been a new outrage, an attempt had been made to sever the arm
close to the bangle which held the tiny key. A heavy "kukri"
knife--one of the leaf-shaped knives which the Gurkhas and others of
the hill tribes of India use with such effect--had been taken from its
place on the wall, and with it the attempt had been made. It was
manifest that just at the moment of striking, the blow had been
arrested, for only the point of the knife and not the edge of the blade
had struck the flesh. As it was, the outer side of the arm had been