g. Curse you!" he whispered savagely, as he stopped before
her, and with a quick movement caught her by the wrist.

The next moment he uttered a hoarse cry of rage, for, stung to madness
by the brutal act, Chester sprang at him, forcing him back over the
table before which he stood, while Marion was flung aside.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

A BLACK CLOUD BEHIND.

"Where am I?"

Head throbbing horribly, a nauseous taste in the mouth, throat
constricted and painful upon an attempt to swallow, and a strange mental
confusion which provoked the above question.

The answer came at once.

In a miserable, musty-smelling, four-wheeled cab, whose windows were
drawn up, and so spattered with mud and the heavy rain which fell upon
the roof that the gleam from the street lamps only produced a dim, hazy
light within, as the vehicle jangled slowly along, with wheels and some
loose piece of iron rattling loudly in concert with the beat of the
horse's feet.

"Whatever am I doing here?" was Fred Chester's next question.

Lying back in the corner, in an awkward position, as if in a state of
collapse, and only saved from subsiding into the bottom of the cab by
his feet being propped up on the front cushion, the doctor kept
perfectly still trying to think, but every retrogressive attempt gave
the idea that he was gazing at a vast black cloud which completely shut
out the past.

He uttered a faint groan, for he felt startled; but after lying back
listening to the beating rain and the jarring of the ill-fitting
glasses, he recovered somewhat.

"How absurd!" he muttered. "Where am I going? Ask the driver."

He drew up his legs and let his feet drop into the cab, as he tried to
sit up, but the effort gave him the sensation of molten lead running
from one of his temples to the other, and he lay perfectly still while
the agonising pain passed slowly away, trying hard to think what had
happened, but in vain. There was the black cloud before him mentally,
though he could see the gleaming of a lamp he passed through the blurred
panes of glass.

At last, feeling more and more startled by his condition, he made a
brave effort, raised himself upright, and reached out for the strap, so
as to lower the front window; but at the first movement he was seized
with a sickening giddiness, lurched forward, and thrust himself back to
recline in the corner again till the molten lead had ceased to flow from
side to side of his head.

At last, very s