Professor Rigaud shrugged his shoulders.
“For myself, I find it seldom helpful to call a thing improbable after it has actually happened.” He looked at Miles. “Does you sister own a revolver?”
“Yes! But . . .”
Miles got to his feet.
He wouldn't, he said to himself, make a disgraceful exhibition of himself by starting to run: though Rigaud's countenance was a mottled white and even Dr. Fell had close his hands suddenly round the arms of the tapestry chair. Miles walked out of the room into the dark reception-hall. It was on the staircase, the enclose staircase leading to the upstairs hall, that he did begin to run.
Ahead of him upstairs lay the very long, narrow hall, touched by the yellow speck of a night-light, with its line of mute-looking closed doors on either side.
There was no reply.
As he faced the rear of the hall, the door of Marion's bedroom was the last door down on the left. Again Miles started to run. He stopped long enough to pick up the night-light, another little lamp with a cylindrical glass shade, from the top of the radiator half-way down. As he patiently fumbled with the wheel of the wick to make it burn brighter, he discovered that his hands were trembling. He turned the know of the door, pushed it open, and held the lamp high.
Marion was in bed, partly reclining upwards with her head and shoulders pressed back against the headboard of the bed, in an otherwise empty room. The lamp shook crazily, but I showed him that.
There were two lines of little windows in this room. One line faced eastwards, opposite Miles as he stood in the doorway, and these were still covered by drawn curtains. The other line of windows faced the south, towards the back of the house, and white moonlight poured in. As Marion lay in bed—or half lay in bed, shoulders uphunched—she was facing straight towards these southern windows across the length of the room.
She didn't move.
Miles went forward, edged forward with little slow steps. As the line of light shook and crept on, farther and farther into a blur of gloom, it brought out one detail after another.
Marion, wearing light-blue silk pyjamas in a tumbled bed, had not quite drawn up to a sitting position against the headboard o the bed. At first glance her face was almost unrecognizable. The hazel eyes were partly open, glassy and unblinking when the light touched them. The face was chalk white. Moisture glimmered on her forehead under the lamp. Her lips were drawn back over her teeth for the scream she had never been able to utter.
And in her right hand Marion clutched a .32 calibre Ives-Grant revolver. As Miles glanced towards the right, towards the windows Marion Faced, he could see the bullet-hole in the glass.
And so Miles stood there mute, a pulse vibrating down his whole arm, when a rather hoarse voice spoke behind him.
“You will permit me?” it said.
Georges Antoine Rigaud, pale but stolid, bounced in with little pigeon-toed steps, holding up the sitting-room lamp from downstairs. At Marion's right hand there was a bedside table: its drawer partly open, as though the revolver had come from there. On this little table—Miles noticed such details with a kind of maniacal abstraction— stood Marion's own bedside lamp, turned out long ago, and beside the water-bottle a tiny one-ounce bottle of French perfume with a red-and-gold label. Miles could catch the scent of perfume. It made him half sick
Professor Rigaud put down the sitting-room lamp on this table.
“I am an amateur of medicine,” he said. “You will permit!”
“Yes, yes, yes!”
circling round to the other side of the bed, catlike of movement, Professor Rigaud picked up Marion's limp left wrist. Her whole body looked limp, limp and flat-weighted. Delicately he pressed his hand under her left breast, high up against the region of the heart. A spasm went across Professor Rigaud's face. He had lost all his sardonic air; he showed only deep and genuine distress.
“I am sorry,” he announced. “This lady is dead.”
This wasn't possible.
Miles could not hold up the lamp any longer; his arm trembled too violently; in another second he would let the whole thing fall. Hardly conscious of his own legs, he moved over towards a chest-of-drawers at the right-hand side of the southern windows, and set down the lamp with a bang.
Then he turned back to face Professor Rigaud across the bed.
“What”--he swallowed--”what did it?”
“Shock.”
“Shock? You mean . . .”
“It is medially correct,” said Professor Rigaud, “ to speak of death from fright. The heart (you
Miles was not listening.
He loved Marion, really loved her in that thoughtless way we feel towards those we have known for twenty-eight out of our thirty-five years. He thought of Marion, and he thought of Steve Curtis.
“What follows,” sad Professor Rigaud, “is collapse and death. In severe cases . . .” Then an almost rightful change came over his face, making the patch of moustache stand out.
“Ah, God!” he shouted, with a cry which was no less heartfelt for being accompanied by a melodramatic gesture. “I forgot! I forgot! I forgot!”
Miles stared at him.
“This lady,” said Professor Rigaud, “may NOT be dead.”
“In severe cases,” gabbled the professor, “there is no perceptible pulse. And there my not be any cardiac impulse—no!--even when you put your hand over the heart.” He paused. “It is not a good hope; but it is possible. How far away is the nearest doctor?”
“About six miles>”
“Can you 'phone him? Is there a 'phone here?”
“Yes! But in the meantime . . .!”
“In the meantime,” replied Professor Rigaud, his eyes feverish as he rubbed at his forehead, “we must stimulate the heart. That is it! Stimulate the heart!” He squeezed up his eyes, thinking. “Elevate the limbs, pressure on the abdominal cavity, and . . . Have you got any strychnine in the house”
“Great Scott, no!”
“But you have salt, yes? Ordinary table-salt! And a hypodermic needle?”
“I think Marion
where before everything had gone in a rush, now time seeded to have stopped. Every movement seemed intolerably slow. When it was vitally necessary to hurry, you could not hurry.
Miles turned back to the chest-of-drawers, yanked open the topmost drawer, and began to rummage. On top of the maple-wood chest, brilliantly lighted now by the lamp he ha put down there, stood a folding leather photograph-frame containing two large photographs. One side showed Steve Curtis, with a hat on to conceal his baldness; the other side showed Marion broad-faced and smiling, far away from the pitiable mass of flesh now vacant-eyed on the bed.
It seemed to Miles minutes, and was probably fifteen seconds, before he found the hypodermic syringe in two pieces in its neat leather case.
“Take it downstairs,” his companion was gabbling at him, “and sterilize it in boiling water. Then heat some other water with a little pinch of salt in it, and bring them both up here. But first of all 'phone the doctor. I will take
