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Page 34
It was many minutes before Gwen regained any considerable command
of her faculties, and she afterwards told me that she was even then
more than half inclined to consider the whole thing as a weird dream
of an overwrought mind. At length, however, she realised that she
had had an actual experience, and that it was of sufficient
importance to make it known at once. She accordingly hastened to
lay the whole matter before me, and I, in my turn, notified the
police, who, at once instituted as thorough a search as Gwen's
description made possible. She had told me that her assailant was
dark-skinned, yet with straight hair, and a cast of features that
gave no hint of any Ethiopian taint. This, and his halting gait
and great stature, were all the police had in the way of description,
and I may as well add that the information was insufficient, for they
never found any trace of Gwen's assailant.
I had had some hopes of this clue, but they were doomed to
disappointment. It seemed evident to us that if anything were ever
done in bringing Mr. Darrow's assassin to justice, Maitland would
have to do it, unless, indeed, M. Godin solved the problem.
Osborne, Allen, and their associates were simply out of the question.
We debated for some time as to whether or not we should write
Maitland about Gwen's strange experience, and finally decided that
the knowledge would be a constant source of worriment without being
of the least assistance to him while he was so far away. We,
therefore, decided to keep our own counsel, for the present at least.
Maitland had written us a few lines from New York telling us the
result of his analysis, and ended by saying:
There is no doubt that Mr. Darrow died of poison injected into the
blood through the slight wound in the throat. This wound was not
deep, and seemed to have been torn rather than cut in the flesh.
What sort of weapon or projectile produced that wound is a question
of the utmost importance, shrouded in the deepest of mysteries.
Once this point is settled, however, its very uniqueness will be
greatly in our favour. I have an idea our friend Ragobah might be
able to throw some light upon this subject, therefore I am starting
on my way to visit him this afternoon, and shall write you en route
whenever occasion offers. My kindest regards to Miss Darrow.
Yours sincerely,
GEORGE MAITLAND.
P. S. I shall have leisure now on shipboard to set tie that question
of atomic pitches, which is still a thorn in my intellectual flesh.
I handed this letter to Gwen, and, after she had read it through
very carefully, she questioned me about this new theory of Maitland's.
I went through the form of telling her, after the usual practice of
amiable men discoursing to women, feeling sure she would be no wiser
when I had finished, and was dumfounded when she replied: "It looks
very reasonable. Professor Bjerknes, if I remember the name, has
produced all the phenomena of magnetic attraction, repulsion, and
polarisation, by air vibrations corresponding, I suppose, to certain
fixed musical notes. Why might not something similar to this be
true of atomic, as well as of larger, bodies?"
If the roof of my house had fallen in, I should not have been more
surprised than at this quiet remark. How many times had I said:
"You can always count on a young woman, however much she flutter over
the surface of things, being ignorant of all the great underlying
verities of existence"? I promptly decided, on all future occasions,
to add to that--"When not brought up by her father." I was
convinced that of the attainments of a girl educated by her father
absolutely nothing could be definitely predicted.
We had a short note from Maitland written at Trieste. He excused
its brevity by saying he had been obliged to travel night and day
in order to reach this port in time to catch the Austrian Lloyd
steamer Helois, bound for Aden, Bombay, Ceylon, Singapore, and Hong
Kong. From Aden I received the following:
MY DEAR DOCTOR:
We have just been through the Red Sea, and I know now the real origin
of the Calvinistic hell. Imagine it! A cloudless sky; the sun
beating down with an intolerable fierceness; not a breath stirring,
and the thermometer registering 120 degrees F. in the shade! It
seemed as though reason must desert us. The constant motion of the
punkas in the saloons, and an unlimited supply of ice-water was all
that saved us. Sleep was hardly to be thought of, for at no time
during the night did the mercury drop below 100 deg. F. Apart from the
oppressive heat referred to, the entire voyage has been exceedingly
pleasant. I have not solved the atomic-pitch problems, as attendance
at meals has left me little time for anything else. They seem to
eat all the time on these boats. At 8 A. M. coffee and bread; at
ten a hearty breakfast of meat, eggs, curry and rice, vegetables and
fruit; at 1 P. M. a luncheon, called "tiffin," of cold meats, bread
and butter, potatoes, and tea; at five o'clock a regular dinner of
soups, meats with relishes, farinaceous dishes, dessert, fruits, and
coffee, and lastly, at 8 P. M., the evening meal of tea, bread and
butter, and other light dishes. Five meals a day, and there are some
English people who fill up the gaps between them by constantly
munching nuts and sweets! Verily, if specialisation of function
means anything, some of these people will soon become huge gastric
balloons with a little wart on top representing the atrophied brain
structure. They run their engines of digestion wholly on the
high-pressure system.
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