I must have fainted,
and then have fallen into a deep slumber.
[Illustration]
When I waked it was morning, and I was alone, but undressed and in bed,
unconscionably weak, and surrounded by medicine bottles of many kinds. The
clock on the mantle on the other side of the room indicated that it was
after ten o'clock.
"_Great Beelzebub!_" I cried, taking note of the hour. "I've an engagement
with Barlow at nine."
And then a sweet-faced woman, who, I afterwards learned, was a
professional nurse, entered the room, and within an hour I realized two
facts. One was that I had lain ill for many days, and that my engagement
with Barlow was now for six weeks unfulfilled; the other, that my midnight
visitor was none other than--
And yet I don't know. His tricks certainly were worthy of that individual;
but Perkins and Tompson assert that I never entered the club that night,
and surely if my visitor was Beelzebub himself he would not have omitted
so important a factor of success as my actual presence in the
billiard-room on that occasion would have been; and, besides, he was
altogether too cool to have come from his reputed residence.
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