"More battery!" shouted Fulton. "Softly, softly!"
The patient's muscles jerked again, but less violently than before. He tossed and turned his head, trying vainly to escape the phial; thus for a moment, then of a sudden his eyes opened and he gazed about him.
"Stop battery!" cried Dr. Fulton. "Marion, come here!"
The girl left her lover and hurried forward. She stooped over the patient and looked into his eyes. "Ah, my poor fellow!" she murmured soothingly in English, "you are awake at last, I see. It is all over now--all over--nothing more to fear now. Soon you will be well and strong. Stronger than you have ever been in your life before--for you are cured."
He looked up at her with a dull, vacant stare, then uttered a little gasp of pain, for Dr. Fulton had plunged the hypodermic needle in his arm.
The injection's effect was miraculous. Within three minutes his face flushed crimson, his dull eyes brightened, and he actually attempted to sit up. Marion, however, gently pressed him back, but she allowed his head to rest upon her arm.
"Hush!" said Marion; "you must not talk. You must be very good and keep still, for that is the only way you can get better."
Sir Charles Venner pressed a glass into her hand.
"Try and drink this," she proceeded. "It is not medicine, only a little brandy and water. Ah! that's right. You'll do splendidly now. There, my boy, shut your eyes, and try to sleep. You'll soon sleep, and you'll wake well and strong."
The poor lad obeyed her, and he seemed to sleep immediately, but Marion's prophecy was not fulfilled. He never opened his eyes again.
For a long hour we watched him, the hearts of us all racked with anxiety. Every few minutes Dr. Fulton injected some drug into his arm, and by degrees the full force of the battery was applied. But all in vain.
"He is dead!" said Dr. Fulton at last, stepping dejectedly from the glass stool. "Turn off the battery, Vernet, please."
"Our nineteenth failure!" observed Sir Charles Venner, folding his arms and looking down at the corpse with a face of stone. "And they have all died of shock. Nothing else."
Mr. Cavanagh started forward. "How can you be sure of that?" he demanded. "How do you know that your accursed solution did not poison him?" The young man's face was the hue of ivory, but his big eyes were ablaze with passion.