Elusive Isabel, by Jacques Futrelle by Unknown (good short books .TXT) 📗

between the tables, reeled, attempted to steady himself by holding on to a chair, then everything grew black about him, and he pitched forward on the floor. His face was dead white; his fingers moved a little, nervously, weakly, then they were still.

Several people rose at the sound of the falling body, and the new-comer hurried forward. His coat sleeve caught the empty demi-tasse, as he stooped, and swept it to the floor, where it was shattered. The head waiter and another came, pell-mell, and those diners who had risen came more slowly.

“What’s the matter?” asked the head waiter anxiously.

Already the new-comer was supporting Mr. Grimm on his knee, and flicking water in his face.

“Nothing serious, I fancy,” he answered shortly. “He’s subject to these little attacks.”

“What are they? Who is he?”

The stranger tore at Mr. Grimm’s collar until it came loose, then he fell to chafing the still hands.

“He is a Mr. Grimm, a government employee—I know him,” he answered again. “I imagine it’s nothing more serious than indigestion.”

A little knot had gathered about them, with offers of assistance.

“Waiter, hadn’t you better send for a physician?” some one suggested.

“I’m a physician,” the stranger put in impatiently. “Have some one call a cab, and I’ll see that he’s taken home. It happens that we live in the same apartment house, just a few blocks from here.”

Obedient to the crisply-spoken directions, a cab was called, and five minutes later Mr. Grimm, still insensible, was lifted into it. The stranger took a seat beside him, the cabby touched his horse with a whip, and the vehicle fell into the endless, moving line.

XXI

A SLIP OF PAPER

When the light of returning consciousness finally pierced the black lethargy that enshrouded him, Mr. Grimm’s mind was a chaos of vagrant, absurd fantasies; then slowly, slowly, realization struggled back to its own, and he came to know things. First was the knowledge that he was lying flat on his back, on a couch, it seemed; then, that he was in the dark—an utter, abject darkness. And finally came an overwhelming sense of silence.

For a while he lay motionless, with not even the movement of an eye-lash to indicate consciousness, wrapped in a delicious languor. Gradually this passed and the feeble flutter of his heart grew into a steady, rhythmic beat. The keen brain was awakening; he was beginning to remember. What had happened? He knew only that in some manner a drug had been administered to him, a bitter dose tasting of opium; that speechlessly, he had fought against it, that he had risen from the table in the restaurant, and that he had fallen. All the rest was blank.

With eyes still closed, and nerveless hands inert at his sides he listened, the while he turned the situation over in speculative mood. The waiter had administered the drug, of course, unless—unless it had been the courteous stranger who had replaced the newspaper on the table! That thought opened new fields of conjecture. Mr. Grimm had no recollection of ever having seen him before; and he had paid only the enforced attention of politeness to him. And why had the drug been administered? Vaguely, incoherently, Mr. Grimm imagined that in some way it had to do with the great international plot of war in which Miss Thorne was so delicate and vital an instrument.

Where was he? Conjecture stopped there. Evidently he was where the courteous gentleman in the restaurant wanted him to be. A prisoner? Probably. In danger? Long, careful attention to detail work in the Secret Service had convinced Mr. Grimm that he was always in danger. That was one reason—and the best—why he had lain motionless, without so much as lifting a finger, since that first glimmer of consciousness had entered his brain. He was probably under scrutiny, even in the darkness, and for the present it was desirable to accommodate any chance watcher by remaining apparently unconscious.

And so for a long time he lay, listening. Was there another person in the room? Mr. Grimm’s ears were keenly alive for the inadvertent shuffling of a foot; or the sound of breathing. Nothing. Even the night roar of the city was missing; the silence was oppressive. At last he opened his eyes. A pall of gloom encompassed him—a pall without one rift of light. His fingers, moving slowly, explored the limits of the couch whereon he lay.

Confident, at last, that wherever he was, he was unwatched, Mr. Grimm was on the point of concluding that further inaction was useless, when his straining ears caught the faint grating of metal against metal—perhaps the insertion of a key in the lock. His hands grew still; his eyes closed. And after a moment a door creaked slightly on its hinges, and a breath of cool air informed Mr. Grimm that that open door, wherever it was, led to the outside, and freedom.

There was another faint creaking as the door was shut. Mr. Grimm’s nerveless hands closed involuntarily, and his lips were set together tightly. Was it to be a knife thrust in the dark? If not—then what? He expected the flare of a match; instead there was a soft tread, and the rustle of skirts. A woman! Mr. Grimm’s caution was all but forgotten in his surprise. As the steps drew nearer his clenched fingers loosened; he waited.

Two hands stretched forward in the dark, touched him simultaneously—one on the face, one on the breast. A singular thrill shot through him, but there was not the flicker of an eye or the twitching of a finger. The woman—it was a woman—seemed now to be bending over him, then he heard her drop on her knees beside him, and she pressed an inquiring ear to his left side. It was the heart test.

“Thank God!” she breathed softly.

It was only by a masterful effort that Mr. Grimm held himself limp and inert, for a strange fragrance was enveloping him—a fragrance he well knew.

The hands were fumbling at his breast again, and there was