"Ah, my dear Doctor!" I cried eagerly, rushing forward to welcome him--"You will excuse me calling you so unexpectedly, and at this hour, but something very unusual has transpired--a matter in which I require your assistance." "Ach!" he answered, shaking my hand, "I was surprised to get your kart, my frient. But, you see, I haf come to you at once." He was a stout, ill-dressed man, broad-shouldered, short-legged, big-headed, heavy-jowled, about fifty-five, with scraggy yellowish hair upon his furrowed face, a pair of big eyes which blinked through large gold-rimmed spectacles, and a limp shirt-front secured by a couple of common pearl studs. Typically German in figure and manner, he spoke with a strong accent, his English grammar being often very faulty, but he was nevertheless a burly, good-natured man, possessing a keen sense of humour. I introduced him briefly to the baronet's wife, and then, indicating the inanimate body of my love, gave him a short, technical account of her symptoms. He bent over her, examined her face, and grunted dubiously. "It looks as though the young lady were dead," he said with his strong accent, his great sleepy-looking eyes blinking at us through his spectacles. "I see no sign of life," I responded. "What is your opinion?" He went down on his knees, grunting over the effort, and while I held the lamp for him, examined her throat and neck carefully, as though looking for some mark or other. "And how did it all happen?" he inquired presently, after a long, thoughtful silence. I exchanged glances with her ladyship, and then related him the story just as she had told it to me. "Her ladyship wishes that it should be kept a profound secret," I added. "Secret!" he snorted. "How are you going to hoodwink the coroner?" "Then you think poor Beryl is really dead?" her cousin gasped. "She is dead," the old fellow answered gruffly. "But can you do nothing?" I urged in desperation. "If she's dead, that's impossible," he declared. "No," I said. "I refuse to believe that she is actually beyond your aid. To us she may appear dead, but her state may be only a cataleptic one." He shook his great shaggy head dubiously, but made no response. This man, one of the greatest chemists of the age, who had been recognised as _private docent_ of pathological anatomy and bacteriology at the University of Naples, and was renowned throughout the world for his excursions into the queer byways of medicine, was a man of few words. His grunts were full of expression, and his fleshy face with the dull eyes was absolutely sphinx-like. The story he had heard regarding Beryl's sudden seizure did not convince him. His expressive grunt told me so. He had ripped up the tight sleeves of her dress, and was examining the inside of the arms at the elbows, but what he saw did not satisfy him.