Furthermore, I now had my chance to unloose my anaesthetic. I can hear the squeak of that fat cork now; I can recall the pleasure of smelling those dizzy fumes as I thrust the gauze into her face. Time after time she succeeded in thrusting it aside with her clawing hands; time after time I succeeded in jamming it back again against her nose. The scene is not one I recall with pride, but my brief excuse must be that I do not like to have my undertakings fail. The delicacies of the best of us, moreover, depart at critical junctures. However that may be, the important point is that finally I felt her struggles subside. Her hands no longer acted with intelligence; they moved about wildly in front of her face, as if to push away a tangle of cobwebs. Her head rolled to and fro; the gurglings, sputters, half-uttered cries of rage, ceased. "Breathe again!" said I, with the habitual phrase of the surgeon administering an anaesthetic. "Breathe away--breathe away--Ah, now!--breathe--breathe--breathe!" And at last she was still. I threw the gauze into the corner. I got up panting, for I am not built for exercise, and, panting still, I peeped out through the silk curtains to be sure that in our little adventure we had attracted no attention. The wind-driven rain still swept down the streets under the iridescent glows of the arc lights, my car still stood like a forlorn, forgotten thing in the gutter. In one direction the wet perspective of the avenue appeared as empty as a street scene on a drop curtain. But when I turned my eyes the other way my heart gave quick response. Just beyond the iron fence stood a patrolman. He had stopped and seemed to be looking directly at the door behind which I stood. I could see his two bare hands on the iron railing. They were very conspicuous against the rubber coat--wet, black, and shiny--which covered his burly figure, and he used them to sway himself softly backward and forward. It seemed to me that he was debating how to act, and I believe that I learned then, peeping through the glass, to what extent guilt and the desire for secrecy will sharpen the imagination. I say this, because, almost at the moment that I felt sure he had taken a step forward toward me, I saw that not his face but his back was turned toward me, that his hands were behind him and that he had leaned for a moment on the rail, perhaps to look at the physician's green cross on my lights. A second later he ducked his helmet into the driving rain and, walking on, turned into the shadows of the cross-street. I knew then I had no time to lose. I had been delayed; Margaret Murchie might regain her senses. And yet, when I had signaled to Estabrook, when he, without a word, had come, and when I felt the excitement most keenly, I found myself impressed not with the necessities of the moment, but rather with the extraordinary grotesqueness of the situation.