"Nearly three months afterwards," ruminated the old man. "You found yourself----?" "Seated in a chair, in a room in a strange house in Bogota." "Alone?" "Raoul Arthur was with me. He was bending over me, his eyes fixed on mine, making passes with his hand before my face." "You were in a hypnotic trance." "I was coming out of one apparently." "It would be hard to define your condition. Of course, after the explosion you had been picked up and carried to this house in Bogota, where you had remained, suffering from a severe nervous shock--perhaps concussion of the brain--for three months." "I had been in that house scarcely an hour before my memory was suddenly revived." "How do you know that?" demanded Leighton sharply. "The rainy season was on in August in Bogota. I found myself in my riding dress. My rubber poncho, dripping with rain, was on the floor. My boots, the spurs still attached to the heels, were caked with mud." "And Arthur told you----?" "At first, I was bewildered, as one is when suddenly aroused from a long sleep. With full return of consciousness, I asked Raoul how I came to be there. He said he didn't know." "He must have given some explanation." "Very little. What he said mystified me more than ever. He declared that a short time before a messenger had come saying that I was in the house, waiting for him." "Whose house was it?" "Raoul's. He had rented it two months before and was living in it alone with two servants who were running it for him." "And this messenger----?" "An Indian, whom neither of us saw or heard of again, although we inquired high and low." "The servants must have had information to give?" "On being questioned they said I had arrived that morning on horseback, with an Indian, who left me there. This Indian was probably the messenger who informed Raoul of my arrival, and who afterwards disappeared. My horse was tethered in the courtyard." "The clews seem to have been pretty well obliterated," remarked Leighton sarcastically. "But Arthur must have been able to shed some light on the affair." "He said that when he found me, I did not recognize him and was in a sort of dazed mental state. Then he tried hypnotism. He had often hypnotized me before that, and was thus familiar with my condition while in a trance. Well, as soon as he saw me, after my long disappearance, he declared that I showed every symptom of hypnotic trance. So, he at once tried the usual method for bringing me back to a normal condition--and with complete success." "In his report Arthur emphasizes that as the singular feature of the case. His account, so far as it goes, agrees with yours. It gives the facts of the explosion, how you were supposed to be killed, how you disappeared for three months, and how, when you were found, you were in a trance from which he awakened you." "Does he say that, on coming out of the trance, I could remember nothing that happened during those three months?" "Yes."