The professor's experiment: A novel, Vol. 1 (of 3)Duchess
Science
The professor's experiment: A novel, Vol. 1 (of 3)
Duchess
Science fiction
Wyndham knelt down beside him, and took his hand in his. He, too, was
trembling excessively, and his eyes were full of tears.
‘Sir,’ he said softly, ‘she is alive.’
‘She—she—who?’ asked the Professor. He bent forward; his features were
working.
‘That girl ... last night.... She lives, sir. Your experiment has not
failed, after all.’
He feared to look at the Professor when he had said this, and bent his
head, leaning his forehead on the wrinkled hand he held. It quivered
slightly beneath him, but not much, and presently the old man spoke.
‘She lives?’ His voice was stronger now. Wyndham looked up, and found
the Professor looking almost his normal self, and with that expression
in his eyes that the young man knew as meaning a sharp calculation.
‘Yes; I have spoken to her. Will you see her?’
‘No.’ The Professor silenced him by a gesture. He was evidently in the
midst of a quick calculation now.
‘The hour she woke?’ he asked presently, with such a vigorous ring in
his tone that Wyndham rose to his feet astonished.
‘Two minutes ago.’
‘Hah!’ The Professor went back to his calculations. Presently a shout
broke from him. ‘I see it now!’ he cried victoriously; ‘I see where the
mistake lay! Fool that I was not to have seen it before! It was a
miscalculation, but one easy to be rectified. An hour or two will do it.
Here, help me up, Paul.’
‘But, Professor, it is impossible; you must rest; you——’
‘Not another moment, not one, I tell you!’ cried the Professor
furiously. He lunged out of bed. ‘This thing must be seen to at once.
What time can any man be sure of, that he should waste it? The discovery
must be assured. And what time have I?’
He fell forward; he had fainted. Wyndham laid him back, and rushed
frantically into the next room.
The girl was standing just where he had left her. But her arms were
outstretched no longer; they were better employed—they were doing up her
hair.
There was a glass on a wall opposite to him, and by this she was trying
to bring herself back to as perfect a state of respectability as
circumstances permitted her.
‘You must go,’ said Wyndham, ‘and at once. Do you hear—at once?’
And, indeed, it was imperative that she should be out of the house
before the arrival of the doctor, for whom he was now about to go.
She rose. And suddenly gladness died from her face, her arms dropped to
her sides; something of the old misery, but not all, settled down on her
once more.
‘I can go,’ she said. ‘I—I am not so afraid now, when it is day; but—he
said——’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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