"I can relate to you a few of the facts if you wish to hear them," was
my reply. I certainly had no intention of telling him all that I
knew, or of the death and cremation of the mysterious Gabrielle
Engledue--whoever she might have been.
So I explained practically what I had told his sister. I also
described how Professor Vega at Madrid had told me of the two cures
effected by Professor Gourbeil, of Lyons.
"My sister tells me that you suggest Gabrielle should consult him,"
Mr. Maxwell said. "But she has consulted so many specialists. Doctor
Moroni has been most kind to her. He took her to doctors in Paris and
in Italy, but they could do nothing."
"Well, I think that as Professor Gourbeil has cured two persons of the
deadly effects of the drug Miss Tennison should see him," I remarked.
"I quite agree. It is for that reason I have come to London," he said.
"I understand that you, Mr. Garfield, take a personal interest in my
niece, therefore I want to ask you a favour--namely, that if I pay the
expenses would you accompany my sister and her daughter to Lyons?"
"Willingly. But I will pay my own expenses, please," was my prompt
reply.
At first he would not hear of it, until I declined to go unless I went
independently, and then we arranged for our departure.
Four days later we descended at the big busy Perrache station at Lyons
from the lumbering _rapide_ which had brought us from Paris, and
entered the Terminus Hôtel which adjoins the platform. Later, from the
concierge, we found that Professor Gourbeil of the Facultés des
Sciences et de Médecine, lived in the Avenue Felix Faure, and I
succeeded over the telephone in making an appointment with him for the
following day at noon.
This I kept, going to him alone in order to explain matters.
I found him to be a short, florid-faced man with a shock of white hair
and a short white beard. His house was a rather large one standing
back in a well-kept garden full of flowers, and the room in which he
received me was shaded and cool.
I told him of Professor Vega's recommendation, whereupon he exclaimed
in French:
"Ah! I know Professor Vega. We met last year at our conference in
Paris--a very brilliant man!"
Then, as briefly as I could, I explained how the deadly drug orosin
had been surreptitiously administered to Gabrielle and myself, and its
effects upon us both.
"Orosin!" exclaimed the old savant, raising his thin hands. "Ah! There
is not much hope of the lady's recovery. I have known of only two
cases within my experience. The effect of orosin upon the human brain
is mysterious and lasting. It produces a state of the brain-cells with
which we cannot cope. A larger dose produces strong homicidal
tendencies and inevitable death, and a still larger dose almost
instantaneous death."
I told him how we both had lost all sense of our surroundings for
weeks, and how we were both found at the roadside, she in Hampshire
and I in France.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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