"A weak heart, and brain trouble, my dear Mr Kemball. To tell you frankly, alas! I fear the worst." "Come here a moment," I said, taking him by the arm and pulling him into the disordered bedroom. "Now," I added, as I pushed the door to as well as it would go. "Tell me truthfully. Doctor Redwood, what do you make of this affair?" "Nothing at present," he replied with a peculiar sniff, a habit of his, "Can't make it out at all. But I don't like the symptoms. Only once she has spoken. In her delirium she whispered something about a hand. She must have _seen_ something or other--something uncanny, I think. And yet what can there be here?" he asked, gazing amazedly round the apartment. "Look here, Redwood," I exclaimed firmly, "the facts are very similar to those at Titmarsh. Poor Nicholson saw _Something_, you'll recollect. And he had locked himself in--just as Miss Seymour did." The doctor stroked his ruddy, clean-shaven chin. "I quite admit that in many of the details it is quite a parallel case. But I am hoping to get the young lady round sufficiently to describe what happened. The servants say that the screams were loud piercing ones of horror and terror. Shaw himself told me that he had the greatest difficulty in breaking down the door. They found her crouched down in fear--yonder, behind the ottoman. And she shrieked out something about a hand. To what could she have referred, do you think? She's quite sane and of perfectly sound mind, or I should attribute the affair to some hallucination." "It was more than hallucination," I assured him, recollecting my own experience, yet determined not to assist him towards the elucidation of the mystery. The dead man had evidently made a discovery immediately, before his fatal seizure. I recollected that brief urgent note of Asta's. Had she, too, made a similar discovery? Yes. There could be no evasion of the fact. The two cases were in every way identical. For nearly a quarter of an hour I stood discussing the amazing affair with Redwood. I could see that he was both mystified and suspicious, therefore I extracted from him a pledge of secrecy, and promised to assist him towards a solution of the extraordinary problem. I made no mention to anybody of Asta's message to me, which I intended should remain a secret. At my earnest appeal he allowed me to creep on tiptoe into the darkened chamber, wherein still lay unconscious the woman I loved so profoundly-- she who was all the world to me. I bent over the poor white face that presented the waxen transparency of death, and touched the thin, soft hand that lay outside the coverlet. Then, with eyes filled with tears, and half choked by the sob which I was powerless to restrain, I turned away and left the room. "Will she recover?" I managed to ask the doctor. But he merely raised his thick eyebrows in blank uncertainty. What devil's work had been accomplished within that locked room? Ay, what indeed?