Page:Hilda Wade (1900).pdf/22

'Oh, I have not guessed what it is: I am no Œdipus: I have merely guessed that it exists. But whatever it may be, Hilda's life is bounded by it. She became a nurse to carry it out, I feel confident. From the very beginning, I gather, part of her scheme was to go to St. Nathaniel's. She was always bothering us to give her introductions to Dr. Sebastian; and when she met you at my brother Hugo's, it was a preconcerted arrangement; she asked to sit next you, and meant to induce you to use your influence on her behalf with the Professor. She was dying to get there.'

'It is very odd,' I mused. 'But, there!—women are inexplicable!'

'And Hilda is in that matter the very quintessence of woman. Even I, who have known her for years, don't pretend to understand her.'

A few months later Sebastian began his great researches on his new anæsthetic. It was a wonderful set of researches. It promised so well. All Nat's (as we familiarly and affectionately style St. Nathaniel's) was in a fever of excitement over the drug for a twelvemonth.

The Professor obtained his first hint of the new body by a mere accident. His friend the Deputy Prosector of the Zoological Society had mixed a draught for a sick racoon at the Gardens, and, by some mistake in a bottle, had mixed it wrongly. (I purposely refrain from mentioning the ingredients, as they are drugs which can be easily obtained in isolation at any chemist's, though when compounded they form one of the most dangerous and difficult to detect of organic poisons. I do not desire to play into the hands of would-be criminals.) The compound on which the Deputy Prosector had thus accidentally lighted sent the racoon to sleep in the most extraordinary manner. Indeed, the racoon slept for thirty-six hours on end, all attempts to awake him