We strolled back to the hospital, but on the way along the Quai Duguay-Trouin — I noticed it written up — I became again confused. My vision was not as it should have been, and my memory seemed blurred, even of the happenings of the past hour.
My nurse chatted as we walked together through the streets, but I know that my answers were unintelligible. I felt I was not myself. All my senses were keen as far as I could gauge — all save that of my memory of the past.
As I ascended through the pretty grounds of the hospital, the Sister beside me, I felt a curious failing of my heart. I experienced a sensation which I cannot here describe, as of one who had lost all interest in life, and who longed for death.
There may be some among my readers who have experienced it, perhaps. I cannot describe it; I merely explain that I felt inert, inefficient, and bored with life.
No such feeling had ever fallen upon me before. Hitherto I had been quick, alert, and full of the enjoyment of living. At Rivermead Mansions Harry Hambledon and I had prided ourselves on our post-war alertness.
Where was Harry? What was he doing? Would he be wondering why I was absent from our riparian bachelor home?
I was reflecting upon all this when suddenly, without any apparent cause, I once more lost consciousness. We were at that moment entering the door of the hospital and the Sister had just exclaimed:
“Now, do remain quite quiet and not worry over the past. It will all be right to-morrow,” she urged.
I know not what words I uttered in reply. A curious sense of oppression had fallen upon me, a hot, burning feeling as though my skull was filled with molten metal, while at the back of my neck was a sharp excruciating pain which caused me to hold my breath.
The Sister apparently noticed my sudden relapse, for she expressed a hope that I was not feeling worse. I tried to reassure her that I was all right, but I know I failed to do so, for once again I lost all knowledge of things about me.
After that I recollect nothing more. Probably I walked on mechanically back to my bed.
When my lapse had passed, and I again regained consciousness, I found myself in bed gazing up at the ceiling. On either side of me were men, also in bed. They were talking in French.
I listened, and in a few seconds I recollected the events of the previous day. Then a sharp-featured nurse, whom I had not seen before, told us it was time to dress. I obeyed, but my clothes were entirely unfamiliar. They were coarse and did not fit me.
While I washed I burst out laughing. The humour of the situation struck me as distinctly amusing. At one hour I was myself; at the next I was another being!
Was my case that of Jekyll and Hyde?
I knew, and I felt keenly about it, that I had accepted a bribe to perform an illicit service. I had posed as a medical man and given a certificate of death. But my one and only object in life was to see Mr. De Gex and demand of him a full explanation of the amazing and suspicious circumstances.
My lapses were intermittent. At times I was fully conscious of the past. At others my brain was awhirl and aflame. I could think of nothing, see nothing — only distorted visions of things about me.
Apparently twenty-four hours had passed since I walked in the sunshine.
The men in the hospital ward were all Frenchmen, apparently of the lower class. At one end of the room a heated argument was in progress in which four or five men were gesticulating and wrangling, while one man was seated on his bed laughing idiotically, it seemed, at his own thoughts.
Presently a tall thin man in spectacles entered, and addressing me, asked me to follow him.
I obeyed, and he conducted me to a small kind of office in which two men were standing. Both were middle-aged, and of official aspect.
Having given me a chair they all seated themselves when the thin man — who I rightly judged to be the director of the hospital — commenced to interrogate me.
“How do you feel to-day?” was his first question, which he put in French in a quiet, kindly manner.
“I feel much better,” was my reply. “But yesterday my nurse revealed to me some very extraordinary facts concerning myself.”
“Yes. You have been seriously ill,” he said. “But now you are better these gentlemen wish to put a few questions to you.”
“They are police officers, I presume.”
The director nodded in the affirmative.
“We wish to ascertain exactly what happened to you, monsieur,” exclaimed the elder of the pair.
“I really don’t know,” I replied. “I must have lost all consciousness in London, and — — ”
“In London!” exclaimed Monsieur Leullier, the Prefect of Police, in great surprise. “Then how came you here in St. Malo?”
“I have not the slightest idea,” was my reply. “I only presume that I was found here.”
“You were. A fish-porter passing along the Quay St. Vincent at about two o’clock in the morning found you seated on the ground with your back to the wall, moaning as though in pain. He called the police and you were removed on the ambulance to the hospital here. The doctors found that you were in no pain, but that you could give no intelligible account of yourself.”
“What did I tell them?”
“Oh! a number of silly stories. At one moment you said you had come from Italy. Then you said that you had hired a motor-car and the driver had attacked you in the night. Afterwards you believed yourself to be in some office, and talked about electrical engineering.”
“That is my profession,” I said. And I told them my name and my address in London, facts which the police carefully set down.
“You told us that your name was Henry Aitken, and that you lived mostly in Italy — at some place near Rome. We have made inquiries by telegraph of a number of people whom you have mentioned, but all their replies have been in the negative,” said the police official.
“Well, I am now entirely in possession of my full senses,” I declared. “But how I got to France I have not the slightest knowledge. I lost consciousness in a house in Stretton Street, in London. Since then I have known nothing — until yesterday.”
“In what circumstances did you lapse into unconsciousness?” asked the doctor, looking intently at me through his glasses, for mine was no doubt an extremely interesting case. “What do you remember? Did you receive any sudden shock?”
I explained that being on a visit to a friend — as I designated Oswald De Gex — his niece died very suddenly. And after that I became unconscious.
The Prefect of Police naturally became very inquisitive, but I preferred not to satisfy his curiosity. My intention was to return to London and demand from De Gex a full explanation of what had actually occurred on that fatal night. I was full of suspicion regarding the sudden death of his niece, Gabrielle Engledue.
The police official told me that from my clothes all the tabs bearing the tailor’s name had been removed, and also the laundry marks from my underclothes. There was nothing upon me that could possibly establish my identity, though in my pocket was found five thousand pounds in bank notes — which he handed to me. They were intact — the same notes which De Gex has given me in return for the false death certificate I had signed.
I sat utterly aghast at the story of my discovery, of the many attempts made to establish my identity, of the visit of the British Vice-Consul to the hospital, and of his kindness towards me. It seemed that he had questioned me closely, but I had told an utterly fantastic story.
Indeed, as I sat there, I felt that neither of my three interrogators believed a single word of the truth I related. Yet, after all, I was not revealing the whole truth.
Certain recollections