He was white and bleeding from a dozen circular patches.

The odd-job man was coming up the garden, amazed at the smashing of glass, and saw her emerge, hauling the inanimate body with red-stained hands.  For a moment he thought impossible things.

“Bring some water!” she cried, and her voice dispelled his fancies.  When, with unnatural alacrity, he returned with the water, he found her weeping with excitement, and with Wedderburn’s head upon her knee, wiping the blood from his face.

“What’s the matter?” said Wedderburn, opening his eyes feebly, and closing them again at once.

“Go and tell Annie to come out here to me, and then go for Doctor Haddon at once,” she said to the odd-job man so soon as he brought the water; and added, seeing he hesitated, “I will tell you all about it when you come back.”

Presently Wedderburn opened his eyes again, and, seeing that he was troubled by the puzzle of his position, she explained to him, “You fainted in the hothouse.”

“And the orchid?”

“I will see to that,” she said.

Wedderburn had lost a good deal of blood, but beyond that he had suffered no very great injury.  They gave him brandy mixed with some pink extract of meat, and carried him upstairs to bed.  His housekeeper told her incredible story in fragments to Dr Haddon.  “Come to the orchid-house and see,” she said.

The cold outer air was blowing in through the open door, and the sickly perfume was almost dispelled.  Most of the torn aerial rootlets lay already withered amidst a number of dark stains upon the bricks.  The stem of the inflorescence was broken by the fall of the plant, and the flowers were growing limp and brown at the edges of the petals.  The doctor stooped towards it, then saw that one of the aerial rootlets still stirred feebly, and hesitated.

The next morning the strange orchid still lay there, black now and putrescent.  The door banged intermittently in the morning breeze, and all the array of Wedderburn’s orchids was shrivelled and prostrate.  But Wedderburn himself was bright and garrulous upstairs in the glory of his strange adventure.

IN THE AVU OBSERVATORY

The observatory at Avu, in Borneo, stands on the spur of the mountain.  To the north rises the old crater, black at night against the unfathomable blue of the sky.  From the little circular building, with its mushroom dome, the slopes plunge steeply downward into the black mysteries of the tropical forest beneath.  The little house in which the observer and his assistant live is about fifty yards from the observatory, and beyond this are the huts of their native attendants.