“Strange—­strange!” said Lefevre—­“very strange!  And the card—­of course the stranger must have put it in your pocket.”

“Which would seem to imply,” said the young man, “that he knows something of the hospital.”

“Well,” said Lefevre, “we must see what can be done to clear the mystery up.”

“Some of those newspaper-men have been here,” said the house-physician, when they had left the ward, “and they will be sure to call again before the day is out.  Shall I tell them anything of this?”

“Certainly,” said Lefevre.  “Publicity may help us to discover this amazing stranger.”

“Do you quite believe the story?” asked the house-physician.

“I don’t disbelieve it.”

“But what did the stranger do to put him in that condition, which seems something more than hypnotism?”

“Ah,” said Lefevre, “I don’t yet understand it; but there are forces in Nature which few can comprehend, and which only one here and there can control and use.”

Chapter III.

“M.  Dolaro.”

Next day men talked, newspaper in hand, at the breakfast-table, in the early trains, omnibuses, and tramcars, of the singular railway outrage.  It was clear its purpose was not robbery.  What, then, did it mean?  Some—­probably most—­declared it was very plain what it meant; while others,—­the few,—­after much argument, confessed themselves quite mystified.

The police, too, were not idle.  They made inquiries and took notes here and there.  They discovered that the five o’clock train made but two pauses on its journey to London—­at Croydon and at Clapham Junction.  At neither of those places could a man in a fur coat be heard of as having descended from the train; and yet it was manifest that he did not arrive at Grosvenor Road, where tickets were taken.  After persistent and wider inquiries, however, at Clapham Junction (which was the most likely point of departure), a cabman was found who remembered having taken up a fare—­a gentleman in a fur coat—­about the hour indicated.  He particularly remarked the gentleman, because he looked odd and foreign and half tipsy (that was how he seemed to him), because he was wrapped up “enough for Father Christmas,” and because he asked to be driven such a long way—­to a well-known hotel near the Crystal Palace, where “foreign gents” were fond of staying.  Being asked what in particular had made him think the gentleman a foreigner, cabby could not exactly say; he believed, however, it was his coat and his eyes.  Of his face he saw little or nothing, it was so muffled up; yet his tongue was English enough.