Flat on my back I was lying, gazing up at what, surprisingly, seemed to be a ceiling festooned with garlands of roses and painted with ladies and cavaliers, idling about a stretch of greensward, decidedly in the Watteau style.  Where was I?  What had happened to make me feel so helpless?  It reminded me of an episode of my childhood, a day when my pony had fallen and rolled upon me, and I had been carried home with two crushed ribs and a broken arm.

Coming out at that time from the influence of the ether, I had found Dunny at my bedside.  If only he were here now!  I looked round.  Why, there he was, sitting in a brocaded chair by the window, his dear old silver head thrown back, dozing beyond a doubt.

To see him gave me a warm, comforted, homelike feeling.  Nor did it surprise me, but my surroundings did.  The room, a veritable Louis Quinze jewel in its paneling, carving, and gilding, might have come direct from Versailles by parcel post; my bed was garlanded and curtained in rose-color.  Where I had gone to sleep last night I couldn’t remember; but it hadn’t, I was obstinately sure, been here.

What ailed me, anyhow?  I began a series of cautious experiments, designed to discover the trouble.  My arms were weak and of a strange, flabby limpness, but they moved.  So did my left leg; but when I came to the right one I was baffled.  It wouldn’t stir; it was heavily encased in something.  Good heavens! now I knew!  It was in a plaster cast.

The shock of the discovery taught me something further, namely, that my head was liable to excruciating little throbs of pain.  I raised a hand to it.  My forehead was swathed in bandages, like a turbaned Turk’s.  Oh, to be sure, in the castle at Prezelay, as we were retreating up the staircase, Schwartzmann had fired at me; but, then, hadn’t that been a pin prick, the merest scratch?

The name Prezelay served as a key to solve the puzzle.  The whole fantastic, incredible chain of happenings came back to me in a rush; the gray car, the inn, the murder, the night in the castle, Jean-Herve-Marie-Olivier.

“Dunny!” I heard myself quavering in a voice utterly unlike my own.

The figure in the chair started up and hurried toward me, and then Dunny’s hands were holding my hands, his eyes looking into mine.

“There, Dev, there!  Take it easy,” the familiar voice was soothing me.  “Hold on to me, my boy, You are safe now.  You’re all right!”

My safety, however, seemed of small importance for the time being.

“Dunny,” I implored, “listen!  You have got to find out for me about a girl.  How am I to tell you, though?  If I start the story, you’ll think I’m raving.”

“I know all about it, Dev,” my guardian reassured me.  “I’ve seen Miss Falconer.  She’s absolutely safe.”

If that were so, I could relax, and I did with fervent thankfulness.  Not for long, however; my brain had begun to work.