One thing, however, was clear to me now—­this great campaign that was being waged between the nurse and the Professor had reference to the case of Dr. Yorke-Bannerman.

For a time, nothing came of it; the routine of the hospital went on as usual.  The patient with the suspected predisposition to aneurism kept fairly well for a week or two, and then took a sudden turn for the worse, presenting at times most unwonted symptoms.  He died unexpectedly.  Sebastian, who had watched him every hour, regarded the matter as of prime importance.  “I’m glad it happened here,” he said, rubbing his hands.  “A grand opportunity.  I wanted to catch an instance like this before that fellow in Paris had time to anticipate me.  They’re all on the lookout.  Von Strahlendorff, of Vienna, has been waiting for just such a patient for years.  So have I. Now fortune has favoured me.  Lucky for us he died!  We shall find out everything.”

We held a post-mortem, of course, the condition of the blood being what we most wished to observe; and the autopsy revealed some unexpected details.  One remarkable feature consisted in a certain undescribed and impoverished state of the contained bodies which Sebastian, with his eager zeal for science, desired his students to see and identify.  He said it was likely to throw much light on other ill-understood conditions of the brain and nervous system, as well as on the peculiar faint odour of the insane, now so well recognised in all large asylums.  In order to compare this abnormal state with the aspect of the healthy circulating medium, he proposed to examine a little good living blood side by side with the morbid specimen under the microscope.  Nurse Wade was in attendance in the laboratory, as usual.  The Professor, standing by the instrument, with one hand on the brass screw, had got the diseased drop ready arranged for our inspection beforehand, and was gloating over it himself with scientific enthusiasm.  “Grey corpuscles, you will observe,” he said, “almost entirely deficient.  Red, poor in number, and irregular in outline.  Plasma, thin.  Nuclei, feeble.  A state of body which tells severely against the due rebuilding of the wasted tissues.  Now compare with typical normal specimen.”  He removed his eye from the microscope, and wiped a glass slide with a clean cloth as he spoke.  “Nurse Wade, we know of old the purity and vigour of your circulating fluid.  You shall have the honour of advancing science once more.  Hold up your finger.”

Hilda held up her forefinger unhesitatingly.  She was used to such requests; and, indeed, Sebastian had acquired by long experience the faculty of pinching the finger-tip so hard, and pressing the point of a needle so dexterously into a minor vessel, that he could draw at once a small drop of blood without the subject even feeling it.