Quickly Errol turned.  If he had been a motion-picture actor, he could not have portrayed better the similitude of hate that was written on his face.  A few strides and he had advanced toward our little audience, now keyed up to the highest pitch of excitement by the extraordinary exhibition.

“Of course,” remarked Karatoff, as at a word Errol paused, still poising the dagger, “you know that under hypnotism in the psychological laboratory a patient has often struck at his ‘enemy’ with a rubber dagger, going through all the motions of real passion.  Now!”

No word was said by Karatoff to indicate to Errol what it was that he was to do.  But a gasp went up from some one as he took another step and it was evident that it was Marchant whom he had singled out.  For just a moment Errol poised the rubber dagger over his “victim,” as if gloating.  It was dramatic, realistic.  As Errol paused, Marchant smiled at the rest of us, a sickly smile, I thought, as though he would have said that the play was being carried too far.

Never for a moment did Errol take from him the menacing look.  It was only a moment in the play, yet it was so unexpected that it seemed ages.  Then, swiftly, down came the dagger on Marchant’s left side just over the breast, the rubber point bending pliantly as it descended.

A sharp cry escaped Marchant.  I looked quickly.  He had fallen forward, face down, on the floor.

Edith Gaines screamed as we rushed to Marchant and turned him over.  For the moment, as Kennedy, Karatoff, and Gaines bent over him and endeavored to loosen his collar and apply a restorative, consternation reigned in the little circle.  I bent over, too, and looked first at Marchant’s flushed face, then at Kennedy.  Marchant was dead!

There was not a mark on him, apparently.  Only a moment before he had been one of us.  We could look at one another only in amazement, tinged with fear.  Killed by a rubber dagger?  Was it possible?

“Call an ambulance—­quick!” directed Kennedy to me, though I knew that he knew it was of no use except as a matter of form.

We stood about the prostrate form, stunned.  In a few moments the police would be there.  Instinctively we looked at Karatoff.  Plainly he was nervous and overwrought now.  His voice shook as he brought Errol out of the trance, and Errol, dazed, uncomprehending, struggled to take in the horribly unreal tragedy which greeted his return to consciousness.

“It—­it was an accident,” muttered Karatoff, eagerly trying to justify himself, though trembling for once in his life.  “Arteriosclerosis, perhaps, hardening of the arteries, some weakness of the heart.  I never—­”

He cut the words short as Edith Gaines reeled and fell into her husband’s arms.  She seemed completely prostrated by the shock.  Or was it weakness following the high mental tension of her own hypnotization?  Together we endeavored to revive her, waiting for the first flutter of her eyelids, which seemed an interminable time.