“Come—­see a patient who is just recovering,” I added, much flattered by the praise, which, from a German physician, meant much.

Reinstrom followed me out of the door and we entered a private room of the hospital where another woman patient lay in bed carefully watched by a nurse.

“How do you do?” I nodded to the nurse in a modulated tone.  “Everything progressing favorably?”

“Perfectly,” she returned, as Reinstrom, Haynes and myself formed a little group about the bedside of the unconscious woman.

“And you say they have no recollection of anything that happens?” asked Reinstrom.

“Absolutely none—­if the treatment is given properly,” I replied confidently.

I picked up a piece of bandage which was the handiest thing about me and tied it quite tightly about the patient’s arm.

As we waited, the patient, who was gradually coming from under the drug, roused herself.

“What is that—­it hurts!” she said putting her hand on the bandage I had tied tightly.

“That is all right.  Just a moment.  I’ll take it off.  Don’t you remember it?” I asked.

She shook her head.  I smiled at Reinstrom.

“You see, she has no recollection of my tying the bandage on her arm,” I pointed out.

“Wonderful!” ejaculated Reinstrom as we left the room.

All the way back to the office he was loud in his praises and thanked us most heartily, as he put on his hat and coat and shook hands a cordial good-bye.

Now comes the strange part of my story.  After Reinstrom had gone, Dr. Holmes, the attending physician of the woman whom we had seen anesthetized, missed his syringe and the bottle of scopolamine.

“Miss Sears,” he asked rather testily, “what have you done with the hypodermic and the scopolamine?”

“Nothing,” she protested.

“You must have done something.”

She repeated that she had not.

“Well, it is very strange then,” he said, “I am positive I laid the syringe and the bottle right here on this tray on the table.”

Holmes, Miss Sears and Miss Stern all hunted, but it could not be found.  Others had to be procured.

I thought little of it at the time, but since then it has occurred to me that it might interest you, Professor Kennedy, and I give it to you for what it may be worth.

It was early the next morning that I awoke to find Kennedy already up and gone from our apartment.  I knew he must be at the laboratory, and, gathering the mail, which the postman had just slipped through the letter slot, I went over to the University to see him.  As I looked over the letters to cull out my own, one in a woman’s handwriting on attractive notepaper addressed to him caught my eye.

As I came up the path to the Chemistry Building I saw through the window that, in spite of his getting there early, he was finding it difficult to keep his mind on his work.  It was the first time I had ever known anything to interfere with science in his life.