anaged to draw the dagger concealed in her waist, but
he caught her wrist and held her in front of him, taking careful aim at
the man in the armor and firing deliberately. Renwick tottered forward
silently and came crashing to the floor in the corner, where after a
moment of struggle, he relaxed and lay motionless.

Goritz caught Marishka around the waist and disarmed her. But this act
of precaution was unnecessary, for after one fleeting glance at the
tangled heap of iron in the corner, she sank a dead weight in his arms.

CHAPTER XVIII

NUMBER 28

For a month the Landes Hospital had been greatly interested in the
mystery of patient Number 28. In spite of the imminence of war, and the
preparations which were being made to care for the wounded along the
border, the physicians, the nurses, and the other patients had all
formed theories as to the man's history and the possible causes of his
injuries. And during the long period in which he lay unconscious,
hovering in the dim realm between life and death, not a day passed in
which his temperature, respiration, and other symptoms were not
discussed from one end of the hospital to the other. The Head Surgeon,
Colonel Bohratt, inclined to the opinion that if the man continued for a
few days longer without change he would recover. But the Head Nurse
shook her head sagely. The wound in the head had been difficult, as the
operation was an unusual one, the wound in the shoulder was nothing, but
the one in the stomach! If the operation of Colonel Bohratt proved
successful, then a miracle had been performed.

The interest in the case, both from the sentimental as well as the
professional point of view, was so great that the man's bed had been
carefully wheeled from a ward where he had been taken from the operating
table, into a private room, where every chance would be given him to
recover.

On the twenty-seventh of July, Fraeulein Roth, the nurse on duty at the
bedside of the man of mystery, noted a slight change in his breathing,
and saw that he had opened his eyes, which were regarding her calmly,
but with the puzzled expression of one who has come a great distance
into a strange country. She knew then that what the Head Surgeon had
said was true, and that the man of mystery had turned the corner which
led away from the land of the Great Beyond. But being a prudent person,
she gave no sign of her delight, merely moving softly closer to the
bedside, and in German q