se who perished here.

"Death has three modes--the pale horseman strikes us down by asphyxia,
by coma, and by syncope. In asphyxia he stabs the lungs; in coma his
lance is aimed at the brain; in syncope, at the heart.

"When a man dies by asphyxia, it means that the action of the muscles
by which he breathes is stopped, or the work of his lungs prevented
by injury, or the free passage of air arrested, as in drowning, or
strangulation. It may also mean that embolism has taken place, and the
pulmonary artery is blocked, withholding blood from the lungs. But it
was not thus that any died in this chamber.

"Coma occurs through an apoplexy, or concussion; by the use of certain
narcotic or mineral poisons; and in various other ways, all of which are
ruled out for us.

"There remains syncope. A heart ceases to beat from haemorrhage, or
starvation, from exhaustion, or the depressing influence of certain
drugs. They who died here died from syncope; but why? No autopsy can
tell us why. They passed with only their Maker to sustain them, and none
leaves behind an explanation of what overtook him, or her. Yet we know
full well, even in the case of Peter Hardcastle, concerning whom the
police felt doubt, that he was quite dead before Mr. Lennox discovered
him and picked him up. We know that the phenomena of rigor mortis had
already set in before his body reached London.

"Nothing, however, is new under the sun. Many journals related the fact
that these people had passed away without a cause, as though it were
an event without a parallel. It is not. Your Dr. Templeman, in 1893,
describes two examples of sudden death with absolute absence of any
pathological condition in any part of the bodies to account for it.
He describes the case of a man of forty-three, and calls it 'emotional
inhibition of the heart.' The heart was arrested in diastole, instead
of systole, as is usually the case; the mode of death was syncope; the
cause of death, undiscoverable.

"A layman may be permitted, I suppose, to describe 'emotional inhibition
of the heart' as 'shock'; but we know, in our cases, that if a shock,
it was not a painful one--perhaps not even an unpleasant one. Since all
other emotions can be pleasant or unpleasant, why must we assume that
the supreme emotion of death may not be pleasant also, did we know how
to make it so? Perhaps the Borgia, among their secrets, had discovered
this. At least the familiar signs of death were wholly abse