n the floor of the room dead. Exactly where, he
does not remember. But for my own part I have no doubt whatever that her
death took place in that way.

"We are on safer ground with the other tragic happenings, though, save
in the case of Nurse Forrester, there is nothing on the surface of
events to connect their deaths with the accursed bed. You will see,
however, that it is very easy to do so. In the lady's case all is clear
enough. She goes to bed tired and she sleeps peacefully into death
without waking. She is probably asleep within ten minutes, before her
own warmth has penetrated through sheet and blanket to the mattress
beneath and so destroyed her. Suppose that she is dead in half an hour.
She retired to rest at ten o'clock; she is called at seven; the room is
presently broken into and she is then not only dead, but cold. The demon
has gone to sleep again under its lifeless burden. Now had she been
stout and well covered, there had hardly been time for her to grow cold,
and those who came to her assistance might even have perished, too.
But she is a little, thin thing, and the heat has gone out of her. This
assured the safety of those who came to the bedside. One can make no
laws as to the time necessary for a dead body to grow as cold as its
surroundings. The bodies of the old and the young cool more quickly than
those of adult persons. If the conditions are favorable a body may cool
in six to eight hours. Prince took but five, poor little bag of bones.

"In the case of Captain May the conditions are altogether different.
Let me speak with all tenderness and spare you pain. Be sure that he
suffered no more than the others. The bed is now no longer made; the
mattress is bare. That matters not to him. Clad in his pyjamas, with a
railway rug to cover him and his dressing-gown for a pillow, he flings
himself down, and from his powerful and sanguine frame warmth is
instantly communicated to the mattress that supports him. Probably but
a few minutes were sufficient to liberate the poison. He is not asleep,
but on the edge of sleep when he becomes suddenly conscious of physical
sensations beyond his experience. He had breathed death, but yet he is
not dead. His brain works, and can send a message to his limbs, which
are still able to obey. But his hour has come. He leaps from the bed in
no suffering, but conscious, perhaps of an oppression, or an unfamiliar
odor--we cannot say what. We only know that he feels intense