Dinner was brought in at seven, and with it a small bottle of claret. He
made an excellent meal, in spite of his unhappy reflections. The claret
proved a welcome addition to it. On the tray was also a cigar. Decidedly
the doctor was thoughtful, he reflected grimly.

Shortly after dinner he began to feel strangely drowsy. For a time he
resisted the feeling--fought against it, but his eyelids seemed weighted
with lead. Try as he would, he could not keep his eyes open. He threw up
the window, gasping at the fresh air, but it had little effect. He
rushed to the door, tried it, found it locked as he had expected, then
groped toward the bed and fell heavily upon it, drunk with sleep. "It
must have been the wine," he muttered to himself, and in another moment
his muscles relaxed and he lay unconscious.

CHAPTER XVI

When Richard Duvall once more opened his eyes, he saw nothing but a
blinding glare of light, that hurt and bewildered him with its singular
and brilliant intensity. He closed his eyes again at once, unable to
bear the irritation which was thus caused him. It was not exactly pain
that he felt, but an intense discomfort, such as one experiences when
looking directly at the brilliant rays of the sun.

After a few moments spent in futile attempts to cover his eyes with his
hands, only to discover that his arms were tightly bound, he thought to
secure relief by turning his face to one side, so that his vision might
seek the soft darkness which seemed to lie on every side of him. In this
effort he was equally unsuccessful. His head, his neck, his whole body,
were rigid, immovable. He could not stir an inch in any direction.

He spent a long time in useless speculation upon the meaning of the
remarkable situation in which he now found himself. He felt no pain, no
discomfort, except that which the brilliance of the light above him
caused. He determined at length once more to open his eyes, in order to
discover if possible its source.

Even when his eyes were closed, he could see that the strange light
burnt upon them. In a way it rendered his eyelids translucent--he was
conscious of a dull pulsing redness through which shot a network of
lines of fire. He opened his eyes slowly, cautiously, and looked upward.
From some point above him, in what he judged must be the ceiling of the
room, extended a beam of violet white light, cutting sharply through the
darkness like the rays of a searchlight. At the opening i