sprang to his feet.

"I think he is mad. He is dancing about the grounds, singing, and he has
with him the preparation!"

Van Heerden rapped out an oath and leapt through the door, the doctor at
his heels. They took the short cut and ran up the steps leading from the
well courtyard, and bursting through the bushes came within sight of the
offender.

But he was not dancing now. He was standing with open mouth, staring
stupidly about him.

"I dropped it, I dropped it!" he stammered.

There was no need for van Heerden to ask what he had dropped, for the
green lawn which had excited Milsom's admiration was no longer to be
seen. In its place was a black irregular patch of earth which looked as
though it had been blasted in the furnaces of hell, and the air was
filled with the pungent mustiness of decay.

CHAPTER XIX

OLIVA IS WILLING

It seemed that a grey curtain of mist hung before Oliva's eyes. It was a
curtain spangled with tiny globes of dazzling light which grew from
nothing and faded to nothing. Whenever she fixed her eyes upon one of
these it straightway became two and three and then an unaccountable
quantity.

She felt that she ought to see faces of people she knew, for one half of
her brain had cleared and was calmly diagnosing her condition, but doing
so as though she were somebody else. She was emerging from a drugged
sleep; she could regard herself in a curious impersonal fashion which
was most interesting. And people who are drugged see things and people.
Strange mirages of the mind arise and stranger illusions are suffered.
Yet she saw nothing save this silvery grey curtain with its drifting
spots of light and heard nothing except a voice saying, "Come along,
come along, wake up." A hundred, a thousand times this monotonous order
was repeated, and then the grey curtain faded and she was lying on the
bed, her head throbbing, her eyes hot and prickly, and two men were
looking down at her, one of them a big barefaced man with a coarse mouth
and sunken eyes.

"Was it my father really?" she asked drowsily.

"I was afraid of that second dose you gave her last night," said Milsom.
"You are getting a condition of coma and that's the last thing you
want."

"She'll be all right now," replied van Heerden, but his face was
troubled. "The dose was severe--yet she seemed healthy enough to stand a
three-minim injection."

Milsom shook his head.

"She'll be all right now, but she might as easily ha