XXV

AT RAINCY-LA-TOUR

When I opened my eyes it was with a peculiarly reluctant feeling, for
my eyelids were so heavy that they seemed to weigh a ton. My head was
unspeakably groggy, and I had quite lost my memory. I couldn't,
if suddenly interrogated, have replied with one intelligent bit of
information about myself, not even with my name.

Flat on my back I was lying, gazing up at what, surprisingly, seemed to
be a ceiling festooned with garlands of roses and painted with ladies
and cavaliers, idling about a stretch of greensward, decidedly in
the Watteau style. Where was I? What had happened to make me feel so
helpless? It reminded me of an episode of my childhood, a day when my
pony had fallen and rolled upon me, and I had been carried home with two
crushed ribs and a broken arm.

Coming out at that time from the influence of the ether, I had found
Dunny at my bedside. If only he were here now! I looked round. Why,
there he was, sitting in a brocaded chair by the window, his dear old
silver head thrown back, dozing beyond a doubt.

To see him gave me a warm, comforted, homelike feeling. Nor did it
surprise me, but my surroundings did. The room, a veritable Louis Quinze
jewel in its paneling, carving, and gilding, might have come direct
from Versailles by parcel post; my bed was garlanded and curtained in
rose-color. Where I had gone to sleep last night I couldn't remember;
but it hadn't, I was obstinately sure, been here.

What ailed me, anyhow? I began a series of cautious experiments,
designed to discover the trouble. My arms were weak and of a strange,
flabby limpness, but they moved. So did my left leg; but when I came to
the right one I was baffled. It wouldn't stir; it was heavily encased in
something. Good heavens! now I knew! It was in a plaster cast.

The shock of the discovery taught me something further, namely, that my
head was liable to excruciating little throbs of pain. I raised a hand
to it. My forehead was swathed in bandages, like a turbaned Turk's.
Oh, to be sure, in the castle at Prezelay, as we were retreating up the
staircase, Schwartzmann had fired at me; but, then, hadn't that been a
pin prick, the merest scratch?

The name Prezelay served as a key to solve the puzzle. The whole
fantastic, incredible chain of happenings came back to me in a rush;
the gray car, the inn, the murder, the night in the castle,
Jean-Herve-Marie-Olivier.

"Dunny!" I heard myself quavering in a voice utt