"No, sir," was the reply; "only I feel queer--sinking--just here."
He laid a trembling hand on his chest, and Thorndyke, still eyeing him
anxiously, said in a low voice to the inspector: "Cab or ambulance, as
quickly as you can."
A cab was led round from Newman Street, and the injured man put into it.
Thorndyke, Badger, and I entered, and we drove off up Rathbone Place. As
we proceeded, our patient's face grew more and more ashen, drawn, and
anxious; his breathing was shallow and uneven, and his teeth chattered
slightly. The cab swung round into Goodge Street, and then--suddenly, in
the twinkling of an eye--there came a change. The eyelids and jaw
relaxed, the eyes became filmy, and the whole form subsided into the
corner in a shrunken heap, with the strange gelatinous limpness of a
body that is dead as a whole, while its tissues are still alive.
"God save us! The man's dead!" exclaimed the inspector in a shocked
voice--for even policemen have their feelings. He sat staring at the
corpse, as it nodded gently with the jolting of the cab, until we drew
up inside the courtyard of the Middlesex Hospital, when he got out
briskly, with suddenly renewed cheerfulness, to help the porter to place
the body on the wheeled couch.
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