"
"So much the better. We will be with him in a few minutes. Did
you leave anyone in attendance on him?"
"No, sir. He will allow no one but myself to enter his laboratory.
And, injured as he is, I could not induce him to quit it."
"Indeed! He is engaged in some great research, perhaps? I have
known such cases."
We were passing under a lamp-post, and the woman suddenly turned
and glared at me with a look of such wild terror that for an
instant I involuntarily glanced round me under the impression that
some terrible peril, unseen by me, was menacing us both.
"Don't--don't ask me any questions," she said breathlessly. "He
will tell you all. But do, oh, do hasten! Good God! he may be
dead by this time!"
I made no reply, but allowed her to grasp my hand, which she did
with a bony, nervous clutch, and endeavored with some difficulty to
keep pace with the long strides--I might well call them bounds, for
they seemed the springs of a wild animal rather than the paces of a
young girl--with which she covered the ground. Not a word more was
uttered until we stopped before a shabby, old-fashioned tenement
house in the Seventh Avenue, not far above Twenty-third Street.
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