For a while he lay motionless, with not even the movement of an eye-lash
to indicate consciousness, wrapped in a delicious languor. Gradually
this passed and the feeble flutter of his heart grew into a steady,
rhythmic beat. The keen brain was awakening; he was beginning to
remember. What had happened? He knew only that in some manner a drug had
been administered to him, a bitter dose tasting of opium; that
speechlessly, he had fought against it, that he had risen from the table
in the restaurant, and that he had fallen. All the rest was blank.
With eyes still closed, and nerveless hands inert at his sides he
listened, the while he turned the situation over in speculative mood.
The waiter had administered the drug, of course, unless--unless it had
been the courteous stranger who had replaced the newspaper on the table!
That thought opened new fields of conjecture. Mr. Grimm had no
recollection of ever having seen him before; and he had paid only the
enforced attention of politeness to him. And why had the drug been
administered? Vaguely, incoherently, Mr. Grimm imagined that in some way
it had to do with the great international plot of war in which Miss
Thorne was so delicate and vital an instrument.
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