"Exactly my idea' agreed Dr. Leslie, with evident satisfaction.
"Now listen. Maitland was conscious almost up to the last moment,
and yet the hospital doctors tell me they could not get a syllable
of an ante-mortem statement from him."

"You mean he refused to talk?" I asked.

"No," he replied; "it was more perplexing than that Even if the
police had not made the usual blunder of arresting him for
intoxication instead of sending him immediately to the hospital,
it would have made no difference. The doctors simply could not
have saved him, apparently. For the truth is, Professor Kennedy,
we don't even know what was the matter with him."

Dr. Leslie seemed much excited by the case, as well he might be.

"Maitland was found reeling and staggering on Broadway this
morning," continued the coroner. "Perhaps the policeman was not
really at fault at first for arresting him, but before the wagon
came Maitland was speechless and absolutely unable to move a
muscle."

Dr. Leslie paused as he recited the strange facts, then resumed:
"His eyes reacted, all right. He seemed to want to speak, to
write, but couldn't. A frothy saliva dribbled from his mouth, but
he could not frame a word. He was paralysed, and his breathing was
peculiar. They then hurried him to the hospital as soon as they
could. But it was of no use."