then rising and averting his head so that Mansfield could not
hear, even if his vagrant faculties should be attracted. "His
pulse is terribly weak and his heart scarcely makes a sound."

Doctor Murray's face knit in deep lines.

"I'm afraid," he said, in a low tone, "that I will have to admit
not having been able to diagnose the trouble, I was just
considering whom I might call in."

"What have you done?" asked Kennedy, as the two moved a little
farther out of ear-shot of the patient.

"Well," replied the doctor, slowly, "when his valet called me in,
I must admit that my first impression was that I had to deal with
a case of diphtheria. I was so impressed that I even took a blood
smear and examined it. It showed the presence of a tox albumin.
But it isn't diphtheria. The antitoxin has had no effect. No; it
isn't diphtheria. But the poison is there. I might have thought it
was cholera, only that seems so impossible here in New York."
Doctor Murray looked at Kennedy with no effort to conceal his
perplexity. "Over and over I have asked myself what it could be,"
he went on. "It seems to me that I have thought over about
everything that is possible. Always I get back to the fact that
there is that tox albumin present. In some respects, it seems like
the bite of a poisonous animal. There are no marks, of course, and
it seems altogether impossible, yet it acts precisely as I have
seen snake bites affect people. I am that desperate that I would
try the Noguchi antivenene, but it would have no more effect than
the antitoxin. No; I can only conclude that there is some narcotic