The Crystal Claw by William Le Queux

I fancied that I heard my name spoken. My ears were strained --

"Rex! Rex! Listen; can't you hear? " I seemed to hear faintly afar off.

The voice sounded unusual, like a child's, weak and high-pitched. Surely I was in a dream.

"Rex! Rex! Listen! Can't you hear? " the voice continued. It seemed like the shrill voice of a tiny girl.

I listened stupidly: in my lethargy I had not the power to reply.

For a long time I listened, in a sort of delirium, I suppose, but did not hear the voice repeated.

Suddenly, how long afterwards I cannot tell, I distinctly saw Doctor Feng's face grinning into mine. Upon his white-bearded countenance was a look of exultant triumph. His eyes danced with glee. The sight angered and horrified me. I closed my eyes to shut out the features that seemed to me sinister and mysterious.

A strange sense of oppression, of being deprived of air and of my body being benumbed, overcame me. I could not stir a muscle. In my ears there sounded a strange singing like the song of a thousand birds. At the same time I experienced considerable difficulty in moving, for I seemed to be enveloped in something which, weighing upon my limbs, kept them powerless, as though I were still manacled.

I remember that both my wrists pained me very badly, where the rope had cut into them so cruelly. Then, like a flash, came back a hideous memory of those moments of horror and those darting red tongues of flame. The terror of those moments when I faced a horrible death I now lived over again. I lay appalled.

I must have shrieked in my befogged agony, and in shouting I again opened my eyes.

An eager face peered into mine; it was that of a woman in a white linen head-dress -- a hospital nurse evidently. She uttered some words that I did not comprehend. I tried to grasp them, but my hearing was so dull that I only heard high-pitched sounds.

No wonder! After a few moments of blank bewilderment I realized that from head to foot I was swathed in oil-soaked cotton wool. There were small openings for my eyes and another small aperture lower which enabled me to breathe.

Now memory surged back upon me in full flood and again the horror of those dreadful moments at Heathermoor Gardens fell upon me.

I recollected everything in detail. But I was alive -- alive! after passing through the valley of the shadow of death, through the flames that had licked my face!

But where was Thelma?

I tried to ask. But the calm-faced nurse only shook her head. Was it that she could not understand my muffled words; or was it that Thelma was dead?

Once more I implored her to explain, but she again shook her head, placing her fore-finger upon her lips to enjoin silence.

Then she put some medicine to my lips, and speaking soothingly, compelled me to swallow it.

I lay there stretched upon the bed, my wondering eyes seeing only the whitewashed ceiling of the narrow room. The atmosphere seemed heavily laden with some disinfectant and I noticed, with idle curiosity, how very closely the nurse watched over me.

I believed it to be about mid-day. But my bewildered brain was obsessed by thoughts of those two devilish plotters -- Feng and Humphreys -- who had been my friends amid the Alpine snows and had later conspired to kill me.