The Prisoner in the Opal by A.E.W. Mason — Read

Julius Ricardo had spent a wearing day which would have taxed even a younger and more adventurous person; and such a shock had befallen him at the end that his sensibilities were quite stunned. It was not to be wondered at, then, that he slept like a log. Tidon the magistrate, the Vicomte de Mirandol, Evelyn Devenish, Robin Webster, Hanaud, the old, throned captious lady of Suvlac, the Abbé with the furtive walk, Diana Tasborough, even Joyce Whipple, who occupied the tenderest corner of his heart, thinned to the texture of gossamer. Away they went, carrying their questions and perplexities with them. Not one ghost haunted his pillow, not a question plagued him with dreams. He slept as boys sleep after a football match. Neither the brightness of the morning nor all the clocks of Bordeaux could awaken him. The hour of noon had struck before he passed in a fraction of a second through one of those excruciating nightmares which at times precede the actual awakening. Excruciating, because he could neither cry out nor move, but must lie like another Merlin under a perpetual spell. He dreamed that he lay in an inferno of acrid smoke, and that while Tidon the magistrate held his hand and pointed and said: "There! That is the place," old Mrs. Tasborough, delicately and without effort, severed his arm at the wrist with a fruit-knife. He sat up with a cry upon his lips and his heart racing. Hanaud was sitting by his bedside, with a black cigarette between his lips and his fingers on Mr. Ricardo's pulse.

Mr. Ricardo, aware as he swam upwards into consciousness that he had cried out in alarm, eyed his visitor with disfavour.