Part 10

"The past!" I cried. "What has passed--eh? What has happened since I went through Stretton Street the other night?"

The Sister smiled at me. She seemed inclined to humour me--as she would a child.

"Do not perturb yourself, I beg of you," she said in a sympathetic voice. "There is really no need for it. Only just remain calm--and all will be right."

"But you do not explain, Sister," I said. "Why am I here? And where am I?" I asked, gazing vacantly around me.

"You are with friends--friends who have looked after you," was her reply. "We are all very sorry for your motor accident."

"Motor accident!" I echoed. "I have had no motor accident."

Again the dark-eyed woman smiled in disbelief, and it annoyed me. Indeed, it goaded me to anger.

"But you told us all about it. How you started out from the Quay at Boulogne late at night to drive to Abbeville, and how your hired chauffeur held you up, and left you at the roadside," she said. "Yet the curious fact about your strange story is the money."

"Money! What money?" I gasped, utterly astounded by the Sister's remark.

"The money they found upon you, a packet of bank notes. The police have the five thousand pounds in English money, I believe."

"The police! Why?" I asked.

"No," she said, smiling, and still humouring me as though I were a child. "Don't bother about it now. You are a little better to-day. To-morrow we will talk of it all."

"But where am I?" I demanded, still bewildered.

"You are in St. Malo," was her slow reply.

"St. Malo!" I echoed. "How did I get here? I have no remembrance of it."

"Of course you have not," replied the kindly woman in the cool-looking head-dress. "You are only just recovering."

"From what?"

"From loss of memory, and--well, the doctors say you have suffered from a complete nervous breakdown."

I was aghast, scarce believing myself to be in my senses, and at the same time wondering if it were not all a dream. But no! Gradually all the events of that night in Stretton Street arose before me. I saw them again in every detail--Oswald De Gex, his servant, Horton, and the dead girl, pale but very beautiful, as she lay with closed eyes upon her death-bed.

I recollected, too, the certificate I had given for payment--those notes which the police held in safe custody.

The whole adventure seemed a hideous nightmare. And yet it was all so real.

But how did I come to be in St. Malo? How did I travel from London?

"Sister," I said presently. "What is the date of to-day?"

"The eleventh of December," she replied.

The affair at Stretton Street had occurred on the night of November 7th, over a month before!

"And how long have I been here?"

"Nearly three weeks," was her answer.

Was it really possible that I had been lost for the previous ten days or so?