The Time Mirror Part 2

"When I got upstairs, Elaine opened her door. She already was undressed--had on the negligee she's wearing now. She said she wasn't sleepy, and that she'd decided to come back down for another look at the presents. So I came along...."

Carefully, yet concisely, Mark outlined the events which had preceded the girl's collapse. When he had finished, Professor Duchard looked even more worried than before.

"I do not like what you tell me," he informed the younger man. "I believe this is a case for a doctor. A good one. I have a friend who is a neurologist. I shall call him."

He disappeared toward the telephone.

Not once in the half-hour preceding the specialist's arrival did the girl stir. She lay upon the big double bed like a lovely corpse, unmoving save for the slight rise and fall of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s as she breathed.

The neurologist examined her with keen interest.

"A remarkable case!" he declared. "Her pulse and respiration have slowed to the point where they are scarcely apparent."

Professor Duchard nodded slowly.

"But what does it mean?" exploded Mark, beside him, his handsome young face pale and haggard. "Why can't you revive her?"

The doctor frowned, pinched his chin thoughtfully.

"A remarkable case!" he repeated slowly. "To be frank about it, I can't find the slightest clue as to what's wrong. She seems in a perfect state of health. Organically I can detect no possible cause for this coma. Yet she doesn't respond to any resuscitatory measures."

"But there must be something--"

The specialist shot Mark a disapproving glance. Without a word he opened his bag, taking from it a smaller case of instruments. He selected a long, slender dissecting needle. Plunged its point into a bottle of disinfectant.

"Watch me!" he commanded.

Turning to the bed, he plunged the needle an eighth of an inch into the unconscious girl's breast!

Mark's eyes went wide with horror. He started forward. Found himself halted by Professor Duchard's hand.

"You asked a question, Mark!" the white-haired scientist rapped. "The doctor merely is giving you his answer. Look at her!"

Elaine had not stirred! If anything, she lay even more still than before, not a muscle so much as quivering. Her eyes were closed, her face calm, her golden hair halo-like about her head.

The neurologist bared her thigh. Again plunged in the needle.

She did not move.

A dozen times the physician p.r.i.c.ked her, moving over the white surface of her body from one nerve center to another. At last he straightened.

"You see?" he demanded grimly. "Anaesthesia is complete. She feels nothing."

Mark's eyes were horror-stricken. He was breathing hard.

"What does it mean, doctor?" he choked. "What's happened to her?"

The medical man motioned him closer.

"Touch her!" he ordered.

Half-afraid, Mark bent forward. He rested his trembling fingers against the girl's breast. The next instant he jerked back, his face gray with shock.

"My G.o.d!" he gasped. "She's dead! Her body's getting cold! She's dead!"

His face twisted in a grimace of emotional agony.

"No!" contradicted the neurologist.

"What!"

"No," repeated the other. "She's not dead, young man."

"Then what--"

"The closest I can come to it in language you'd understand is to say that she's falling into a state of suspended animation," the doctor answered. "Her bodily functions are slowing down. I believe this will continue--that eventually her muscles will tighten into catalepsy."

"What will happen eventually?" Professor Duchard broke in.

The neurologist shrugged. "I don't know, professor. My hope is that she simply will continue to lie in a coma. But there is always the possibility that the thread of life will break. That she will die without recovering consciousness--"

"You can't let her!" cried Mark hysterically, unable to restrain himself longer. "She musn't die! She musn't! You've got to do something, doctor!

There must be a way--"

"--if it can be found!" interrupted Professor Duchard. He again gripped the younger man's arm. "Do not let yourself go to pieces, my boy. That will not help.

"Because you, yourself, are a man of action, you want our friend, here, to prescribe for Elaine with the same speed and certainty that you would go after a hot news story. Only that is not the way of science, Mark. We must be patient and hope for the best, content in the knowledge that everything possible is being done for Elaine."

He turned to the neurologist.

"What do you recommend, doctor?"

"There's only one thing to do, Professor Duchard. We must place the girl in a hospital, where she can be taken care of properly and kept under observation."

The aged scientist nodded. "Yes. I thought that would be your suggestion."

"If you'll excuse me," the doctor continued, "I shall use your telephone to make the necessary arrangements."

He left the room.

Beside the bed, Mark Carter still stared dumbly down at the girl he loved. The girl who tomorrow--no, today, for it was nearly morning now--was to have become his wife. He tried to speak, but his throat was too twisted and thick with pain for words to come. His broad shoulders were slumped. His brown eyes blurred with tears. A queer, strained sound of awful grief tore itself from somewhere deep within his chest, like the moan of an animal in torment.

A hand touched his shoulder.

"Come, Mark. We can do no more good here."