“I don’t know what I saw, but it looked like the dead face of——”
He paused, apparently unable to speak Merriwell’s name.
“And I saw it, too!” groaned Duncan. “So did Du Boise. He’s fainted, Mike. We must call assistance.”
At this juncture, however, Hal began to show symptoms of reviving. He gasped and moaned, moving his limbs weakly. Ditson stooped and bent over him, seizing his collar and breaking it loose with a twisting jerk. The touch of Duncan’s hand seemed to revive Hal, but apparently it filled the fellow with unspeakable terror, for he shrank away, choking forth a cry and beginning to quiver violently in every limb.
“Why, don’t you ring a bell, Lynch?” said Duncan. “Du Boise is having a fit. He may be dying for all I know.”
But Lynch, leaning forward with his elbows on the table, had covered his face with his hands as if seeking in that manner to shut out a terrible vision which he could not otherwise dismiss. There was a strange stooping slouch to his broad, thick shoulders—a droop throughout his entire figure like that which assails an old man or a younger one who has felt the crushing hand of some fearful calamity.
With his legs beneath the table, Du Boise began to mutter and mumble incoherently. Although he seemed suffering from terror, he finally fell to laughing in a hysterical manner, whereupon Duncan once more clutched him by the shoulder and gave him a shake.
“Stop it! stop it!” commanded Ditson. “Are you losing your senses? Get up!”
“Don’t! don’t! don’t!” gasped Hal, shrinking away. “I’m all right. I’ll be all right in a minute. Did I faint? I’m a fool! That’s right, Ditson, give me a hand. Help me up. Oh, how ridiculous! Oh, what a fool I am!”
But the moment he was lifted he turned his eyes fearsomely toward the panel in the wall. On seeing it closed he seemed inexpressibly relieved. With Duncan’s aid he regained his seat at the table, although he still seemed dizzy and weak.
“Never did that before in all my life,” he whispered apologetically. “Wasn’t it a silly trick? Don’t laugh at me—don’t laugh!”
“I beg your pardon if I frightened you by yelling the way I did. I thought I saw something. Of course I know I was deceived. It must have been a hallucination. Perhaps it was the effect of what I’ve drank. Perhaps the absinthe is beginning to go back on me. If it is, what can I turn to next? What’s the matter with Mike?”