Little did either of them anticipate what met their eyes as the door opened. There on the couch, no longer on his back, but sitting up and gasping for clearer speech, which he seemed to have achieved in part, was the paralysis-stricken man. The left hand, powerless no longer, was still uncertain of its purpose, and wavered in its ill-directed motion; the right, needed to raise him from his pillow, grasped the level moulding of the couch-back. Its fingers still showed a better colour than those of its fellow, which trembled and closed and reopened, as though to make trial of their new-found power. His eyes were fixed on this hand rather than on his daughter or the stranger. His knees jerked against the light bondage of a close dressing-gown, and his right foot was striving to lift or help the other down to the floor. Probably life was slower to return to it than to the hand, as the blood returns soonest to the finger-tips after frost. Only the face was quite changed from its seeming of but ten minutes back. The voice choked and stammered still, but speech came in the end, breaking out with a shout-burst:--"Stop--stop--stop!"
"Easy so--easy so!" says the police-officer, as the woman gives way to a fit of hysterical crying, more the breaking-point of nerve-tension than either joy or pain. "Easy so, master!--easy does it. Don't you be frightened. Plenty of time and to spare!"
The old man gets his foot to the floor, and his daughter, under no impulse of reason--mere nerve-paroxysm--runs to his side crying out:--"No, dear father! No, dear father! Lie down--lie down!" She is trying to force him back to his pillow, while he chokes out something he finds it harder to say than "Stop--stop!" which still comes at intervals.
"I should make it easy for him, Miss Hawkins, if I was in your place. Let the old gentleman please himself." Thus the officer, whose sedateness of manner acts beneficially. She accepts the suggestion, standing back from her father with a stupid, bewildered gaze, between him and the exit to the roof. "Give him time," says Sub-Inspector Cardwell.
He takes the time, and his speech dies down. But he can move that hand better now--may make its action serve for speech. Slowly he raises it and points--points straight at his daughter. He wants her help--is that it? She thinks so, but when she acts on the impulse he repels her, feebly shouting out: "No--no--no!"