the heads of cerberus by francis stevens

The cold water seemed to relieve the dizziness or nausea from which he suffered. Wetting a towel that hung there, he began bathing the wound on his temple. In another corner of the room was a doorway through which he glimpsed a porcelain washbowl. He ran his hand through the papers, uncovered a small brooch which he picked up and examined with a curious frowning intentness then let it fall and again raised a hand to his head. With eyes fixed on this heap, the man swung his legs over the side of the bed, and, staggering across to the safe, dropped on his knees beside it. Two or three empty morocco cases had been carelessly tossed on top of the pile. From between loose pages and folded, elastic-bound documents gleamed a few small articles of jewelry. The door of it was swung wide open, while scattered on the floor before it lay a mass of papers. In a corner of the room, near the one window, stood a small, old-fashioned, black steel safe. What he saw, it seemed, had revived some memory that mingled with a new and different bewilderment. He seemed like one who, having fallen victim to some powerful drug, awakens in unfamiliar and inexplicable surroundings.Īs he again looked about him, however, the expression changed. Gazing about the room with bewildered, pain-stricken eyes, he raised his hand to his head and afterward stared stupidly at the blood on his fingers. Then he attempted to withdraw his right hand from beneath him, groaned, and by a considerable effort at last raised himself on one elbow. With a sudden contraction of the brows the man opened his eyes.įor several minutes he lay quiet, staring upward. The features twitched the lips which had fallen slightly apart, closed firmly. That alien, wax-like placidity of one who is done with pain slowly softened and changed. The dawn light grew brighter, and as if in sympathy with its brightening, the face of the man on the bed began to take on a look more akin to that of life. Fully dressed in a rather shabby blue serge, both appearance and attitude suggested that the man had been flung down here and left brutally to die or revive, as he might. His fair hair was plastered with blood from the wound, and a good deal of blood had also run down over the side of the face, lending a sinister and tragic aspect to his otherwise not unpleasant countenance. On his right temple there showed an ugly wound, evidently made by some blunt, heavy instrument, for the skin was burst rather than cut. Under him his right arm was doubled in an uncomfortable, strained position, while the left hand, slender and well cared for, trailed limp to the floor by the bedside.

His thin face, indefinably boyish for all its gauntness, wore that placid, uncaring look which death shares with complete insensibility. UPON a walnut bed in a small, plainly furnished room which dawn had just begun grayly to illuminate, a man lay unconscious.

The heads of cerberus by francis stevens