"I WENT first to Mannheim, Lady Janet, as I told you I should in my
letter, and I heard all that the consul and the hospital doctors could
tell me. No new fact of the slightest importance turned up. I got my
directions for finding the German surgeon, and I set forth to try what I
could make next of the man who performed the operation. On the question
of his patient's identity he had (as a perfect stranger to her) nothing
to tell me. On the question of her mental condition, however, he made a
very important statement. He owned to me that he had operated on another
person injured by a shell-wound on the head at the battle of Solferino,
and that the patient (recovering also in this case) recovered--mad. That
is a remarkable admission; don't you think so?"
Lady Janet's temper had hardly been allowed time enough to subside to
its customary level.
"Very remarkable, I dare say," she answered, "to people who feel any
doubt of this pitiable lady of yours being mad. I feel no doubt--and,
thus far, I find your account of yourself, Julian, tiresome in the
extreme. Go on to the end. Did you lay your hand on Mercy Merrick?"
"No."
"Did you hear anything of her?"
"Nothing. Difficulties beset me on every side. The French ambulance
had shared in the disasters of France--it was broken up. The wounded
Frenchmen were prisoners somewhere in Germany, nobody knew where.
The French surgeon had been killed in action. His assistants were
scattered--most likely in hiding. I began to despair of making any
discovery, when accident threw in my way two Prussian soldiers who had
been in the French cottage. They confirmed what the German surgeon told
the consul, and what Horace himself told _me_--namely, that no nurse
in a black dress was to be seen in the place. If there had been such a
person, she would certainly (the Prussians inform me) have been found in
attendance on the injured Frenchmen. The cross of the Geneva Convention
would have been amply sufficient to protect her: no woman wearing that
badge of honor would have disgraced herself by abandoning the wounded
men before the Germans entered the place."
"In short," interposed Lady Janet, "there is no such person as Mercy
Merrick."
"I can draw no other conclusion," said Julian, "unless the English
doctor's idea is the right one. After hearing what I have just told you,
he thinks the woman herself is Mercy Merrick."
Lady Janet held up her hand as a sign that she had an objection to make
here.
"You and the doctor seem to have settled everything to your entire
satisfaction on both sides," she said. "But there is one difficulty that
you have neither of you accounted for yet."