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“What is that crazy Frenchman going to do to me?”

“I have no idea; be patient.”

In less than an hour they returned, bringing with them a keen-eyed, tall young man, who had a number of tools wrapped in an apron. Evidently he was unused to such scenes, for he became deathly pale upon seeing the ghastly spectacle on my bed. With staring eyes and open mouth he began to retreat towards the door, stammering,–

“I–I can’t do it.”

“Nonsense, Hippolyte! Don’t be a baby. Why, man, it is a case of life and death!”

“But–look at his eyes! he is dying!”

Arnold smiled. “I am not dead, though,” he gasped.

“I–I beg your pardon,” said Hippolyte.

Dr. Entrefort gave the nervous man a drink of brandy and then said,–

“No more nonsense, my boy; it must be done. Gentlemen, allow me to introduce Mr. Hippolyte, one of the most original, ingenious, and skilful machinists in the country.”

Hippolyte, being modest, blushed as he bowed. In order to conceal his confusion he unrolled his apron on the table with considerable noise of rattling tools.

“I have to make some preparations before you may begin, Hippolyte, and I want you to observe me that you may become used not only to the sight of fresh blood, but also, what is more trying, the odor of it.”

Hippolyte shivered. Entrefort opened a case of surgical instruments.

“Now, doctor, the chloroform,” he said, to Dr. Rowell.

“I will not take it,” promptly interposed the sufferer; “I want to know when I die.”

“Very well,” said Entrefort; “but you have little nerve now to spare. We may try it without chloroform, however. It will be better if you can do without. Try your best to lie still while I cut.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Arnold.

“Save your life, if possible.”

“How? Tell me all about it.”

“Must you know?”

“Yes.”

“Very well, then. The point of the stiletto has passed entirely through the aorta, which is the great vessel rising out of the heart and carrying the aerated blood to the arteries. If I should withdraw the weapon the blood would rush from the two holes in the aorta and you would soon be dead. If the weapon had been a knife, the parted tissue would have yielded, and the blood would have been forced out on either side of the blade and would have caused death. As it is, not a drop of blood has escaped from the aorta into the thoracic cavity. All that is left for us to do, then, is to allow the stiletto to remain permanently in the aorta. Many difficulties at once present themselves, and I do not wonder at Dr. Rowell’s look of surprise and incredulity.”

That gentleman smiled and shook his head.

“It is a desperate chance,” continued Entrefort, “and is a novel case in surgery; but it is the only chance. The fact that the weapon is a stiletto is the important point–a stupid weapon, but a blessing to us now. If the assassin had known more she would have used—-“

Upon his employment of the noun “assassin” and the feminine pronoun “she,” both Arnold and I started violently, and I cried out to the man to stop.

“Let him proceed,” said Arnold, who, by a remarkable effort, had calmed himself.

“Not if the subject is painful,” Entrefort said.

“It is not,” protested Arnold; “why do you think the blow was struck by a woman?”

“Because, first, no man capable of being an assassin would use so gaudy and valuable a weapon; second, no man would be so stupid as to carry so antiquated and inadequate a thing as a stiletto, when that most murderous and satisfactory of all penetrating and cutting weapons, the bowie-knife, is available. She was a strong woman, too, for it requires a good hand to drive a stiletto to the guard, even though it miss the sternum by a hair’s breadth and slip between the ribs, for the muscles here are hard and the intercostal spaces narrow. She was not only a strong woman, but a desperate one also.”