Page:The Master of Mysteries (1912).djvu/216

 "We'll go over there first, then." And Astro and Valeska made their way to the limousine and ordered the driver to the place.

"But," said Valeska, "how queerly she acted! I'm so disappointed that she didn't recognize me, after all I'd done for her. I don't know what to make of it."

"Don't you see? She has waked up. Yesterday she was quite another person, a dissociated personality. She had no memory, and had even lost the power to talk or write. That is often the case. Owing to some severe mental shock, her normal personality was broken up into parts, so to speak. She had just enough of the functions of her mind synthesized to have volition, and that part-self resembled a crazy person. She had been tortured and starved, no doubt in order to force her to commit this crime, by Soumissin. Somehow she managed to escape from that house, and then her reason left her. You found her what she was, half-witted, with only sense enough to appeal to your protection. She had forgotten everything,—everything, that is, except something concerning the number 13. Now the question is, when did she come to herself and her full rationality? Was it when she got up in your room to leave you—"

"Or was it when she got into the rug store?" Valeska added, with a look of horror in her eyes.

"That's the question. Let's hope that Dyorian is conscious by the time we reach the hospital. Everything depends on that!"

Arrived at the hospital, Astro entered the office and asked for the house physician. A few words only were necessary to explain the palmist's right of inquiry, and his description of the Syrian girl's mental condition