Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/178

 lighted gas jet. He turned out the lighted one and turned that on again. To Val’s strained ears came a slight hissing, faintly like escaping steam.

“Good night, pretty boy,” mocked O’Hara.

They went out and closed the door tightly.

A pungent, sweetish odor, the odor of illuminating gas, came to Val’s nostrils. With the closing of the door the first thought that came to Valentine Morley was that he was dying. He was young, healthy, in full possession of his senses, yet in a few moments this body of which he was so conscious would be a senseless piece of clay, unfeeling and cold. He was dying. With each breath he came closer and closer to death and yet he could not stop breathing.

In sudden moments like this, hopeless moments, it has been said that all a man’s past life is reviewed by him swiftly, kaleidoscopically. Yet it was not so with Val.

One thought only was in his mind, and that is the thought that he was dying, while in the next room two men waited to enter and drag out his body when all was over. He felt himself getting weaker and weaker, and he knew it was but a question of minutes. This was the end of Valentine Morley, the man who had wanted to marry Jessica Pomeroy. It was the end of a man who had held life lightly, only to find at the last that he desired life above all things.

His mind was remarkably clear, he thought, and he found it curious that he did not lose consciousness. Yet he knew he was dying. He seemed to be falling, falling, falling swiftly, as in a dream. Down down. . . down.

He came to himself with a jerk. Against the window pane opposite his couch a dark form pressed a