"The key-hole, of course!" he explained. "I cut away the entire
lock, and have submitted it to these tests which you see."
"I don't see it all yet," I said.
"Some one came to our door in the night, after gaining entrance to
the hall--not a difficult thing to do, we know. That person found
our door locked, knew it would be locked, knew that I always
locked it. Knowing that such was the case, this person came
prepared, bringing perhaps, a tank of compressed nitrous oxide,
certainly the materials for making the gas expeditiously."
I began to understand how it had been done.
"Through the keyhole," he resumed, "a stream of the gas was
injected. It soon rendered you unconscious, and that would have
been all, if the person had been satisfied. A little bit would
have been harmless enough. But the person was not satisfied. The
intention was not to overcome, but to kill. The stream of gas was
kept up until the room was full of it.
"Only my return saved you, for the gas was escaping very slowly.
Even then, you had been under it so long that we had to resort to
the wonderful little pulmotor after trying both the Sylvester and
Schaefer methods and all other manual means to induce respiration.
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