Chapter Seven
The Net
We raised the poor victim and turned him over on his back.
I dropped upon my knees, and with unsteady fingers began to strike a match. A slight breeze was arising and sighing gently through the elms, but, screened by my hands, the flame of the match took life. It illuminated wanly the sun-baked face of Estephe Bernard, his eyes gleaming with unnatural brightness.
I bent forward, and the dying light of the match touched that other face.
“Oh, God!” whispered Bernard.
A faint puff of wind extinguished the match.
In all my surgical experience I had never met with anything quite so horrific.
Blanc’s livid face was streaked with tiny streams of blood, which proceeded from a series of irregular wounds. One group of these clustered upon his left temple, another beneat
