“Appeared to die?” Norris queried in a puzzled way.
“He didn’t quite die, or he wouldn’t be as complete as we see him, even dried and sere as he is. Apart from the blood stream, he is all there, as you can see.
“And as for the dryness, a Doctor Alexis Carrel has just proved or is now proving that dried organs of the body can be brought back to life— glands, brains, heaven knows what. A sort of holding life in suspension, apparently, and then reviving it. It looks to me as if these things anticipated Carrel, held Robert Hunter here in a state of suspended animation, and derived some life of their own from him. Not enough to manifest themselves— they had to have other food and warmth and strength for that— but this undead-dead Robert Hunter was home for them, a nucleus round which they cou
