Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 1, September 17, 1927
- Автор: Valentine, Corley H. W.
- Год: 1927
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 1, September 17, 1927». Краткое содержание книги:
Richard Grew:
This paper has transmitted to you a deadly disease: you are doomed.
Ruggles put the letter back in the envelope which he had taken out with it; then he put the envelope back in the unconscious man’s pocket.
“Boiling water kills every known germ,” my companion said. “Open that door into the kitchen — I don’t want to touch it with my hands — put on a small saucepan of hot water from the pipe there, then give it the biggest burner on the gas stove!”
I obeyed him instantly. We watched the water in the little saucepan wriggle, then begin to quiver; then it began to boil, first lazily, then furiously. Ruggles darted his hands in, then dried them.
“Now turn off the gas, Dan,” he said.
Chapter II
Beyond Hope
“Feeling better, I hope,” Ruggles said, as we saw Richard Grew open his eyes and look about him.
“Yes, I am better, but it will not be for long, I think. Let me talk to you while I am able to.” He lifted himself on his elbow. “I have a letter in my pocket—”
“I read it,” Ruggles said. “There was no time to wait. I have sterilized my hands. There is no danger. Who sent you that letter? Do you know?”
“I believe that I do, but—”
“Tell me who he is! Where is he? Rouse yourself!” Ruggles put his strong, sympathetic hand on the weak shoulder. “Tell me, and I promise—”
“I dare not tell you, for this man is a fiend in human form. Save my daughter! Go to my house, where she is, and stay with her — that alone can protect her sufficiently. Not even you can do anything for me; he has struck, and his blow is sure.” His elbow, on which he had leaned, gave way, and he slid down on the couch on his side.
“You are ill, as you have said,” Ruggles cried. “Let me call in your family doctor to care for you!”
“No,” Grew said with an effort. “Not that. Think only of my daughter, Margaret!” He collapsed then, and his voice trailed off in a groan that was more a gasp.
“Undo his collar,” I cried. “If we get him more air—”
“He is burning up with a fever,” Ruggles said, “and must be taken at once to a hospital. Phone to Dr. Whittimore to come with an ambulance! Then, God help us, we’ll run down Richard Grew’s murderer.”
“Murderer?”
“Yes,” Ruggles said, “for I believe, as this man does, that he is suffering from a fatal malady brought on by his having touched that letter.”
I was at the phone in a moment, and almost as soon, Dr. Whittimore arrived. He was a grave-looking man, whose office was only a few doors from us; we had called in Whittimore in many a case before this, but I had never seen him look more anxious than when he had completed his swift examination.
“The ambulance will be here immediately,” he said. “There’s its bell now. Help me carry him, will you?”
When they had gone down the steps and Ruggles had returned for an instant with the doctor, Whittimore said in a swift and guarded undertone: “I know you’re used to queer things, Ruggles, and take long chances when it comes to another man’s gun or knife, but there are things even more dangerous than those, and you ought to realize it.”
“Speak out, Whittimore,” Ruggles said.
“I will. How long has that case, that’s now on the way to my hospital, been in this room with both of you?”
“Half an hour, perhaps.”
“I hope you’re alive to-morrow.”
“I mean to be. Crane and I have flushed our throats and noses with a strong solution of—”
Whittimore smelled our atomizer. “That stuff,” he said, “is perfectly good when it come to nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, but it may not be strong enough for the present case; I can’t say definitely yet, but it looks to me as if this man were suffering from one of those excessively virulent tropical diseases—”
“I tell you, I’ve taken adequate precautions!”
“Oh, I know, Ruggles, you’ve managed to pick up an extraordinarily lot of practical knowledge somehow about poisons, antidotes, and such stuff, surgery and medicine generally, and most diseases won’t fool you much, but when it comes to—”
“Amazon fever, you mean?” Ruggles asked.
“What did you say?” Whittimore snapped.
“I said Amazon fever. I think Mr. Grew is suffering from that.”
“You mean those eruptions on his hands?”
“No, those are only Natal sores.”
“Natal—” Whittimore stopped, staring open-mouthed.
“Natal sores,” Ruggles repeated. “They come from getting some of the red earth of Natal in an open cut or scratch — anywhere the skin has been broken. Mr. Grew is evidently just back from Natal.”
“Where’s that?” Whittimore demanded blankly.
“South Africa.”
“Is he just back from the Amazon, too?” Whittimore scoffed. “I’ll admit, as I just said, that your head is stocked with all sorts of out-of-the-way knowledge, and you’ve surprised me and a lot of other people more than once; but you’ve tripped yourself this time — how could that man in my ambulance have just got back from Natal, South Africa, and yet have been on the Amazon, in South America, recently enough to come down with Amazon fever only now?”
“I did not say he had been in South America,” Ruggles replied, rather sharply, I thought.
“But you said he had been, I mean that he had Amazon fever,” Whittimore insisted, “and you ought to know there’s none of that disease in this country — he simply couldn’t have developed it here. He’d have had to go to South America to get it. I tell you, you’ve caught yourself this time, Ruggles!”
“No, I haven’t; he could have caught it by going to South America or—”
“Or,” Dr. Whittimore laughed, “on second thought, don’t you think he may be suffering from sleeping sickness? That’s an African disease, and he might have caught it when he was in Natal, South Africa, getting those Natal sores you spoke about on his hands.”
“He has not sleeping sickness,” Ruggles said; “and, even if he had, he could not have caught it in Natal, for the tsetse fly, whose bite causes sleeping sickness, is never found south of Delegoa Bay.”
“All right, all right,” Dr. Whittimore said in a bewildered way, and putting his hat on back to front, “I’m only a general practitioner, and when you get into that sort of thing — sub-equatorial stuff — I’ve got to admit you get too deep for me. I guess our man’s got Amazon fever, if you say so, but I’ll phone you from the hospital.”
“Do so,” Ruggles said. “Here,” scribbling on a piece of paper, “is your patient’s name and address. To send for his daughter, Margaret, will be to subject her to unnecessary danger from contagion and profit her nothing, for her father will not recover consciousness.”
“I’ll phone you,” Dr. Whittimore repeated, taking the bit of paper from Ruggles. Then he went down the steps and swiftly out to his car.
Chapter III
A Compelling Reason
“And now,” Ruggles said, “this letter and my laboratory — though I believe that an examination of the germs is unnecessary.” He took the letter from his pocket as he spoke.
“But,” I said, “I thought you put that back in Mr. Grew’s pocket.”
“I did, the first time; but I got it again after he had refused to tell us the name and address of his murderer. No, Dan,” Ruggles went on as I started to enter his laboratory with him, “I would not come in if I were you; you can’t help me in the least, and these things are in the highest degree dangerous — hand me that face-mask there, will you? And those skin rubber gloves? Thanks.