Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 18, No. 3, September 18, 1926
- Автор: Bailey H. C., Bechdolt Jack
- Год: 1926
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 18, No. 3, September 18, 1926». Краткое содержание книги:
“I’m so sorry for him,” meaning Brakely — “so sorry!”
Brakely was just passing the door at the time.
His injuries consisted of a couple of broken ribs, and he had been squeezed in such a way that his breathing hadn’t been right since. We thought the ribs must be pressing against his lungs some way, but we wouldn’t know just what ailed him until we got to a port and a doctor. He occupied a room near mine, in the ’midship house.
He was able to walk about a little at a slow and painful gait, but a fight for him was out of the question. The other prisoners were secure in their quarters, and things had been fixed so that Brakely could not communicate with them.
Every one of the ship’s company had been warned to watch him, mainly to see that he inflicted no harm on himself. He hadn’t shown the slightest sign of anything like that. He held his head high and proud despite his injuries. When he and Hippolyte met they simply looked at each other mildly, with no sign that their ancient grudge would ever again burst into flame.
Brakely paused at my door, and looked intently at Mary Lee. Since things had gone wrong with him, the few times he addressed her he had given no hint that he was thinking of his love for her and the days when he was her suitor.
“Miss Lee,” he said now, very quietly, “I wish you hadn’t said that. Sympathy is the last thing I wish for. I am on my way to face a charge of having committed one murder with my own hands and of being an accomplice in two others.
“My head hasn’t been lowered a peg by that. I played a game and lost, and I’m man enough not to squeal nor to dodge my responsibility for everything that happened in the game I myself started. For the first time I feel a little disheartened and wilted. Pity! I can stand anything but that—”
He stopped speaking suddenly, bowed, and passed on, as though regretting this display of emotion, the first I had ever seen in Julius Brakely. The life seemed to have gone out of him.
The girl stared at the empty doorway.
Julius Brakely came up missing. None saw him take the leap. He had been very clever and stealthy about it, on such a little ship, where we thought it impossible for him to try a thing like that without being intercepted by some one in the space to which his movements were restricted.
But he was gone. He simply wasn’t on the ship when a search was started for him, nor did they find him or any written word of explanation. But I thought I understood. One word of pity from the girl he loved and who did not love him—
The Seabird was manned by sailors off the lost Angela Lee. That night I told one of them to ask Miss Mary Lee if she minded coming in and reading to me a few minutes. I was nervous and unstrung. The sailor returned to me presently.
“M’sieur,” he said in his precise English, “I have found Mlle. Lee, but I did not think that you would wish for her to be disturbed. She is standing with M. Vernon on the quarter-deck, and they are staring back at the sea — very quiet and very solemn. I did not think—”
“Thanks,” I assured him. “You did right in not disturbing her.”
The Brown-Eyed Lady
by Emily Callaway
A great blighting sorrow hovered over her life, and she sought to lift it by the strangest of ways
I
“It means everything in life to me — everything.”
Convulsively, the girl rolled her lacy handkerchief into a wet little ball. Her brown eyes were filled with unshed tears, her mouth trembling.
“You say he’s had these attacks for the last year?”
The girl nodded. The great doctor looked keenly into her exquisite face.
“Tell me everything again, quietly.”
A nurse stood hesitatingly at the door. The doctor waved her back and she promptly vanished, closing the heavy oak doors noiselessly. The doctor concentrated on the slight figure before him.
With a palpable effort at control, the girl settled back into her chair. Her small figure seemed almost childlike from the depths of its upholstered luxury.
“We live in Chicago, as I told you, doctor. You said you had heard of my husband?”
The doctor nodded encouragingly.
“You know then of his enormous business interests, of how much he has on his shoulders.”
The doctor nodded. He was making notes on a pad at his elbow.
“Doctor, you must take this case. You can’t refuse to help me, you must let me bring him to you — you must.”
The girl’s color was rising, her voice was high and hysterical.
“My dear little lady, try to be calm. Try to tell me again, quietly, everything that has happened.”
The doctor’s voice was soothing. With another tearful little smile, the girl tried to pull herself together.
“We’ve always been so close — my husband and I.”
“How long have you been married?”
The four years that she confessed to, seemed impossible. In her clinging gray gown, she seemed scarcely more than a child.
“It was just a year ago, doctor, the first time my husband came home and didn’t know me. When I kissed him as usual, he drew back, as though I were a total stranger. He told me he was a clerk in a fur store and had been sent to show me a neck-piece. Of course, I thought it was a joke and tried to fall in with it. But he kept it up, looked astounded when I asked him if he were ready for dinner — and tore out of the house.
“I was nearly frantic. It was two days before he came home. He ignored his absence, thought I was fooling when I asked him where he’d been. I didn’t know what to do. He seemed to think I was crazy when I tried to get him to see a doctor.”
Again the tears welled up in her eyes. Patiently the doctor waited.
“I went to my family doctor. He said that all we could do was to watch, if another spell came on. For six weeks my husband was his old self, loving, attentive as he always was. Then one day as we were walking along Michigan Boulevard, we passed a fur store. My husband seemed to change before my very eyes. He became a total stranger, a clerk trying to sell me a wrap that was displayed in the window.
“ ‘Isn’t it beautiful, madam?’ he said. ‘Let us take it out of the window for you, so that you can try it on.’
“I humored him. I went in the store with him, determined that he shouldn’t get out of my sight again. How to get him home was my chief thought. I managed to get the proprietor of the store aside and explain to him. I think he thought we were both mad. However, he obliged me by giving my husband an imaginary errand at my house. So I got him into a taxi and home. All the way there he treated me politely, but as a perfect stranger. Somehow I managed to lock him in a room while the butler got the doctor. For three days he raved. Then he was completely himself again, with no memory at all of those three days.”
“Interesting,” murmured the doctor. “Most interesting.”
Nervously the girl’s hands interlocked. She seemed to be keeping them from trembling by a supreme effort of will. Her great brown eyes followed the doctor’s every movement.
“To whom did you finally take him?” asked the doctor.
“I couldn’t ‘take’ him to any one. He wouldn’t go. All I could do was to consult specialists myself.” She named the two big specialists she had been to.
“Every one says that you are the only man who can help us. If you won’t take the case, I... I don’t know what to do.”
The tears seemed very close to the surface. The great doctor leaned over and patted her reassuringly.
“There, there, child, it isn’t hopeless, you know. How many of these dual personality attacks has your husband had?”