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:
Our present case had come to us out of thin air. Providence might have been said to have sent Richard Grew to us, not soon enough to save his own life it was true, for the germs of the deadly Amazon fever had worked too long in his system for that; but there remained his daughter, Margaret.
Her father, with his last conscious words, had begged Ruggles and me to save her, and Ruggles, in the small laboratory behind that closed door at my back, now was working for Margaret Grew’s safety with all his power.
Chapter VI
A Mysterious Message
The laboratory door opened and he came in, saying: “More Amazon fever germs, Dan.”
“Where?”
“In the cigarette.”
“Dr. Spaulding’s?”
“Of course.”
“We’ll arrest him to-night.”
“No, we won’t.”
“Why not? We’ye got evidence enough.”
“Enough to convict the ordinary criminal, but not enough to convict Dr. Spaulding.”
“What defense can he offer?”
“A hundred different ones.”
“But if you testify to having found these deadly germs on the cigarette he gave you—”
“That wouldn’t bother him a bit.”
“Not when coming right after his patient, Richard Grew, died of Amazon fever? Wouldn’t those two things, coming together, convict Spaulding?”
“Not necessarily. Dr. Spaulding would argue that some one had undoubtedly tried to kill him by means of germs — put them in his cigarettes, don’t you see? — germs like those which had killed Richard Grew. You get it now, don’t you? Abundant evidence to cause his arrest, but not enough to convict him.”
“How about that little cut on the first finger of his right hand? There is a drop of dried blood on that screw-head. Here it is. I took the screw out of the metal around our front door keyhole.”
“Even if we proved that was Spaulding’s blood, he could probably convince a jury that he had come here to see us and, in jiggling the doorknob, had cut his finger on the loose screw; it would not prove that he had shot poisoned gas into our living room.
“I am sure he killed Grew and that he tried to kill us; but as yet I can’t prove it. We’ve got to move very cautiously or he will see we suspect him, then he’ll be more careful than ever.”
“It strikes me he hasn’t been very careful so far.”
“He has, though. He didn’t do a thing until he got perfectly well set — some one he could throw direct suspicion on, I mean this bacteriologist. We’ve got to locate this man; but first we’ve got to see Margaret Grew, the woman in the case, who is probably in love with the bacteriologist.”
“What makes you think that?”
“If she hadn’t been, why would Richard Grew have forbidden the young man to come to the house? Doesn’t that show us not only one thing, but two: that he was in love with Miss Grew and that she was in love with him? Doesn’t it, as a matter of fact, show us something else also: that Dr. Spaulding was in love with Miss Grew and that he found another man was her accepted suitor and so, to get this rival out of the field, trumped up a bad reputation for him?
“We’ll see Margaret Grew and Dr. Spaulding together; the way he acts will show us whether or not this theory of mine is right. Come, Dan; it’s a quarter after eight; we’re due there at eight thirty; that means it’s time we started.”
“I don’t like going there,” I said; “it means getting into Dr. Spaulding’s clutches again, and, this time, there’s no telling what he’ll do to us.”
“What I’m thinking about,” Ruggles said, “is how he’s going to look when he sees I’m apparently healthy though he’s sure he saw me smoke one of his cigarettes. On my soul, Dan, I don’t know yet whether Spaulding is innocent and stupid or guilty and clever.
“One thing, we’ll know in a few moments — whether or not he’s in love with her. Come, let’s get started! If this is the last time we ever see these rooms of ours, Dan, we’ve at least had interesting experiences in them.”
The family doctor received us at the Grew home without any sign of surprise and, it must be admitted, without any particular show of interest.
I thought once that his keen eyes lingered on Ruggles’s bronzed face and athletic carriage, but I knew I might be mistaken — that I was, in short, looking for it and so might imagine it. I remembered, too, that Spaulding might be innocent.
Spaulding offered Ruggles another cigarette and, this time as an hour and a half before, Ruggles palmed it, substituted one of his own for it, and smoked it pleasurably. I had, as it happened, sworn off smoking for a month, and had told Spaulding that at our first meeting, so now he did not offer me tobacco.
Looking at Ruggles, the family doctor said: “Now, if you would like to talk with Miss Grew for a few moments, I am sure I can arrange it.”
“If you think it will be all right on her side,” Ruggles said, “we should appreciate it.”
Spaulding pressed a bell; a maid entered; he gave her his instructions, and she returned in a moment saying that Miss Grew would receive us in the upstairs living room, and we followed the maid up the stairs.
Miss Grew was perhaps twenty-three, tall, erect, and strikingly lovely. Her dark eyes were heavy from weeping, and her voice was not steady when she pronounced our names as Spaulding introduced us. After that, she sat silent and motionless, looking, I noticed, not at us but at the family doctor, as if waiting for him to speak.
He said: “Margaret, just before your father was taken ill, he went to Mr. Ruggles’s rooms to consult him. Mr. Ruggles and Mr. Crane are detectives.”
“Yes,” the girl said, “he told me—” Then she stopped short, hesitated, putting her hands to her forehead, as if trying to recall what she had been about to say. “I cannot — remember,” she faltered. “I am not — sure.” She looked at Ruggles and me vaguely.
“That is natural, just now,” Ruggles said. “Your father told me—”
“You can understand, Margaret,” the family doctor broke in, “that your father spoke confidentially to Mr. Ruggles. That, under the circumstances, would be expected. He—”.
The telephone rang then on the floor below and a maid answered it, appearing in the doorway a moment later and announcing that the call was for Mr. Ruggles.
A look of sharpest annoyance for a moment showed on my companion’s face; then he excused himself and followed the maid down the stairs.
While he was out of the room none of us spoke, and the only one to move was Dr. Spaulding, when he lowered a window-shade to keep a faint ray of light from the street from entering the room. The man, for some reason, was suffering now from something more pronounced than nervousness. He could not take his eyes from the girl, who sat motionless, her head resting on her hand, opposite him.
As Ruggles entered the room he was scribbling a note, which he handed to me, saying: “Dan, I wish you’d take that to Captain Shannon at police headquarters. Read it and add anything you like to it, then give it to him.”
“All right,” I said, starting into the hall. I excused myself to Miss Grew, and in a moment was out on the sidewalk, reading the note in the light from the first store I came to.
The note read:
I had told Mrs. Watts, our honest housekeeper, to telephone Dr. Spaulding at this time, but she got things mixed and called me up instead.
Go out, now, will you, and call Spaulding up — this will give me a couple of minutes alone with the innocent cause of all this tragedy, all that has taken place and all that I can see coming if we act quickly enough to save M. G. and C. S.