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:
“Has any one telephoned?” Ruggles asked, when we were standing in our living room.
“No,” a man’s voice called quickly.
“That’s good,” Ruggles said. “Come, Dan, it’s time you met Mr. Cyril Stanhope.”
Ruggles led me into our extra bedroom and up to the bed on which lay a man in his late twenties, a man light-haired, blue-eyed, and handsome, ordinarily of fine strength, but now wan-looking, weak, and haggard.
“This is Mr. Crane,” Ruggles said, “who assists me in all my cases. I’ve told you about him.” Ruggles turned the light full on Stanhope’s face, then nodded, saying: “You’ll do very well, Mr. Stanhope; but if you’re really to look ill enough to fool Dr. Spaulding, you’ll have to have a little more—”
Ruggles broke off abruptly, left the room, and in a moment was back with his makeup box open.
“I ought to make you look another ten pounds under weight,” he said critically, “and I’m going to do it.”
He did, with that extraordinary skill of his — grease paint, powder, and the shadows deepened under the eyes and cheek bones.
Then Ruggles suddenly closed his makeup box, and looked earnestly down at Stanhope, saying:
“I must warn you again that what is coming will put you in the most serious danger. Spaulding is desperate now. I have told you that I am sure he killed Richard Grew, and I am certain that he is about to try to kill you.
“From the moment he enters this room, Crane and I will have him covered; but, in order to carry out the plan I outlined to you — to perfect our evidence against him, we must let him go to your side and examine you, and he may have a knife ready.”
“I know that,” Stanhope said steadily, “but I am going through with it.”
“Prepare yourself, then,” Ruggles said in a tense whisper, as our front doorbell rang. “The time for the final show-down has come. Have your gun ready, Dan! Do not shoot except as a last resort; but then shoot to kill!”
Stanhope extended both his hands. Ruggles snapped a pair of handcuffs on Stanhope’s wrists. Then Ruggles, his face more grave and anxious than I had ever seen it, went to our front door, opened it, end admitted Dr. Spaulding.
In he came, bowing to us with that cold, collected, impassive manner of which Ruggles had spoken; and it struck me then that a great actor had been lost to the world of drama when Dr. Spaulding adopted the profession of medicine.
Or his may have been the medical man’s professional calm.
He laid his hat on a chair, took off his gloves, then the light overcoat he wore, and lifted his doctor’s bag from where he had first put it, on the floor, to our center table.
“You have called me in to prescribe for your patient,” he said in a colorless voice. “Is he—”
“I will show you,” Ruggles said. Then, diffidently and in a whisper, “You said that you knew Mr. Stanhope?”
“Yes,” Dr. Spaulding replied.
Ruggles came a step nearer and said in a still lower whisper:
“Perhaps I might better have called in another doctor — under the circumstances, you may not find attendance on Mr. Stanhope — agreeable?”
“It will not be agreeable to either him or me,” Spaulding said. “On the other hand, please remember, both of us are men of the world; furthermore, I am attending him only in my professional capacity. He knew you were calling me in, did he not? And did he oppose it?”
“A prisoner,” Ruggles said, “is not in a position to oppose much of anything. But he did not express himself against your coming.”
“Then,” Spaulding replied, “I see no objection.” He took up his medical case, and Ruggles led the way into the bedroom.
They were both men of the world, as Spaulding had said, but their self-control was not the same; or it may have been their difference in temperament. Young Stanhope’s face went a fiery red as their eyes met, but no color showed in the face of the family doctor — only his eyes changed: a glaze seemed to have come over them, and behind that strange glaze they glowed cold and cruel as a snake’s eyes.
Spaulding went to Stanhope’s side and said: “What seems to be wrong with you, Stanhope?”
“I do — not — know,” the younger man said, clearing his throat and speaking huskily. “I have no strength, for some — reason, and something seems to be pressing on me — here.” He lifted both hands from under the bedclothes, and his handcuffed hands went to his forehead.
“Any fever, do you think?” Spaulding asked. “Let me—”
Spaulding took no notice of the handcuffs on the man he hated so. The family doctor said nothing.
But another did: the front door, which Ruggles had not closed, was thrown open, and Margaret Grew cried:
“Cyril? Cyril?”
“Here,” young Stanhope cried hoarsely. “Here, Margaret.”
Ruggles signaled to me to bar the door of the bedroom, but she passed me in a flash and in an instant was kneeling beside the bed.
She must have seen Dr. Spaulding, but she did not speak to him; she had no thought or consciousness of any one but the man she loved.
Chapter IX
The Last Act
“Cyril,” she cried brokenly, holding him with her arms, “why are you here? You look so ill. It frightens me! Are you—” Her voice broke, then, into a gasping cry of horror, as, for the first time, she became aware of the handcuffs on her lover’s wrists.
She sprang up then and faced us like a tigress. “Take them off! Take them off!” she cried over and over. “Take them off!”
“That cannot be done,” Ruggles said evenly. “I am sorry to have to tell you that he is under — arrest.”
“I do not care,” she shrieked. She tore at them with her soft hands.
“Margaret,” young Stanhope said weakly, “you cannot—”
A look of ghastly realization came over her face; she swayed, caught at the air for support, then, before any of us could catch her, fell fainting across the foot of the bed.
“It is nervous exhaustion only,” Dr. Spaulding said after a swift examination. His set face now was white as chalk. “Like you, Stanhope, she needs only something to make her sleep. I’ll leave you something.”
Spaulding was making every effort to steady himself back into the professional calm. He looked fixedly at his successful rival. “May I ask how long it is since you have eaten anything?”
“Nothing to-day or yesterday,” Stanhope said. “I have been too desperate.”
“You must eat, for all that,” Spaulding said. “I am going to give you both something now. Mr. Ruggles, may I have two cups and some milk, and some hot water?”
“The kitchenette,” Ruggles said, “is right in through that door. You will find milk in the ice box; there is a saucepan on the gas stove — I will show you — and cups on the shelf in the pantry.”
“Thanks, I can find them,” Spaulding said. “I shall be only a moment.” He left us, the pantry door swinging to behind him.
After a few moments he returned, bringing two cups of milky substance, handed one to Margaret and the other he held to Stanhope’s lips.
“Drink it,” he said quietly. “It will—”
But Ruggles snatched the two cups, handed them to me, and then turned like a flash on Spaulding, saying:
“Up with your hands! Those are the last doses of poison you will ever try to give!” He sprang at Spaulding.
But the family doctor darted aside and drew an automatic with which he instantly covered Ruggles.
“You trapped me,” Spaulding said hoarsely, “and you are right about the stuff in that milk: there are germs there like those I gave to Richard Grew. But you have caught me too late!”