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:
Still covering Ruggles and me with his automatic, Spaulding swiftly took from an inner pocket a small glass phial, with his teeth tore off the gauze which had covered the phial’s top, then scattered the dustlike contents in the air.
“For God’s sake,” Stanhope cried, “open a window, Mr. Ruggles.”
“Quite correct,” Spaulding said with grisly composure, “as Mr. Ruggles is about to see demonstrated — for no one is going to open a window. You did that with the gas I shot in through your keyhole, Mr. Detective, but you will not have a chance to in this case. I will shoot to death any one who makes such a move.”
Ruggles dove at Spaulding’s feet. The family doctor’s bullet went high. Before he could fire again, Ruggles jerked from under Spaulding’s feet the small rug he stood on, throwing Spaulding off his balance and making him drop his gun.
Before Spaulding could recover it, Ruggles had snatched it up and tossed it to me, crying: “Open every window and the front door!” Then he sprang in again at Spaulding.
I let in the fresh air, then turned just in time to see Spaulding meet Ruggles’s rush with a crashing blow from a blackjack. As Ruggles reeled back, I brought my gun up, but Ruggles cried:
“Don’t, Dan; I’m going to take this fiend alive!” Then Ruggles was in again; this time he evaded the swing of the blackjack and with a left hook knocked Spaulding unconscious.
“And that’s the end of the family doctor,” Ruggles said when, ten minutes later, Ruggles had turned Spaulding, now conscious, over to the police, and Stanhope, his handcuffs off and his face clean of the paint and powder, had left to take Margaret Grew to her home. “Stanhope did admirably — a fine, brave chap; and Miss Grew did precisely what I had told her to.”
“Why did you bring her in that way?” I asked. “She certainly made it realistic, but—”
“That was what I was after,” Ruggles said. “Spaulding had to be made desperate, by seeing Margaret’s love for Stanhope — then Spaulding revealed himself in his true colors. He would have done it anyway, I guess; but having her there made it sure.”
“But why did you tell me that you had arrested Stanhope for the murder of Richard Grew, ask me to tell that to Spaulding, and tell Spaulding to come here to prescribe for Stanhope’s illness?”
“It was all a plant,” Ruggles said. “It was this way: As soon as you told Spaulding that Stanhope was under arrest in my custody, Spaulding knew that the coast was clear — being under arrest and with me, Stanhope could not be at his rooms; that meant that Spaulding could go to Stanhope’s rooms and get more of the germs.
“My adding that I wanted Spaulding to prescribe, as a doctor, for Stanhope made Spaulding see a chance to administer the germs to Stanhope immediately, and this double-headed chance was more than Spaulding could resist.”
“But why did he try to kill Margaret Grew, when he loved her?”
“He knew he could not have her himself and he meant that no other man should have her. He walked into the trap the whole way.”
“One more question,” I said. “When did you first suspect Spaulding? Was it when we first saw his adoration of Margaret Grew?”
“No, before that,” Ruggles said. “It was in our talk with Richard Grew — he said, you remember, that he believed he was stricken with a fatal illness. I asked him if I should not call in his family doctor, and he replied in the most emphatic negative.
“That set me thinking that he believed the worst of his family doctor, whoever that man was. He said, then, that, though we could do nothing for him, we must save his daughter. There is one thing, Dan, which we never shall know all about, but my guess is this: Richard Grew had found, in Spaulding’s past life, some reason to believe that Spaulding was capable of using his medical knowledge to poison one who became his enemy.
“It may have been some slip Spaulding had made in his talk at some time or other; be that as it may. Grew, though, had never forgotten it, and it came up in his mind when, after receiving that threatening, indeed hideous letter, he soon began to feel ill. The letter said, you remember:
This paper has transmitted to you a deadly disease: you are doomed.
“That meant, to Grew, that Spaulding had sent fatal germs to him, and Grew was absolutely right.”
The telephone rang. I started to answer it, but Ruggles took the call. It was from the police, stating that Dr. Spaulding had just died in his cell!
“I expected that,” Ruggles said quietly. “Whatever was in that phial, it was strong enough to kill him, even the little of it he got into his mouth when he tore off the gauze on its top with his teeth.”
The Elusive Giant
by Henry Gollomb[6]
THE WHOLE WORLD WAS HIS COURT. AND FOR HIS CRUEL GRACE FAIR LADIES AND BRAVE MEN BARTERED THEIR LIVES
Six foot three, massively built, strikingly featured, he was the focus of all eyes. When he was present all things centered about him. The crimes he enacted filled the mouths of men and the pages of the newspapers. Governments knew him well, millionaires were his companions, many women loved him, but withal he was the most invisible of men.
He appeared out of the mist of the unknown and loomed like a mountain. He vanished like a mirage. The police of many nations sought him, but when he was caught he squirmed and was gone. He was Franz von Veltheim, master rogue, king of blackmailers and despoiler of women.
All of the foregoing may sound bombastic, but he carried with him an atmosphere of the dramatic, the theatrical, and minor adjectives are insufficient to describe him.
He was murderer, blackmailer, polygamist, thief; but he had a charm and a magnetism that inspired faith, that made his victims believe, his judges to doubt their judgment.
Germany bore him. Karl Kurt was born in Brunswick in 1857, and with him came into being a truly criminal soul. His family was of the lower classes, but somewhere in its earlier generations there must have been a left-handed infusion of nobler blood; for here was Karl, in appearance an aristocrat, in manners, when he so willed, a gentleman, but in nature a blackguard.
The strict discipline of German family life left him untouched. Just as soon as the years developed his physique, and experiences his wit, he became the leader of the younger thieves of the city.
The prisons were his schools, jailbirds his teachers. From them he learned the tricks of evasion, the fine points of crime, the need of a cold heart in his profession. All these came to him with ease, they were the gifts of his birthright.
Until 1880 he was Karl Kurt. But the name did not fit. His appearance spelled romance, his carriage aristocracy. So he changed his name. And he stole even that. The German navy called him to service.
He came, with a mental reservation that his stay would be short. He climbed ropes, he manned guns, he saluted his captain — and stole his watch. The captain raged, questioned, threatened, but Karl Kurt had faded away; how, no one could reveal.
A London pawnbroker saw him next. A magnificent-looking stranger, his English barely tinged by a German accent, wished to pawn a beautiful gold watch, an heirloom. Name? Franz von Veltheim. See, there it was, cleverly engraved under a coat of arms which had been his family’s insignia for centuries.
And the pawnbroker, gazing at the name and the man could not doubt they belonged to each other. With fifteen pounds in his pockets the newly baptized adventurer vanished from Europe, where as Karl Kurt he had interested the police too deeply for his comfort.
6
A Story of Fact