Читать книгу Hidden Foes; Or, A Fatal Miscalculation - Carter Nicholas - Страница 11

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The steeple bell of a church within a stone’s throw of Hamilton Square struck twelve. The successive strokes fell with monotonous reverberations on the midnight air, breaking with solemn resonance the quietude of that reputable residential section of Madison.

For Hamilton Square, though not far from the business district, was in an attractive part of the city, to which the extensive tract of land had been donated years before, in part for a public square and the remainder for the site, park, and gardens of the now locally famous Osgood Hospital, established by the donor, and still largely supported by the income from his bequests.

The last stroke of the bell scarce had died away to a customary stillness, when a burly policeman, one James Donovan, appeared on one side of the square flanking the hospital grounds, moving along near the iron fence and pausing now and then to gaze across the broad avenue at the opposite dwellings, the most of which were shrouded in darkness.

Presently, approaching a gate in the fence, he muttered to himself:

“I may as well have another look. It’s a hundred to one there has been nothing doing, though, or I would have heard it. This evidently isn’t one of the nights for their devilish doings. Hang it, I’m not sure of it!”

He had stopped short, taking out his electric lamp and flashing the beam of light on the ornamental gate. A padlock had been removed and was lying on the gravel walk within. Nearly at his feet, discovered after a brief search, was a piece of black thread.

“By thunder, I was wrong,” Donovan muttered, gazing around and scowling perplexedly. “Have my ears gone back on me? Has this scurvy trick been turned again? Some one has been through this gate since I tied the thread on it. I’ll darned soon find out.”

Quietly lifting the latch, Donovan opened the gate and entered with quickened steps. He did not follow the gravel walk, which led toward an end door in a wing of the hospital some fifty yards away. Instead, he strode straight across the broad lawn, through the deeper gloom under the trees, until he came to one, the drooping branches of which formed a sort of arbor in a secluded part of the extensive estate.

There was an iron seat under it, and the policeman flashed his light in that direction. It fell upon a motionless figure in a huddled position on one end of the seat—the figure of a young woman.

“Another, by thunder, as sure as I’m a foot high,” Donovan gasped audibly. “In spite of my vigilance, too, and in the same place and condition as the others. Sure, this beats me.”

Donovan drew nearer and bent over the motionless girl. She was about nineteen, with a slender, neatly clad figure, a dark skirt and Eton jacket. Her head was bowed forward, and her hat was somewhat awry. She was of dark complexion, but the ghastly pallor of her cheeks caused the policeman to catch his breath. He bowed over her, listening, and presently could hear the faint breathing of the unconscious girl.

“By Jove, I feared for a moment she was gone,” he said to himself, straightening up. “I’ll try to raise the sergeant. He said he’d show up about midnight.”

Donovan walked away toward the gate again and blew his whistle, a shrill, sinister sound on the night air. Thrice he had to sound it, and then he heard a distant reply. Several moments later hurried footsteps fell on the pavement, and an officer in plain clothes appeared at the gate.

“That you, Jim?” he called quietly.

“Yes, sir.” Donovan’s hand went to his helmet. “I thought I might get you, Sergeant Brady, as you said you’d drop around about this time.”

“Something doing?”

“Yes, sir, the same old job.”

“The devil you say! Have you seen no one, nor heard anything?”

“Not a soul, sir, nor a sound,” Donovan declared, approaching the gate. “Faith, I think my eyes and ears have gone to the bad. I was round here twenty minutes ago. The padlock then was on the gate, and this thread, tied so that the gate could not be opened without breaking it, was just as I had fixed it. It’s a cinch, now, that this is the gate the rascals have been using. The chief thought, you know, that the padlock might have been taken off only for a blind. The breaking of the thread settles it.”

“That’s a clever scheme, Jim,” Brady said approvingly. “Yes, yes, undoubtedly that’s the gate. Another woman, you say?”

“Yes, sir, and on the same iron seat.”

“I’ll have a look at her.”

“This way, sergeant.”

“The fourth in a fortnight.” Brady spoke with a growl while he and his companion strode across the lawn. “I don’t understand it. I’ll be hanged, Jim, if I can make head or tail to a mystery of this kind. I don’t see why it’s done, or who could quit a winner.”

“Faith, it’s as black as dock mud,” Donovan vouchsafed grimly. “Here she is, sergeant, dead to the world.”

Brady stopped and gazed down at the inanimate girl—the fourth who had been found on this same seat, at the same time, and in the same condition, within two weeks.

“Humph!” Brady grunted, rubbing his furrowed brow perplexedly. “Mystery is no name for it.”

“Shall I send in an ambulance call?”

“No. It’s another case for the hospital. There’s nothing in taking her to headquarters and then bringing her back here, as was done in the other three cases.”

“Sure, sergeant, that’s right.”

“Go to that wing door and raise one of the attendants. Tell him what’s up, Jim, and have him bring out a litter. I’ll wait here until you return.”

Donovan hurried away and vanished around a corner of the wing. He returned in about five minutes, accompanied by one of the hospital attendants, bearing a folded litter, which he hastened to open and on which he and the policeman placed the girl.

While they were doing so, Brady discovered a small leather hand bag on the ground near the seat. He picked it up and tossed it on the litter.

“Go ahead,” he commanded, a bit gruffly. “Get a move on. I’ll go with you.”

His companions picked up their burden and obeyed. They trooped across the grounds and around the end of the wing, bringing up at a door over which a red lantern was burning. It was opened by an orderly within, and Donovan said familiarly:

“Here’s another for you, Bill, of the same sort. Faith, they seem to drop out of the sky.”

“They more likely are sent up from the infernal regions, judging from the character of the job,” returned the orderly. “What’s the matter with you guns, anyway, that tricks of this kind can be repeated under your very eyes? Bring her this way.”

He conducted them through a dimly lighted corridor and into an adjoining room, in which there were several unoccupied cots, on one of which Donovan and the attendant placed the girl.

The orderly turned to a wall telephone and summoned a night nurse, who entered before he had fairly hung up the receiver.

“What physician is here, Agnes?” he asked curtly.

“Doctor Green has been here since eight o’clock,” said the nurse. “I just saw a light in Doctor Devoll’s private room. I think he came in about ten minutes ago.”

“Notify him,” said the orderly. “He can restore her, most likely, since he was so successful in the other three cases. Notify him at once.”

The woman turned to the telephone to speak to Doctor Devoll, while the orderly set about making a few necessary preparations to receive him, apparently disregarding the presence of the two policemen.

Sergeant Brady, who had been gazing with a suspicious frown at the girl on the cot, turned to the attendant who had assisted in bringing her in.

“Doctor Devoll is the head physician, isn’t he?” he asked quietly.

“Yes, sir,” said the attendant. “He runs the place.”

“The big finger, eh?”

“That’s what.”

“I have heard he’s very skillful.”

“None better, sir.”

“I wonder——” Brady dropped his voice to a whisper: “I wonder whether there’s a telephone I can use on the quiet. I want to talk with Chief Gleason, at headquarters.”

“Sure,” the attendant nodded. “There’s one in the operating room. No one is there now. I’ll show you.”

“Half a minute,” Brady muttered. Then, turning to Donovan, he whispered: “Have an eye on the girl, Jim, and keep your ears open when she revives. Get me?”

“Sure!”

“I’ll return in time to leave with you.”

Donovan nodded, and Brady immediately departed with the attendant. Only five minutes had passed when Doctor Devoll entered the room, bringing a leather medicine case and quickly approaching the cot on which lay the inanimate girl, whose jacket and the front of her silk shirt waist had been opened by the nurse.

Doctor Devoll presented quite a striking picture, when he paused and gazed down at her in the bright light of an electric bulb. He was close upon sixty and of medium height, but very slender. His thinness was accentuated by a tight-fitting black frock coat, the skirts of which hung to his knees. His head was almost entirely bald. All that remained to show that he was a son of Esau was a fringe of close-cut, gray hair around the base of his skull, and a single silver-white tuft above his high forehead.

He was smoothly shaven, his features wasted and wan, his thin lips of a dull, grayish tint, instead of a wholesome red, as if the blood in his veins had lost its crimson hue. His nose was long, his eyes a cold blue and wonderfully penetrating. As he stood there with his slender hands behind him, his fingers interlocked, there was something really quite sinister in his aspect. He looked not unlike a bird of prey brooding over his victim.

This was immediately dispelled, however, when he looked up at the nurse and said, with a remarkably soft and ingratiating voice:

“She appears to be in the same condition, Agnes, as the others. She was found on the same seat, did I understand you to say?”

“Yes, doctor.” The nurse bowed to him across the narrow cot. “This policeman discovered her. He had her brought in, sir, instead of taking her to the station house, as before.”

Doctor Devoll turned and eyed Donovan narrowly for a moment; then suavely inquired:

“Is your beat in this locality?”

“It is, sir,” said Donovan respectfully. “I’m the night patrolman, sir.”

“Are you the officer who previously found the other girls who were brought here under similar circumstances?”

“I am, sir.”

“Did you see any one to-night, or hear anything, that might shed a ray of light on this mystery?”

“I did not, sir,” said Donovan. “I’m all in the dark. I’m blessed if I can fathom how and when the girl went there. I had my eyes open all the evening because of the other cases, but how——”

“Yes, yes, no doubt.” Doctor Devoll checked him with a deprecatory gesture. “I must apply for more night men in this district, if these extraordinary episodes are to continue. The cause must be found and the culprits discovered. That is, of course, if it’s a case for the police.”

“She may be a drug fiend, sir, or perhaps——”

“It is useless to speculate,” Doctor Devoll interrupted. “I could learn nothing from the others. I will try this one.”

He opened his medicine case while speaking, taking from it a small sponge and a slender vial filled with an amber-colored fluid, a few drops of which he poured on the sponge. Then he held it with his long, lean fingers near the nostrils of the unconscious girl.

The effect appeared almost magical. A tinge of color instantly dispelled her ghastly paleness. She caught her breath with a gasp and a convulsive heave, as if some potent stimulant had suddenly filled her lungs, and Doctor Devoll quickly drew away the sponge and replaced it in his case, hastily closing it.

He scarcely had done so when, with a low moan, the girl opened her eyes and stared around, then at her observers, with the mute wonderment of one awakening amid strange surroundings and in view of unfamiliar faces. They seemed to alarm and further stimulate her, for she started up, gasping amazedly:

“Where—where am I? Who are you? What has happened?”

“Don’t be alarmed, my girl.” Doctor Devoll’s thin face took on an assuring smile. “You are in no danger. You are in the casualty ward of the Osgood Hospital.”