“Can you understand what I say?” asked the doctor, speaking low, but distinctly.
The head nodded slightly.
“I am a physician, sent for by your wife. You are Mr. Chandler, I am told. You are quite ill. You must not excite or distress yourself at all.”
The patient’s eyes seemed to beckon to him. The doctor stooped to catch the same faint words.
“The money — the twenty thousand dollars.”
“Where is this money? — in the bank?”
The eyes expressed a negative. “Tell her” — the whisper was growing fainter — “the twenty thousand dollars — her money” — his eyes wandered about the room.
“You have placed this money somewhere?” — Doctor James’s voice was toiling like a siren’s to conjure the secret from the man’s failing intelligence — “Is it in this room?”
He thought he saw a fluttering assent in the dimming eyes. The pulse under his fingers was as fine and small as a silk thread.
There arose in Doctor James’s brain and heart the instincts of his other profession. Promptly, as he acted in everything, he decided to learn the whereabouts of this money, and at the calculated and certain cost of a life.
Drawing from his pocket a little pad of prescription blanks, he scribbled upon one of them a formula suited, according to the best practice, to the needs of the sufferer. Going to the door of the inner room, he softly called the old woman, gave her the prescription, and bade her take it to some drug store and fetch the medicine.
When she had gone, muttering to herself, the doctor stepped to the bedside of the lady. She still slept soundly; her pulse was a little stronger; her forehead was cool, save where the inflammation of the bruise extended, and a slight moisture covered it. Unless disturbed, she would yet sleep for hours. He found the key in the door, and locked it after him when he returned.
Doctor James looked at his watch. He could call half an hour his own, since before that time the old woman could scarcely return from her mission. Then he sought and found water in a pitcher and a glass tumbler. Opening his medicine case he took out the vial containing the nitroglycerine — “the oil,” as his brethren of the brace-and-bit term it.
One drop of the faint yellow, thickish liquid he let fall in the tumbler. He took out his silver hypodermic syringe case, and screwed the needle into its place. Carefully measuring each modicum of water in the graduated glass barrel of the syringe, he diluted the one drop with half a tumbler of water.
Two hours earlier that night Doctor James had, with that syringe, injected the undiluted liquid into a hole drilled in the lock of a safe, and had destroyed, with one dull explosion, the machinery that controlled the movement of the bolts. He now purposed, with the same means, to shiver the prime machinery of a human being — to rend its heart — and each shock was for the sake of the money to follow.
The same means, but in a different guise. Whereas, that was the giant in its rude, primary dynamic strength, this was the courtier, whose no less deadly arms were concealed by velvet and lace. For the liquid in the tumbler and in the syringe that the physician carefully filled was now a solution of glonoin, the most powerful heart stimulant known to medical science. Two ounces had riven the solid door of the iron safe; with one fiftieth part of a minim he was now about to still forever the intricate mechanism of a human life.
But not immediately. It was not so intended. First there would be a quick increase of vitality; a powerful impetus given to every organ and faculty. The heart would respond bravely to the fatal spur; the blood in the veins return more rapidly to its source.
But, as Doctor James well knew, over-stimulation in this form of heart disease means death, as sure as by a rifle shot. When the clogged arteries should suffer congestion from the increased flow of blood pumped into them by the power of the burglar’s “oil,” they would rapidly become “no thoroughfare,” and the fountain of life would cease to flow.
The physician bared the chest of the unconscious Chandler. Easily and skilfully he injected, subcutaneously, the contents of the syringe into the muscles of the region over the heart. True to his neat habits in both professions, he next carefully dried his needle and re-inserted the fine wire that threaded it when not in use.
In three minutes Chandler opened his eyes, and spoke, in a voice faint but audible, inquiring who attended upon him. Doctor James again explained his presence there.
“Where is my wife?” asked the patient.
“She is asleep — from exhaustion and worry,” said the doctor. “I would not awaken her, unless—”
“It isn’t — necessary.” Chandler spoke with spaces between his words caused by his short breath that some demon was driving too fast. “She wouldn’t — thank you to disturb her — on my — account.”
Doctor James drew a chair to the bedside. Conversation must not be squandered.
“A few minutes ago,” he began, in the grave, candid tones of his other profession, “you were trying to tell me something regarding some money. I do not seek your confidence, but it is my duty to advise you that anxiety and worry will work against your recovery. If you have any communication to make about this — to relieve your mind about this — twenty thousand dollars, I think was the amount you mentioned — you would better do so.”
Chandler rolled his eyes in the direction of the speaker.
“Did I — say where this — money is?”
“No,” answered the physician. “I only inferred, from your scarcely intelligible words, that you felt a solicitude concerning its safety. If it is in this room—”
Doctor James paused. Did he only seem to perceive a flicker of understanding, a gleam of suspicion upon the ironical features of his patient? Had he seemed too eager? Had he said too much? Chandler’s next words restored his confidence.
“Where — should it be,” he gasped, “but in — the safe — there?”
With his eyes he indicated a corner of the room, where now, for the first time, the doctor perceived a small iron safe, half-concealed by the trailing end of a window curtain.
Rising, he took the sick man’s wrist. His pulse was beating in great throbs, with ominous intervals between.
“Lift your arm,” said Doctor James.
“You know — I can’t move, Doctor.”
The physician stepped swiftly to the hall door, opened it, and listened. All was still. Without further circumvention he went to the safe, and examined it. Of a primitive make and simple design, it afforded little more security than protection against light-fingered servants. To his skill it was a mere toy, a thing of straw and pasteboard. The money was as good as in his hands. With his clamps he could draw the knob, punch the tumblers and open the door in two minutes. Perhaps, in another way, he might open it in one.
Kneeling upon the floor, he laid his ear to the combination plate, and slowly turned the knob. As he had surmised, it was locked at only a “day com.” — upon one number. His keen ear caught the faint warning click as the tumbler was disturbed; he used the clue — the handle turned. He swung the door wide open. The interior of the safe was bare — not even a scrap of paper rested within the hollow iron cube.
Doctor James rose to his feet and walked back to the bed.
A thick dew had formed upon the dying man’s brow, but there was a mocking, grim smile on his lips and in his eyes.
“I never — saw it before,” he said, painfully, “medicine and — burglary wedded! Do you — make the — combination pay — dear Doctor?”
Than that situation afforded, there was never a more rigorous test of Doctor James’s greatness. Trapped by the diabolic humor of his victim into a position both ridiculous and unsafe, he maintained his dignity as well as his presence of mind. Taking out his watch, he waited for the man to die.