The Crime of the French Café and Other Stories

by Nicholas Carter

  CHAPTER II.

  THE DEAD MAN'S HEAD.

  Dr. Jarvis, chief of the staff of St. Agnes' Hospital, was well known asa peculiar man.

  He was rich enough to take his leisure, but he worked like a slave. Hehad an elegant house on St. Nicholas avenue, but he spent all his daysand more than half his nights at the hospital.

  A rude cot in a little room adjoining his laboratory in the hospital washis bed four nights in seven on the average. His only recreation wasfound in the care of a little garden in the hospital grounds; and it wasthe common talk of the younger physicians that Dr. Jarvis enjoyedfinding fault with the gardener more than he did cultivating theflowers.

  He had a wife and a young, unmarried daughter, whom he loved devotedly,but to whom he gave only a few hours of his time in the course of aweek.

  A negro named Caesar Augustus Cleary was the doctor's assistant in thelaboratory.

  The other physicians in the hospital said that Cleary had become soaccustomed to Jarvis' ways that, like a Mississippi mule, he had to becursed before he could be made to understand anything.

  Cleary slept in a little closet similar to the doctor's, and on theopposite side of the laboratory. He was asleep there, about twelveo'clock on the night after Nick's visit to Lawrence Deever, when Nickcrept softly through the window.

  All these rooms were on the ground floor and entrance was easy.

  Nick had spent a part of the evening in the garden. He had watched tillthe light went out in the laboratory and another appeared in thedoctor's bed-room. Then he was ready for a search of the premises.

  If, in a moment of anger, Dr. Jarvis had struck Patrick Deever andkilled him, it was likely that the laboratory would hold some trace ofthe secret.

  The best way to hide a human body is to utterly destroy it. This is noeasy task for an ordinary man, but to a scientist, like Dr. Jarvis, itwould be comparatively easy.

  However, it would take time. Patrick Deever had disappeared on Mondaynight. Forty-eight hours had elapsed, but yet Nick hoped to find atrace, if the work of destruction had been attempted in the laboratory.

  Nick had entered Cleary's room with the purpose of guarding against anyinterruption from the negro. He found Cleary sleeping heavily; but whenNick left the room and glided into the laboratory, Cleary's sleep waseven deeper than it had been before.

  An adept in chemistry, Nick knew how to produce a slumber from which noordinary means could arouse the sleeper. His drug was sure and it leftno bad effects.

  The laboratory was unlighted, except by the moon, which shone in overthe shutters, which covered the lower parts of the windows, preventingobservation from without.

  The first object which attracted Nick's attention was a corpse which layupon a stone table in the middle of the room.

  Nick had made a hasty search of the laboratory some hours before, whilethe doctor had been at dinner. He had then seen this corpse, and hadassured himself that it was not Patrick Deever's; but he had been unableto do much more before the doctor returned. Therefore, he had made thislate visit.

  He first examined some instruments which lay near the dissecting-table.They revealed nothing. Then for perhaps half an hour, he searchedvarious parts of the room without result.

  Beneath the laboratory was a cellar in which, as Nick knew, wereelectric apparatus and a furnace which the doctor used for hisexperiments.

  Nick was about to descend into this cellar when a noise in the directionof the doctor's room attracted his attention.

  He turned and beheld Dr. Jarvis entering the laboratory.

  Realizing the possibility of such an event, Nick had disguised himselfas Cleary, yet he wished to avoid being seen if possible.

  He got into the darkest corner available and watched.

  Dr. Jarvis had on only his night-shirt, a skull-cap and a peculiar reddressing-gown, which he wore whenever he worked in the laboratory or inthe garden. This dressing-gown and the queer red skull-cap were so oldthat nobody about the hospital could remember when they had been new.Cleary once said that he believed they were born and grew up with thedoctor.

  Without noticing Nick, Dr. Jarvis advanced directly toward thedissecting-table. He had no light, but the moon's rays glanced brightlyaround the slab.

  The doctor drew back the sheet which covered the figure, revealing thehead and naked breast.

  Then he drew some instruments from a case, and proceeded to sever thehead from the body.

  This secret action in the dead of night surprised Nick greatly. Could itbe that some clever trick had been accomplished? Had the body which Nickhad seen been removed, and that of Patrick Deever substituted?

  From where he stood Nick could not see the face of the body clearlyenough to form a decision. If, however, this was only an ordinarysubject for the dissecting-table, why did Dr. Jarvis mutilate it withsuch caution and at such an hour?

  To cut off the head was the work of a very few minutes to the skillfulphysician.

  He soon held it in his hands; and it seemed to Nick that the oldphysician gazed at it with peculiar attention in the moonlight.

  Suddenly Dr. Jarvis turned, and, carrying the head in one hand, holdingit by the hair, he advanced toward Nick. In his other hand the doctorheld a knife which he had used in his ghastly work.

  Nick had little hopes of escaping discovery. Evidently it was thedoctor's intention to carry the head into the cellar, and the detectivewas concealed close by the stairs.

  But Nick was not discovered. Dr. Jarvis stalked by, within six feet ofhim, and looked neither to the right nor to the left.

  Still bearing the head, he descended the stairs, and Nick crept afterhim.

  The cellar was perfectly dark except where a faint glow around thelittle furnace could be perceived. Nick was therefore able to follow thedoctor closely.

  But suddenly the place was made light. Dr. Jarvis had touched a buttonin the wall, and a row of electric lights, suspended before the furnace,flashed up.

  Nick had barely time to drop flat on the floor behind a row of greatglass jars full of clear fluid, the nature of which he could notdetermine.

  These jars were set upon a sort of bench made of stone, rising about twofeet from the floor. Between them and the furnace stood the doctor. Nickwas on the other side.

  It seemed tolerably certain to the detective that Dr. Jarvis wouldthrow the head into the furnace. Nick determined to get a sight of thehead at once. He was yet uncertain whether it was Patrick Deever's.

  Rising on his hands and knees he peered between two of the jars. Thehead was not more than a yard from Nick's eyes, but the face was turnedaway.

  By the hair, and the general outline, it might be Deever's. At allhazards Nick must get a sight of it before it was consigned to thefurnace in which a fire, supported by peculiar chemical agencies andmuch hotter than burning coal, raged furiously.

  Suddenly, when it seemed as if the doctor was about to raise an arch offire-brick in order to throw the head into the fire, he turned anddropped the grim object into the jar almost directly above Nick's head.

  It was carefully done, though quickly. The head sank without a splash.Only a single drop of the fluid--a drop no bigger than a pin'spoint--fell upon the back of Nick's hand.

  It burned like white, hot iron. It seemed to sink through the hand uponwhich it fell.

  Nick sprang to his feet, not because of the pain of the burning acid,but because he knew that he must instantly obtain a sight of the head orit would be dissolved.

  It lay face upward in the jar, but the acid, even in that instant, haddone its work.

  All semblance to humanity had vanished. As Nick gazed, the head seemedto waver in the midst of the strange fluid, and then, suddenly, Nicksaw, in a direct line where it had been, the bottom of the jar.

  The head had been dissolved.

  Nick raised his eyes to Dr. Jarvis' face.

  There stood the doctor, entirely unmoved. He looked directly at Nick butseemed not to see him.

  His eyes were
fixed, and their expression was peculiar. One lessexperienced than Nick would have supposed Dr. Jarvis to be insane.

  Certainly his conduct as well as his appearance seemed to justify such aconclusion.

  But Nick knew better. He recognized at once the peculiar condition inwhich Dr. Jarvis then was. He had seen the phenomenon before.

  "Walking in his sleep," Nick said to himself. "Shall I wake him here? Ithink not. Let me see what he will do."