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The Almost Complete Short Fiction

Page 213

by Don Wilcox


  CHAPTER III

  Business for the Doctor

  The following morning a part of the household sat around on the east porch displaying black eyes and bandages. From their doleful talk one might guess that they hadn’t enjoyed their brief game of cops and robbers. The worst of it was that the robbers had won.

  “My theories! My pet theories.

  Those brain children that I’ve nursed along from infancy! Where are they now?” Theodore White wailed.

  “They’re in that roof-smasher’s blue shirt,” said Brenda. “I hope they give him congestion of the lungs.”

  “My pets! All my wonderful words of erudition! What will the world do without them?”

  “The world will have to cripple along somehow,” said Brenda. “But we’ve got to have a new skylight before it rains.” Teddy White lingered around sorrowfully. To one of his pallid complexion a black eye was a conspicuous adornment, not altogether unbecoming. Each time he passed a mirror he liked it better. It was, in a way, a badge of manhood, symbolizing the courage of his attack upon the big, brown-haired invader.

  “I do believe Teddy is growing up,” Brenda said, coming into the drawing room where Louise was opening her letters.

  “How are you feeling, Brenda?” Louise asked. “Are the glass cuts paining you much?”

  “Scratches,” Brenda said, disdainfully. “Just an excuse for bandages. What hurts me is that I didn’t have a flatiron in my hand when that big grizzly bear pushed me in the face. Who do you suppose he was? Oh, pardon me, I see you’re busy.”

  “Yes, this mail turns out to be rather important,” said Louise.

  “You go right ahead. I’m having the maid take care of the breakfast duties this morning. She’ll be right in with some toast and coffee.”

  The toast and coffee came at once, and Theodore White and Brenda joined Louise around the tray.

  “I’m surprised that my chauffeur hasn’t come down,” said Louise. “Has anyone seen him this morning?”

  “I was surprised he didn’t show up for the excitement last night, I don’t see how he could have slept through.”

  “And he used to be a prize fighter,” said Louise. “I’ll see that he’s with us if we have a return engagement.”

  “It won’t happen again,” Teddy said, holding his white head sadly. “It would take me years to assemble another such army of facts and figures. It’s gone.”

  “There, there. Don’t cry over spilt theories, young man,” said Brenda. “Just go right after it again. In another ten years or so—”

  “What was your theory?” Louise asked. “What could the thief do with it?”

  Professor Theodore White looked up very curiously. He put his coffee-cup down. He rose to his feet, cast his visionary eyes toward the ceiling and stroked his white beard thoughtfully. Finally he spoke, in solemn words.

  “I don’t know. As a matter of fact precisely speaking, I really don’t know.”

  When breakfast was done, the chauffeur had not yet appeared. The maid returned with a note.

  “He wasn’t in his room, Miss Wilmott,” the maid said, “but he’d left this note for you in the hall door.” Louise scanned the message.

  “Miss Wilmott—It is about an hour after midnight as I write this note. I met the man in the mask just now and he told me you wanted me to go back to the Lantern Village to get the doctor, so I’m on my way at once. I hope this is all right with you. He told me you were still out in the garden and might not want to be disturbed. So here goes, and I’ll be back by breakfast if I can.” Louise read it aloud. When she had finished, all three of her listeners asked in bewilderment, “The man in the mask?”

  Louise looked from one to another of them. Brenda’s laughing old eyes were question marks. Teddy White’s friendly and over-intellectual face took on a scowl of puzzlement. The thin, angular maid stared, sad-eyed, obviously baffled.

  “Listen to me,” said Louise with a note of sharpness. “All three of you have lived here for years. You are, in fact, the only persons who have been here continuously, so far as I know, since the death of my aunt. Various gardeners and other employees, I understand have come and gone. But you three—you should know what there is to be known about this place. Am I right?”

  There were three affirmative answers. “Very well, I wish to know what you know about this man in the mask.”

  “Horrors!” Brenda exclaimed. “I never heard of him.”

  “And you, Janet?”

  The maid looked as if she might burst into tears. She stammered that she knew nothing about any strange people whatsoever, not counting Brenda and Professor White.

  “Professor White,” said Louise, “you are in charge here. Since the death of my aunt the good order of this estate has been your responsibility. Are you aware that there is this very mysterious person—this man who wears a black fan-shaped head-dress with a band of jewels, whose face is masked in black silk, whose belt is studded with emeralds? Well?”

  “Was he barefoot?” the professor asked. “Or was he wearing white shoes? From my third floor window I can’t discern such details.”

  “Then you have seen him!” said Louise. “It happened that he was not barefoot when I met him last night, though from his habits I would suspect he might prefer that mode. At any rate you are aware that this place is being watched—I might say haunted—by this weird apparition.”

  “I really hadn’t given it any thought,” said the professor blankly. “But I’ll set my mind to it.”

  His lack of concern annoyed Louise. She put questions to him pointedly. What did he think when he first saw this black ghost? Didn’t he consider the possible implications—arson, robbery, even murder?

  Teddy White shook his head like an errant pupil. “Usually when I look out of my window late at night I don’t pay any attention to what I see. My theories are the one and only focus of my concentrations. That’s the way it was the night that little three-year-old boy strayed off through the garden and got lost in the ravine. Afterward I remembered having seen him—”

  The sound of a car interrupted this discourse. The chauffeur had returned from Lantern Village. Accompanying him was a round little doctor with double chin that filled the open collar of his checkered sports shirt.

  “Well, well, well,” said the doctor in a great round voice. “What an ideal spot for a sanitarium. I don’t often get back into these deep woods. Nice view. How many neighbors do you have around this lake? I’ve counted twenty-five houses and they all look like castles. Enough to support a good sanitarium. Well, well, we’d better get busy. I’ll need some hot water to boil these instruments and we’ll have those bullets out in a matter of minutes.”

  “Bullets?” Brenda gulped. “Whose bullets?”

  “I’m not concerned with that end of the case,” said the doctor. “Lead me to the patient, please.”

  “Doctor Marcus, there isn’t any patient,” said Louise. “That, is, not yet”

  “What do you mean, no patient yet? What is this—an obstetrics case? They told me—”

  “Please sit down, Dr. Marcus. I’ll explain.”

  “I’m a busy man,” the doctor growled. “What’s this all about?”

  “I’m Louise Wilmott. I came here last evening—”

  “Louise Willmott! Oh! Well! Well! I thought I’d seen that pretty face before. I never miss the newsreels. You’re taking a vacation, I understand.”

  “Yes—at my own estate—for the first time. Last night after I arrived I met a very mysterious person in the garden. To make a long story short, he convinced me that we would need you very soon—”

  “To remove bullets,” the chauffeur added.

  “I don’t understand,” said the doctor. “When is the shooting supposed to start?”

  Louise shook her head. No one knew, unless it would be the strange young man in the jeweled mask.

  “See here,” said the doctor. “I’m a very busy man, but I always have time for important people. Suppos
e you tell me, Miss Wilmott, all the circumstances of this meeting.”

  “Well—” Louise hesitated. “It was all very bizarre. I haven’t told Brenda or the others because—well, I was rather tired, and this morning it seemed too—too impossible—”

  “Did anyone else see the man in the mask?”

  “I did,” said the chauffeur. “I met him in the garden after he had talked with Miss Wilmott.”

  “Very well, Miss Wilmott,” said Dr. Marcus. “Give us your whole story—or if you prefer to tell me alone—”

  Louise was quite willing to have the others hear. She recounted each detail of the previous evening’s adventures. She did not omit the curious behavior of the chess-men. The later episode of the skylight, too, came in for its recounting. But Louise was inclined to regard the events as separate. She believed that the skylight intruder and the jeweled ghost were two different persons.

  When the doctor had heard all accounts he shook his head importantly. “It doesn’t make sense, does it—to you? Very strange, you think? I’ve come not a minute too soon. Miss Wilmott, come out on the porch and I’ll speak with you alone Very well, bring your friend Brenda, too, if you prefer.”

  The doctor added that there was no friend like an old friend—a remark that brought a quick rebuff from Brenda, who insisted that she was just in her prime.

  When the three were alone on one of the south porches, the doctor lowered his voice, to give forth a few brusque words in confidence.

  “I’m not partial to removing bullets. If it’s a case of a troubled brain instead, I don’t hesitate to apply a psychological scalpel to remove the offending complex.”

  “Whose brain are you talking about?” asked Brenda.

  “Not yours, you may rest assured,” Dr. Marcus said, turning a sly twitch of his cheek toward Louise. “Frankly, Miss Wilmott, these stories add up to a mental case. Still more frankly, you may be it.”

  “I?” Louise gasped.

  “You’ve admitted the necessity of escaping to the country, of arriving here very tired, of yielding to a foolish compulsion to spend a couple of hours in the moonlight when you should have gone straight to bed. If—and I must emphasize the if, since I have not had time for a systematic diagnosis—if you come here on the verge of an exhaustion psychosis, it would not be surprising that you should hear voices and experience other slight delusions—jumping chessmen, for example.”

  Louise bowed her head. “I understand. In fact, I had wondered if . . .”

  “However, it is just as probable, I hasten to add, that my case may be the young exhibitionist who frequents this garden for the purpose of frightening people with, threats of bullets. A diagnosis may prove that he should be confined in a prison rather than a hospital.”

  “Oh!” Louise shook her head. “Please—it’s probably me—my weariness.”

  “Let me be brutally frank,” said the doctor, whose brutal frankness no one would think of doubting after two minutes’ observation. “I’ve come a. hundred miles to handle a case. Whether it’s you or the man in the mask is a matter I’ll decide after further investigation. In either event, I’ll present my bill to this estate. Is that understood?”

  Louise nodded, weakly. She was in no state of mind to contest this arrangement.

  But Brenda was fighting fit and she had the advantage of two score and more years’ experience with men of Dr. Marcus’ stripe.

  “Why, you chiseling young whipper-snapper. You ought to be spanked. I ought to—”

  Brenda’s hand caught up a flower-pot and smashed it down over the doctor’s head. He rolled to the. porch floor under a deluge of good earth and the fragrance of geraniums.

  “There,” said Brenda, feeling her muscle. “That makes up for missing my chances last night.”

  “Brenda, you shouldn’t have done that, even if he was rather officious—”

  Louise broke off. Sounds from the roadway attracted her attention. “Someone’s coming. Maybe it’s Darlene, my secretary—I hope!”

  Before Brenda looked up, she helped the unfortunate doctor roll himself over to the corner where he rose to a sitting position and tried to shake off the effects of the recent avalanche.

  Louise ran down the steps. She was followed by others from the house, curious to know who was arriving.

  “It must be one of the scientists,” Louise called back. “The letters said—look! He’s weaving all over the road!”

  The approaching car failed to make the curve of the driveway. It came to an abrupt stop with two hubcaps screeching against the low rock wall.

  The stranger must have been asleep or ill, Louise thought. She waited at the porch steps while Brenda and the chauffeur hurried across to see what was what.

  The chauffeur was first to reach the car door. His spoken greeting received the feeble response of whispered words from the stranger’s lips.

  “He’s passing out!” the chauffeur called back. “Someone’s shot him in the chest. He thinks he’s dying. Where’s that damned doctor?”

  CHAPTER IV

  The World Pours In

  The little round doctor had a busy day. By two o’clock in the afternoon, however, it was all over and he blustered a sigh of relief and asked for a drink.

  “I’m glad I came, in spite of that Amazon that tried to murder me with a flower-pot,” he said, between healthy gulps of wine. “If you can keep the customers lined up for me every day I’ll lease this property for a hospital.”

  The customers hadn’t been so numerous however. On totaling up his bill he discovered he had removed only four bullets, and none of his patients gave much promise of expensive complications.

  Since noon, much to Louise’s relief, the scientists had been coming through unmolested. Seven taxis and two rented cars loaded with European scientists had negotiated the highway without even being shot at. They could thank the state police for that.

  It was all inexplicable at first. The scientists were so amazed that they could talk of nothing else all day.

  Louise was more amazed than anyone. She had come here for a vacation. She had assumed that her latest communications to these noted men of letters would cancel her earlier plans for meeting with them.

  But the stack of mail she had found waiting for her here had dispelled that illusion. The men of science, fifty or more of them, had gotten in touch with each other and agreed that Louise Wilmott’s plan was so promising it must not be dropped. And so, even though she had retired from her three-year throne of honor as Miss Citizen, they would come anyway.

  As the French botanist observed, “Ze eenfluence zat you wield cannot be thrown to ze weends. Ze world she steel have her on you.”

  And so they were arriving by twos and threes and dozens.

  The mysterious enemy that sought to bluff them out with bullets could not be accounted for. Before noon the desperadoes either ran out of ammunition or were frightened away by the state police.

  It was naturally a day of great confusion, complicated by new arrivals hourly, and further complicated by the coming and going of state officers who were determined to make a speedy roundup of the anonymous troublemakers.

  The officers ran into thick storms of violent talk in unknown tongues in their search for a key to this mystery.

  Dr. Marcus steered them away from any consideration of a masked man or jumping ivory on a chess board near the garden pavilion. The crusty doctor warned them that they should discount any testimony of Louise Wilmott, pending his own investigation of her sanity.

  Consequently, the police were left only the skylight intruder as their suspect. And they were’t entirely satisfied that he had any motive for roadside attacks. Why should he take potshots at scientists he had never seen? Evidently he had already got what he wanted; namely, Professor White’s papers.

  The possession of the papers, however, might not give this desperate thief a complete monopoly on their contents. Was it not possible that Professor White was planning to pass his knowledge on to these
visiting scientists? If so, the criminal must have intended to puncture this plan by turning them back.

  Professor Theodore White stroked his little white beard thoughtfully.

  “Donate my theories to these visiting scientists? By the great Greek scholars, it could be done! As a matter of fact, scientifically speaking—yes, it could be done. By the great Greek scholars, it shall be done! I’ll tell Miss Wilmott at once. My years of work may be saved after all. And I will get full credit!”

  The officers couldn’t make anything of his excited antics. They simply gave their promise that the gunman would be searched down, and drove away.

  Louise had discovered by this time that she was not only running a convention, she was also operating a hotel. There were guests by the dozens, and they all preferred to share the expense of accommodations here rather than commute from the hotels of the nearest villages.

  Only a Brenda could rise to meet such a challenge. She took the burden of these matters off Louise’s hands. She kept the sad-faced maid on the hop, she organized the garden workers into a kitchen squad, she hounded Teddy White for help until he fled to his skylighted office.

  Meanwhile, Louise was swept into the highly stimulating conversations relating to the advancement of science.

  Occasionally, as she listened, her thoughts winged away to those strange and fanciful images of jeweled chessmen gliding over the moonlit marble board.

  “I’m going back tonight,” she vowed to herself. “I’m going back—to make sure—to prove to myself that it was only my fancy.”

  The radio news during the dinner hour contained one item that caught the imagination of the scientists. Louise, too, was struck through with something like an electric shock.

  “No further clue has come to us,” said the news announcer, “concerning the shootings which occurred along the Lantern Village road a few miles from Louise Wilmott’s country home. As a matter of incidental, interest, however, the young man who first notified the state police of this trouble is believed to be the well-known political orator, Robert G. Porter. Mr. Porter, as everyone knows, once won a senatorial election over James Stark, but was afterward found ineligible to hold the office.”

 

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