The Washington Square Enigma
Page 15
The girl stepped over to the wall safe and Morningstar went on speaking.
“And now, Doctor — just one more intimate question — and I’ll allow you to relinquish our improvised witness stand. Maybe we’ll even let you go back — to Evanston! And here is the question. Outside of the carbuncle, was there any physiological — or organic — ailment for which you have treated — or were treating — Bond?”
The doctor was silent. Then he spoke.
“Well, a physician does not have to reveal the condition of a patient — nor the latter’s confidences, either — even after the patient is dead. But there is assuredly nothing disgraceful in the particular disorder Bond had. So I’m glad to answer.” He paused. “Samuel Bond was subject to fainting spells — spells which arose from cardiac failure. Which cardiac failure itself was a symptom arising from an organic heart trouble with, however, a far larger functional component to it than organic. And I shall certainly say, here and now, that that heart trouble, per se, would not — nor should not — ever have killed Samuel Bond. So — ”
Morningstar raised a hand: “Per se, no — perhaps!” He seemed, nevertheless, quite pleased with this information. “Well, now, Doctor, another important question. What would be the effect upon such a person of a poison going straight into his circulation, providing that poison were almost wholly composed of neurotoxins and hemorrhagins?”
Hemingway looked startled. He stroked his short brown beard reflectively and cleared his throat. “A poison, going straight into the circulation, acts some ten times quicker than a poison taken by the mouth. Also — ” He thought for a moment. “As to the second part of your question, I should say that hemorrhagins would be dangerous enough, but for a man in Bond’s condition, neurotoxins — ” He raised his hands with a gesture that told more than words: “But yet I fail to see how — ”
“Then,” persisted Morningstar, “the effect of a poison powerful in neurotoxic agents would be particularly rapid and fatal on a person subject to attacks of heart failure? Am I right?”
Hemingway nodded bewilderedly: “That’s about the case. A hemorrhagin merely attacks the corpuscles, but a neurotoxin invariably tends to paralyze the respiratory center and the heart action. I should say that, barring quick action by a physician, who would use strychnine to act as a heart stimulant, the condition you outline would prove fatal.”
By this time, Trudel had removed from the wall safe the paper packet which Harling had seen Morningstar bring over the roofs of Washington Square. The detective drew it across the library table to him, and proceeded to unwind the paper as he went on talking.
CHAPTER XXXIV
A SURPRISE ALL ‘ROUND
“IT SEEMS,” Morningstar explained, “that tramps broke into that empty house last winter and got into an upstairs room where there was a fireplace. It seems, also, that they ripped up most of the floor and burned the boards in this fireplace; that they had quite a splendid camp while it lasted; at any rate, that is what I learned from the Chicago agent of the property, and, taking it for granted, it is a fact that the room above where Bond waited for Wilkins is utterly devoid of a floor; only the long, parallel rafters are left, covered here and there with loose boards and sheets of tin.
“The plaster on the ceiling below,” Morningstar continued, “has long since fallen off; most of the lathes, too, went their way in the fireplace. The result of these depredations is that anyone in the room above can look down through the rafters into the room below, and, in fact, station himself at any point above the underlying floor. Consequently — ” At this point, Morningstar finished his unwrapping of the newspaper package, revealing something at which all the members of his audience, including the shamefaced Vandervoort, pressed forward to glimpse.
The packet held an enormous spider with great, furry legs. It was dead, and several of the limp legs stretched some three inches in either direction. From under its hideous face and eyes gleamed the tips of two powerful mandibles. Underneath, its white fur was marked on each side by three vertical flecks of golden brown, and about the narrow waist was looped a piece of white cotton string which lay coiled in a neat circle at the side of the creature.
“This,” Morningstar announced, as they all looked up in horror, “is what I found lurking on an upper shelf of that dark closet, hampered in its concealment by the yards of string which it was ensnared with and which it was dragging about with it. It took a dozen-blows to kill it. It happens, however, that this piece of string measures just the distance from the open rafters of the floor above down to the floor below.
“So,” Morningstar went on, “I ask but one question of you all: When Bond entered the room yesterday and sat down for his daily wait, did someone, lying prone on the floor above — on, say, one of those large sheets of tin, on which those former hobo inmates of that house used to sleep — let down this poisonous creature, some distance in back of Bond’s head, till it was on a level with the back of the oblivious man’s neck? Did that someone, quite beautifully concealed, peering craftily over the edge of that sheet of tin, move the string silently back and forth with one half-extended forearm, maneuvering the string the necessary few inches till the maddened spider grasped the back of Bond’s neck with its mandibles and furiously shot forth the poison fangs lying in each of those appendages? If this were the case, Bond would not even have felt it. Much less, even, have felt the front legs of the spider scrambling for a foothold on his neck. And if all this were so, his heart was affected within six or seven minutes, and he collapsed right where he was. And died, where he lay, within another ten minutes.” Morningstar paused. “If we assume so much as this, may we not assume, too, that the string slipped from the fingers of the holder when Bond, with the spider clinging to his neck, went down — and that the spider thus got away? And that the man above, concealed thus far by the long sheet of tin, thought he heard someone coming — and got out of the place in a hurry, not daring to search for the creature — and the incriminating string? I say we may — for here is the spider — and here is the string!” He turned toward Professor Yergin, who was studying the thing intently through his horn spectacles. “Professor, now you no doubt understand why I required a specialist in entomology here tonight. Just what sort of an insect — or rather crustacean — is this?”
“But Great Scott!” broke in Inspector Chapley. “Who could have known that Bond was visiting that house every day at three o’clock, so that he could have stationed himself in the room above?”
“The only one I can conceive of,” returned Morningstar pleasantly, “is someone who heard my telling Miss Vanderhuyden in this very room what I had discovered of Bond’s movements, after I shadowed Bond several days from Evanston. That person likewise knew that Bond was a sick man. That Bond had heart trouble, in fact. And that he had a complete anaesthesia of the back of his neck. And if that individual were an eavesdropper — ” He stepped away from the table. “Once more, Professor, what kind of a spider is that?”
“That,” said Yergin, still studying it, “is a hybrid variant — a half-brother, so to speak, of the so-called tree spider — the Lycosa Invecta — which itself is the most poisonous of the whole tarantula group and avowedly the most deadly in the world. This hybrid, however, is the very bad brother of that quite sufficiently bad one — for the poison sacs in each of the mandibles in this species is hypertrophied; in simpler language, tremendously enlarged. However, I believe you asked the name of this variant. It is known as the Lycosa Invecta Luzonis. And captive tarantulas such as this are used as luck talismans by the people of the island of Luzon — and Mindanao also — who carry them about in little cork-lined boxes and feed them on a daily live cockroach — or bit of raw red meat.”
Morningstar had been nearing the library door as the question was answered. With a sudden motion he reached out to the knob and jerked open the door. The kneeling figure of Santi tumbled in, face forward, on the floor. Like a flash, Morningstar was down, with both knees pressed on the man’s
back, grasping his struggling wrists. “Quick, Chapley,” he snapped, “your handcuffs.”
Inspector Chapley, across the room, seemed to catch himself together with a start, and sprang forward. A second later, he had clipped a pair of steel handcuffs over the distorted wrists which Morningstar held forcibly back of the servant’s waistline. With that, Morningstar got off his man and jerked the latter neatly to his feet, groping at the same time in one of his back pockets. A moment later and he had withdrawn from the pocket a flat box of teakwood and silver, covered with glass and lined with cork.
“So this is where you kept your pet, eh, Santiago?” He looked curiously down at the dwarfed figure. “Well, Santi, what you got say about matter, eh?”
The little Philippino looked toward the table and the spider and the coil of string. He showed his teeth in a snarl and he glared about the room.
“Yes,” he said defiantly, “I keel Bownd a’right with Tasmura, my spidaire. Thata devil of a Bownd beat me thata day I leesten at his library door, an’ I say to me: ‘Santi, you keel heem for that eef it take you thousan’ year!’ An’ I do it, I do it, I do it!” He gazed again toward the ugly creature stretched on the table, and across his brown face flashed a look of genuine emotion. “Tasmura — an’ they have keel you too, eh, beega boy?” He shrugged his shoulders and turned to Morningstar: “So be eet. We can go.”
A half hour later the big house was deserted. All the guests of the strange party had left, and Harling and the girl were standing alone in the library. She leaned forward to him and spoke:
“Mr. Harling, after all, it was you who recovered that ruby. It seems unfair that the money reward should go to Mr. Morningstar and this man Rafferty, and that you who really saved the thing by your quick wit should get nothing.”
He smiled down at her. “That’s nothing,” he assured her. ‘I’ve got that promissory note at last, and if you really feel that there’s something coming to me, you can, if you wish, lend me the fare to go back to Frisco with. I have come out much better than I hoped.”
She stepped a little nearer to him and looked curiously in his face.
“You will never know,” she said to him sadly, “why it was that I found I did not care for Courtenay after that — that Western trip. And I am afraid you will never guess. But may I ask a question — one little tiny question? Suppose, Mr. Ford Harling, that there was another reward went with that ruby. Suppose — suppose — that that reward was — me?”
It all rolled over him in a second. The heavens seemed to open up as the blonde-ringleted face looked wistfully up at him. He knew then that it had to be that way, for with the Vanderhuyden fortune on her side, he could never, never have spoken first.
“Trudel,” he said as he opened out his arms to her and she crept into them, “I — I never dreamed. But if that reward is — is really you — well, I’ll just mail the note back to Frisco, for I’ve suddenly discovered that I don’t care to go back at all!”
THE END
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This is a work of fiction.
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