Professor Augustus Van Dusen: 49 Detective Mysteries in One Edition. Jacques Futrelle

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СКАЧАТЬ get rid of it some time.”

      “It wouldn’t be wise,” remonstrated the dentist. “A filling will save it. Here,” and he turned and stirred an effervescent powder in a glass. “Take this and see if it doesn’t straighten you out.”

      The stranger took the glass and gulped down the foaming liquid.

      “Now sit right there for five minutes or so,” instructed the dentist. “If it doesn’t quiet you and you insist on having the tooth pulled, of course—”

      He sat down and glanced again at the clock after which he looked at his watch and replaced it in a pocket of his pajamas. His visitor was sitting, too, controlling himself only with an obvious effort.

      “This is real neuralgia weather,” observed the dentist at last, idly. “Misty and damp.”

      “I suppose so,” was the reply. “This began to hurt about twelve o’clock, just as I went to bed, and finally it got so bad that I couldn’t stand it. Then I got up and dressed and came out for a walk. I kept on, thinking that it would get better but it didn’t and a policeman sent me here.”

      There was a pause of several minutes.

      “Feel any better?” inquired the dentist, at last.

      “No,” was the reply. “I think you’d better take it out.”

      “Just as you say!”

      The offending tooth was drawn, the stranger paid him with a sigh of relief, and after a minute or so started out. At the door he turned back.

      “What time is it now, please?” he asked.

      “Seventeen minutes past two,” replied the dentist.

      “Thanks,” said the stranger. “I’ll just have time to catch a car back home.”

      “Good night,” said the dentist.

      “Good night.”

      Skulking along through the dense gloom, impalpably a part of the murky mist which pressed down between tall board fences on each side, moved the figure of a man. Occasionally he shot a glance behind him, but the general direction of his gaze was to his left, where a fence cut off the small back-yards of an imposing row of brown-stone residences. At last he stopped and tried a gate. It opened noiselessly and he disappeared inside. A pause. A man came out of the gate, closed it carefully and walked on through the alley toward an arc-light which spread a generous glare at the intersection of a street.

      Next morning at eight o’clock, Paul Randolph De Forrest, a young man of some social prominence, was found murdered in the sitting room of his suite in the big Avon apartment house. He had been dead for several hours. He sat beside his desk, and death left him sprawled upon it face downward. The weapon was one of several curious daggers which had been used ornamentally on the walls of his apartments. The blade missed the heart only a quarter of an inch or so; death must have come within a couple of minutes.

      Detective Mallory went to the apartments, accompanied by the Medical Examiner. Together they lifted the dead man. Beneath his body, on the desk, lay a sheet of paper on which were scrawled a few words; a pencil was clutched tightly in his right hand. The detective glanced then stared at the paper; it startled him. In the scrawly, trembling, incoherent handwriting of the dying man were these disjointed sentences and words:

      “Murdered **** Franklin Chase **** quarrel **** stabbed me **** am dying **** God help me **** clock striking 2 **** good-bye.”

      The detective’s jaws snapped as he read. Here was crime, motive and time. After a sharp scrutiny of the apartments, he went down the single flight of stairs to the office floor to make some inquiries. An elevator man, Moran, was the first person questioned. He had been on duty the night before. Did he know Mr. Franklin Chase? Yes. Had Mr. Franklin Chase called to see Mr. De Forrest on the night before? Yes.

      “What time was he here?”

      “About half past eleven, I should say. He and Mr. De Forrest came in together from the theatre.”

      “When did Mr. Chase go away?”

      “I don’t know, sir. I didn’t see him.”

      “It might have been somewhere near two o’clock?”

      “I don’t know, sir,” replied Moran again, “I’ll—I’ll tell you all I know about it. I was on duty all night. Just before two o’clock a telegram was ‘phoned for a Mr. Thomas on the third floor. I took it and wrote on it the time that I received it. It was then just six minutes before two o’clock. I walked up from this floor to the third—two flights—to give the message to Mr. Thomas. As I passed Mr. De Forrest’s door, I heard loud voices, two people evidently quarrelling. I paid no attention then but went on. I was at Mr. Thomas’s door possibly five or six minutes. When I came down I heard nothing further and thought no more of it.”

      “You fix the time of passing Mr. De Forrest’s door first at, say, five minutes of two?” asked the detective.

      “Within a minute of that time, yes, sir.”

      “And again about two or a minute or so after?”

      “Yes.”

      “Ah,” exclaimed the detective. “That fits in exactly with the other and establishes beyond question the moment of the murder.” He was thinking of the words “clock striking 2” written by the dying man. “Did you recognize the voices?”

      “No, sir, I could not. They were not very clear.”

      That was the substance of Moran’s story. Detective Mallory then called at the telegraph office and indisputable records there showed that they had telephoned a message for Mr. Thomas at precisely six minutes of two. Detective Mallory was satisfied.

      Within an hour Franklin Chase was under arrest. Detective Mallory found him sound asleep in his room in a boarding house less than a block away from the Avon. He seemed somewhat astonished when informed of his arrest for murder, but was quite calm.

      “It’s some sort of a mistake,” he protested.

      “I don’t make mistakes,” said the detective. He had a short memory.

      Further police investigation piled up the evidence against the prisoner. For instance, minute blood stains were found on his hands, and a drop or so on the clothing he had worn the night before; and it was established by three fellow lodgers—young men who had come in late and stopped at his room—that he was not in his boarding house at two o’clock the night before.

      That afternoon Chase was arraigned for a preliminary hearing. Detective Mallory stated the case and his statement was corroborated by necessary witnesses. First he established the authenticity of the dying man’s writing. Then he proved that Chase had been with De Forrest at half past eleven o’clock; that there had been a quarrel—or argument—in De Forrest’s room just before two o’clock; and finally, with a dramatic flourish, he swore to the blood stains on the prisoner’s hands and clothing.

      The august Court stared at the prisoner and took up his pen to sign the necessary commitment.

      “May I say something before we go any further?” СКАЧАТЬ