“NAME YOUR PRICE.”
James Stone looked as if the ground had suddenly caved from under his
feet. His big body stiffened, his hands clutched his hat, and his
startled eyes were riveted on Follansbee’s countenance. He moistened
his dry lips again and attempted to speak, but it ended only in a
swallow, as evidenced by the movement in his throat.
The great specialist seemed to enjoy the sensation he had made.
“You know, Mr. Stone,” he went on, “that we doctors have a way,
sometimes, of locating a patient’s trouble by feeling him over until
we find a tender spot. When he winces, we know we’ve struck it, and
we draw our own conclusions. It’s obvious that I’ve found your tender
spot; therefore, there isn’t any use in your beating about the bush.
I know that you desire to eliminate Crawford. I might use a stronger
expression, but I’ll spare your feelings to that extent. Out with it,
now, man! You have a lot of poison bottled up in your system. Let
it come out. If there’s anything wrong with you mentally, as your
friend in Brazil seems to have thought, I’ll find it out and make due
allowances. On the other hand, if you’re sane, you need be no more
afraid of confiding in me. I’m not a policeman, you know—or a judge.
Remember, too, that I have said I could help you.”
It was not so much his words, but the manner in which he uttered them
that gave James Stone a certain confidence.
Follansbee was as far removed as possible from the type of the kindly,
tolerant, helpful physician. On the contrary, everything said,
every glance he cast—the whole man, in fact—would have been highly
distasteful to the average person. It was that very thing, however,
that tended to draw Stone out and to make him reveal the murderous
impulses which controlled him.
It seemed incredible, but he had a feeling that he had nothing to fear
from the famous Doctor Follansbee; in fact, that the latter was a
possible ally. And in support of that startling belief, certain words
of young Floyd’s came to him.
Floyd had said that Follansbee was very eccentric, had ways of doing
things that were all his own, and was in the habit of seeming to
sympathize with those who came to him, no matter what they might say or
do.
The young physician had evidently been a firm believer in the man who
had once been his professor, but Stone found himself wondering if
Follansbee was what he had seemed to Floyd. He doubted it, and decided
he had found a kindred spirit. Follansbee’s mask seemed to be slipping
off.
Emboldened by this, the miner dropped his great hands on his knees and
leaned forward, flinging a quick glance about him as he did so.
“Are you sure we’ll not be heard here?” he asked, cunning returning to
his eyes.
“Perfectly,” was the answer. “My servants are well trained, and these
walls are much thicker than those they put into the houses they build
nowadays. You can talk openly and freely, Stone, and your secrets will
be guarded.”
Stone nodded, and the glitter in his eyes became more pronounced.
“You are right, Doctor Follansbee,” he said. “I can’t figure out how
you know, but I want to get rid of Win Crawford. I—I want to get rid of
him before he gets rid of me.”
His heavy face was wrinkled into a mask of cunning—the foolish, vacant
cunning of the insane.
“He thinks he’s clever,” Stone went on; “thinks I don’t know what he’s
going to do. But I’m as cute as he is, and I’ve tumbled to him.”
Follansbee had folded his long, flexible fingers and was leaning his
shoulders on the arms of his chair. His evil-looking eyes were slowly
taking on a mocking twinkle as they looked at the features of the man
in front of him.
The skilled specialist had no further doubt about the matter. At that
moment he knew to a certainty that James Stone was mad, and that his
was the most dangerous form of insanity, for it centered only on one
object.
Outwardly and in his everyday life, Stone might move and conduct
himself as an ordinary individual, but lurking always in his diseased
brain was one wild and terrible fancy—an insane fear and hatred of the
man who in the brighter, if less prosperous, past he had once risked
his life to save.
It remained to be seen, however, in what Follansbee’s treatment of the
case would consist.
“So you think that your partner is going to kill you, do you?” the
specialist asked.
“I don’t think—I know!” the husky voice returned. “All this is only a
game of his. He has brought me to New York because he was afraid to do
it in Brazil. I have too many friends there, but he’ll find I’m too
much for him. Ha, ha! He’ll find out!”
The laugh was so ugly and hollow, and the man so obviously getting
more and more excited that Follansbee decided to stave off a further
outburst.
“That’s all right,” he said soothingly. “I’m sure you will be able to
look after yourself.”
“I’m going to do more than that,” Stone announced malignantly. “I’m
going to kill him before he has a chance to kill me.”
It was clear that he had thrown off all fear of Follansbee, either
under the influence of his own misguided desires or his belief that the
head of St. Swithin’s was not what he seemed to the world.
With a quick movement he rose to his feet, and, leaning over the
desk, looked down into the physician’s eyes with a face that worked
convulsively.
“And you’ve got to help me!” he added. “I’ve tried three times to do
it, twice on board the _Cortez_, but luck was against me every time.”
“Three times!” Follansbee repeated, in astonishment. “Then Crawford
knows what you’re up to?”
“Yes, he knows,” Stone answered, “but that doesn’t make any difference.
He’s a fool, and he thinks he’s got to stick by me to wait his own
chance. He and I are staying at the same hotel in connecting rooms. We
breakfasted at the same table this morning, and I had hard work to get
away from him.”
“That’s queer,” the specialist remarked thoughtfully. “He must be a
fool!”
His surprise was genuine. He was not capable of fathoming the true
cause of Crawford’s devotion to his old comrade—could not understand
that Stone’s partner had forgiven and deliberately left his life in
jeopardy for the sake of other days.
And in James Stone’s distorted brain there was no more idea of the
truth. He stabbed at the desk with one thick finger.
“That’s his cursed cunning, I tell you!” he declared. “He’s waiting
until he gets good and ready to strike. By Heaven, I can’t sleep at
night, sometimes, for thinking of it! That’s why he doesn’t leave me,
even though I’ve tried three times to kill him. He’s just waiting his
chance, waiting his chance.”
The hoarse voice was lifted until it broke.
“But his chance isn’t going to come!” the demented man insisted. “He
won’t live to get it! You’ve got to help me, I tell you. Floyd sent
me to you because he caught me trying to shoot Crawford out there,
and thought I was crazy. You know better, though, and I know something
about you. Floyd thinks you’re only a great doctor, but he’s a kid,
and he doesn’t know the world as I do. I ain’t crazy, Doctor Stephen
Follansbee; I ain’t a fool. Maybe New York thinks you’re a saint,
for all I know—though I don’t see how it can when it looks at that
face of yours! But I know you’re not. You may be the king-pin of your
profession, but you’re a crook as well—as big a rascal as ever walked
the earth! I know something about men, and you can’t fool me.
“Now, let’s get down to business,” he continued. “Charlie Floyd sent me
here for one kind of help, but you’ve opened the way for another—and
that’s the kind I want. I ain’t very good at this sort of thing, I’ll
admit. I’ve failed three times, but if you take it on, I guess you’ll
get your man at the first crack. If you can’t I’ve got you wrong. I’m
willing to pay well, but I don’t want any backing and filling about it.
So name your price and let’s get busy, Doctor Stephen Follansbee, for
time is on the wing.”