THE DEADLY TUBE.
While unconsciously playing into Follansbee’s hands, Floyd had opened
the way for a diabolical crime.
The head of St. Swithin’s had adroitly pulled the wool over James
Stone’s eyes, and kept the half-crazed miner from knowing just what to
expect; but nevertheless the specialist’s mind had been made up from
the beginning. He had planned it all out after receiving the letter.
As for his recognition of the miner, which had so startled his visitor,
it had been a very simple matter, and quite within the capacity of one
much less shrewd than Stephen Follansbee. Floyd had announced that
Stone and Crawford had taken passage on the _Cortez_. Follansbee had
taken pains to learn when the vessel had docked, and when, later, the
big, bronzed man had presented himself, the caller’s name had, to the
doctor, been as good as written over his face.
That Stone was undoubtedly a victim of some mental derangement did not
matter to Follansbee in the least. Almost any other physician would
have been affected by the man’s plight, and would have thought of
nothing but the best way to cure him. Not so Follansbee, however. His
apology for a heart had been hard in the beginning, and it had grown
steadily harder as a result of his ostensibly scientific, but really
devilish, experiments on unfortunate sufferers.
Had there been a spark of honor in him, he would have done all in his
power to keep the irresponsible Stone from crime, and, if possible, to
banish his ailment; but instead he determined to use the demented man
for his own ends to help him to murder, and finally to strip him of his
fortune.
His conscience had not given him a single twinge, for the very good
reason that he had none. In fact, the prospective divisions of wealth
seemed to him eminently right and proper. He might be taking away
Stone’s fortune, but he would be giving him Crawford’s in place of it.
In other words, he reasoned that Stone would be getting the job done
for practically nothing, and the four hundred and fifty thousand, while
generous pay, was not a cent too much according to Follansbee’s view of
it. He knew as well as any one could have known that, though he might
try to shift the responsibility as much as he pleased, it lay with him,
after all, and he wanted pay for it.
Moreover, he coveted wealth, more wealth than he had been able to amass
through the many handsome fees that were pouring in all the time from
the rich and great who were numbered among his patients. He wished
to build a hospital of his own, of which he should be even more the
master than was possible at St. Swithin’s. He longed for expensive
laboratories built and equipped along new lines, not for the good of
humanity, but to further his own peculiar ambitions. Stone’s money,
with what he already possessed, would go far toward realizing these
ambitions, and he was willing to take almost any risk to further his
conscienceless aims.
The hours passed away swiftly, and at about seven o’clock in the
evening Follansbee, returning from a round of the wards, entered
his private office and went to the telephone. He rang up the Hotel
Windermere and asked for Stone. The clerk informed him that Mr. Stone
was not in the hotel at that time, but might return at any moment. “If
you care to leave a message, it will be delivered to him as soon as he
arrives,” the man went on.
“Very well,” Follansbee returned, after a pause. “Tell him that the
gentleman whom he visited on Amsterdam Avenue this morning will be at
the hotel about half past seven, and will wait for him in the lobby.”
The clerk took down the message and repeated it, after which Follansbee
replaced the receiver and prepared to leave the hospital. By means of
an intercommunicating phone, he called up St. Swithin’s garage and had
his car, which he kept there, brought round to the entrance. As he
crossed the pavement to enter it, he lifted one long, lean hand and
pressed a smooth, round object in his breast pocket.
Little did the passers-by dream that, concealed in the clothing of that
sinister, shabbily dressed, but nevertheless distinguished figure, was
a tube containing deadly bacilli in a quantity sufficient to spread
death for miles around—even, if unchecked, to sweep throughout the
entire country.
Thus, like the shadow of death itself, the vulturelike form of Stephen
Follansbee slipped into the big limousine, and was winged away to the
Hotel Windermere.