Part 16
“Go on!” Matthew Higgins was relentless and Sally continued.
“It took three years to earn enough money to come to America and then it took years of blind wandering to reach this hospital and....
“When she reached it, her great love had grown, through endless pain and privation, to a great bitterness. She determined to reveal the Great Dr. Sterling and ruin him, and by mistake when she asked to see him, she was taken, instead, to his father-in-law, Dr. Jemison, and it was through the door of Dr. Jemison’s office that she saw Ethridge Sterling standing with his arm around Dr. Jemison’s daughter.
“She had a heart attack. Dr. Jemison pronounced her dead, and she was carted back through the dispensary door and handed over to a German Society for burial. The president of the society was Otto Weber. He burned her papers and I, then nine, was put into an orphan asylum.
“My father was already famous. He was Otto’s best customer. But what we learn in the first eight years of our lives ... if it is bitter ... we never forget....
“At the asylum we had candy at Christmas and mush for breakfast, and the Elijah Wilson operated upon us, free, when necessary. I remember quite vividly when I was operated upon. Double hernia, and endless pain, and a dispensary consultation. Dr. Sterling was designated to do the operation.
“Upon the day slated, his son was born and my case was turned over to an assistant resident. A man killed in the War....”
“Fegus,” Cub’s voice was low.
“The doctor had never done the operation before. I was his first ... the incisions were too deep.
“I lost my mother before I really knew her and my manhood before it began....
“I lost both of them because my father was Dr. Ethridge Sterling, of the famous hands.
“At sixteen, when the boys in the orphanage discovered my inabilities, I determined to ruin my father ... and began studying pharmacy with an idea of becoming connected, eventually, with his hospital.
“The orphanage farmed me out to a pharmacist. Otto Weber had become a political influence. I went to him and worked upon his sentiment. It was he, and the excellency of my work ... and why not? I am the son of Dr. Sterling ... that persuaded the Attorney-General to recommend me to Dr. Barton and Dr. MacArthur as assistant pharmacist.
“I passed my state boards brilliantly. I entered the pharmacy of the Elijah Wilson, the same year that Cub Sterling entered medical school.
“He spent ten years studying the science of medicine. I spent those ten years perfecting myself in the science of murder. At first I intended murdering the patients of my father, slowly, occasionally, over a period of years. Then I perceived if I waited until Wilkins died, became promoted as Chief Pharmacist and murdered my brother’s patients, I would doubly ruin my father....
“Then the gods smiled...! Through the losing of my top hair, I, unconsciously, grew a nickname. For five years now, I have catered to that nickname. I shaved my center part to accentuate my bald spot. I pomaded my long front hair, which naturally is curly as my brother’s, to slick behind my ears ... to change my forehead line.
“There is not a famous doctor around this hospital who would not testify as to my baldness....
“Around a hospital where so many people are constantly passing at stated intervals to stated places, the eyes of even a good observer become dulled into ‘seeing,’ when a person resembling a familiar doctor passes at an unexpected time, that doctor!
“It is upon that knowledge, a sudden assumption of my brother’s queer angularity, and the combing of my recently washed hair to cover my bald spot, that I have built my resemblance ... not upon the features....
“Some day I shall be caught. When I am caught my father will be caught also.”
“Is that all?” Higgins was still relentless....
Cub Sterling’s head jerked up from his folded arms and he said:
“God! It’s enough!”
Sally Ferguson’s voice out into him:
“There is a diary of the murders, too.”
Both men rose and came to her side. Their movement disturbed the fly and he began circling around the dead man’s head.
Sally’s voice drowned out his buzzing.
“Cupola, Friday, May 13th ... 1:00 A.M. I have just committed my first murder upon the patient in Bed 11, Ward B. I know I have just completed it, because I filled, myself, the prescription to which I added Datura stramonium. The medicine was to be administered at midnight. The dose should, with the heavy bromide I included, have acted in an hour. It is unexpected and therefore not likely to cause an autopsy.
“The patient is one of my father’s and also under the care of my brother.
“And she is now dead.”
“Cupola, Sunday, May 15th ... 1:00 A.M. The murder of the second patient in Bed 11, Ward B, is now completed. I tripled the prescription dose of Digitalis. It was to be administered at 12 M.
“She is a patient of my brother and observed by my father. Though autopsy is performed the condition of the organs will be such as not to suggest chemical analysis. Therefore I am protected.
“So far suspicion is not aroused, but patience is not a virtue in which I have been lacking. It takes time to make a reputation and time ... to ... my candle is almost gone....”
“Cupola, Tuesday, May 17th ... 1:15 A. M. I have just returned from Ward B where by the use of coniine administered with a hypodermic syringe, I have murdered the patient in Bed 11. My first traceable murder. Peters and Paton nearly caught me. If murdering ugly women is so much pleasure; a pretty woman.... Tonight I began an intriguing custom. I left upon the crib of Bessie Ellis a Ma-ma doll.
“Miss Kerr was on the ward at the time. She is stealing morphia again. So ... even should she have recognized me, she will deny all knowledge. Most fortunate!
“The staff meeting yesterday, at which my brother escaped all censure, forces me into action. This autopsy will reveal murder and begin, I hope, the suspicion. My plan is working splendidly! But why not? Fifteen years’ patient study are behind it. I am tired and it is late.... Seeing Peters and Paton was luck....”
“My eyes ... I can’t....” Sally wailed.
Matthew Higgins took the book from her hands; the fading light was eerie. Cub Sterling put his arms around the girl and drew her into his lap. She began to shiver and Higgins read:
“Cupola, Wednesday, May 18th ... 1:30 A.M. The Gods are on my side. I have just murdered Rose Standish. She was a pretty woman, and my father had ordered a sleeping potion ... then he came by and asked me privately to make it bread pills. I did ... plus an African sleeping drug. Ah! the murder drugs are so fascinating and Heddis searched for the obvious potions, only.
“Ah, luck! Ah, irony! Bear Sterling helping his illegitimate son to ruin his legitimate one.
“Rose Standish was asleep by midnight. The student nurse nearly caught me. It was exciting! She will testify against my brother.
“Yesterday I was called before the staff to check drugs after Heddis settled upon coniine. It is all so damnably easy. Of course no house sold the supply. I made it from the hemlock I gathered in the mountains of Pennsylvania when I was east on vacation. I had thought so long about what to use. Something which we did not keep in the pharmacy. I used to think something untraceable ... and then when I met Heddis I saw he would discover....
“Then coniine came to me. Out of a volume of Plato I found in a pullman seat in the Broad Street Station coniine came to me. Coniine, such a word! Coniine!
“The suspicion is growing. My brother and my father are panicky.
“I put another doll upon Bessie’s crib. I passed no one in the corridor. Rose Standish was a pretty woman....”
“Crazy. Dead crazy!”
Higgins’ nerves were jumpy too.
“Anything else?” Cub’s voice had become relentless, now.
“Yes?”
“Cupola, Wednesday, May 18th, Noon. My father has pneumonia and will die without the knowledge of my brother’s ruination unless I act quickly.
“There must be a daylight murder within the next twenty-four hours. If there is no patient in Bed 11, then upon the patient in a corresponding bed upon another floor.
“Before he dies, my brother must be under arrest....
“It will take careful planning to execute a daylight murder ... but years of careful planning prepare one....”
“God! It makes me sick to read it! Lil Parkins, the best woman....”
“A detective you put in the bed...?”
Higgins nodded flatly, and turned the pages. At the back of the book was written, upon the stiff cover:
_Murder Chart_:
May 13th, 1:00 A. M.—goitre—E.S. & E.S. Jr.—Datura stramonium May 15th, 1:00 A. M.—heart—E.S. & E.S. Jr.—overdose Digitalis May 17th, 1:15 A. M.—operative E.S. obs. S. Jr.—Coniine May 18th, 1:30 A. M.—nurse—E.S. Jr. obs. E.S.—Coniine May 19th, 3:40 P. M.—heart—House & E.S. Jr.—failed to murder but ruined E.S. Jr.
The sunset breeze wound in the window and loosened the bands of Higgins’ heated brain, and the hysterical tears of Sally Ferguson. She buried her head in Cub’s shoulder and sobbed horribly.
Her sobs were long and rending and they forced Matthew Higgins into instant action. He struck a match, tore the pages from the front of the blank book and put them over the match.
The yellow-red flames ran up the crinkling paper as Cub Sterling’s legs began untangling themselves and he threw Sally aside.
“Aw, what’s the use?” Higgins’ gray eyes shot into Cub. “He’s dead and your father’s dying. The body and the murder chart’s all we need.”
The contact with Cub had revived Sally’s fight.
“How can we stop _The Call_?”
Higgins snapped around.
“Who owns it?”
Cub was half across the room toward Sally. He swerved.
“Barton told me half an hour ago that the Attorney-General had just bought it.... Now I see....” His voice shattered.
Sally ran toward him. Higgins pushed a chair under his bending legs.
The fly rose from the dead man’s face and slipped with the curling smoke out of the open window toward the distant river.
Transcriber’s Notes
--Copyright notice is from the printed edition—this text is public domain in the country of publication.
--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and dialect unchanged.
--Only in the text versions, delimited italicized text in _underscores_ (the HTML version reproduces the font form of the printed book.)