The Silent Bullet Part 10

"How many treatments did you give Mrs. Close?" asked Kennedy.

"Not over a dozen, I should say;" replied Gregory. "I have a record of them and the dates, which I will give you presently. Certainly they were not numerous enough or frequent enough to have caused a dermat.i.tis such as she has. Besides, look here. I have an apparatus which, for safety to the patient, has few equals in the country. This big lead-gla.s.s bowl, which is placed over my X-ray tube when in use, cuts off the rays at every point except exactly where they are needed."

He switched on the electric current, and the apparatus began to sputter.

The pungent odour of ozone from the electric discharge filled the room.

Through the lead-gla.s.s bowl I could see the X-ray tube inside suffused with its peculiar, yellowish-green light, divided into two hemispheres of different shades. That, I knew, was the cathode ray, not the X-ray, for the X-ray itself, which streams outside the tube, is invisible to the human eye. The doctor placed in our hands a couple of fluoroscopes, an apparatus by which X-rays can be detected. It consists simply of a closed box with an opening to which the eyes are placed. The opposite end of the box is a piece of board coated with a salt such as platino-barium cyanide. When the X-ray strikes this salt it makes it glow, or fluoresce, and objects held between the X-ray tube and the fluoroscope cast shadows according to the density of the parts which the X-rays penetrate.

With the lead-gla.s.s bowl removed, the X-ray tube sent forth its wonderful invisible radiation and made the back of the fluoroscope glow with light. I could see the bones of my fingers as I held them up between the X-ray tube and the fluoroscope. But with the lead-gla.s.s bowl in position over the tube, the fluoroscope was simply a black box into which I looked and saw nothing. So very little of the radiation escaped from the bowl that it was negligible--except at one point where there was an opening in the bottom of the bowl to allow the rays to pa.s.s freely through exactly on the spot on the patient where they were to be used.

"The dermat.i.tis, they say, has appeared all over her body, particularly on her head and shoulders," added Dr. Gregory. "Now I have shown you my apparatus to impress on you how really impossible it would have been for her to contract it from her treatments here. I've made thousands of exposures with never an X-ray burn before--except to myself. As for myself, I'm as careful as I can be, but you can see I am under the rays very often, while the patient is only under them once in a while."

To ill.u.s.trate his care he pointed out to us a cabinet directly back of the operating-table, lined with thick sheets of lead. From this cabinet he conducted most of his treatments as far as possible. A little peep-hole enabled him to see the patient and the X-ray apparatus, while an arrangement of mirrors and a fluorescent screen enabled him to see exactly what the X-rays were disclosing, without his leaving the lead-lined cabinet.

"I can think of no more perfect protection for either patient or operator," said Kennedy admiringly. "By the way, did Mrs. Close come alone?"

"No, the first time Mr. Close came with her. After that, she came with her French maid."

The next day we paid a visit to Mrs. Close herself at the private hospital. Kennedy had been casting about in his mind for an excuse to see her, and I had suggested that we go as reporters from the Star.

Fortunately after sending up my card on which I had written Craig's name we were at length allowed to go up to her room.

We found the patient reclining in an easy chair, swathed in bandages, a wreck of her former self. I felt the tragedy keenly. All that social position and beauty had meant to her had been suddenly blasted.

"You will pardon my presumption," began Craig, "but, Mrs. Close, I a.s.sure you that I am actuated by the best of motives. We represent the New York Star--"

"Isn't it terrible enough that I should suffer so," she interrupted, "but must the newspapers hound me, too?"

"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Close," said Craig, "but you must be aware that the news of your suit of Dr. Gregory has now become public property. I couldn't stop the Star, much less the other papers, from talking about it. But I can and will do this, Mrs. Close. I will see that justice is done to you and all others concerned. Believe me, I am not here as a yellow journalist to make newspaper copy out of your misfortune. I am here to get at the truth sympathetically. Incidentally, I may be able to render you a service, too."

"You can render me no service except to expedite the suit against that careless doctor--I hate him."

"Perhaps," said Craig. "But suppose someone else should be proved to have been really responsible? Would you still want to press the suit and let the guilty person escape?"

She bit her lip. "What is it you want of me?" she asked.

"I merely want permission to visit your rooms at your home and to talk with your maid. I do not mean to spy on you, far from it; but consider, Mrs. Close, if I should be able to get at the bottom of this thing, find out the real cause of your misfortune, perhaps show that you are the victim of a cruel wrong rather than of carelessness, would you not be willing to let me go ahead? I am frank to tell you that I suspect there is more to this affair than you yourself have any idea of."

"No, you are mistaken, Mr. Kennedy. I know the cause of it. It was my love of beauty. I couldn't resist the temptation to get rid of even a slight defect. If I had left well enough alone I should not be here now.

A friend recommended Dr. Gregory to my husband, who took me there.

My husband wishes me to remain at home, but I tell him I feel more comfortable here in the hospital. I shall never go to that house again--the memory of the torture of sleepless nights in my room there when I felt my good looks going, going"--she shuddered--"is such that I can never forget it. He says I would be better off there, but no, I cannot go. Still," she continued wearily, "there can be no harm in your talking to my maid."

Kennedy noted attentively what she was saying. "I thank you, Mrs.

Close," he replied. "I am sure you will not regret your permission.

Would you be so kind as to give me a note to her?"

She rang, dictated a short note to a nurse, signed it, and languidly dismissed us.

I don't know that I ever felt as depressed as I did after that interview with one who had entered a living death to ambition, for while Craig had done all the talking I had absorbed nothing but depression. I vowed that if Gregory or anybody else was responsible I would do my share toward bringing on him retribution.

The Closes lived in a splendid big house in the Murray Hill section. The presentation of the note quickly brought Mrs. Close's maid down to us.

She had not gone to the hospital because Mrs. Close had considered the services of the trained nurses quite sufficient.

Yes, the maid had noticed how her mistress had been failing, had noticed it long ago, in fact almost at the time when she had begun the X-ray treatment. She had seemed to improve once when she went away for a few days, but that was at the start, and directly after her return she grew worse again, until she was no longer herself.

"Did Dr. Gregory, the X-ray specialist, ever attend Mrs. Close at her home, in her room?" asked Craig.

"Yes, once, twice, he call, but he do no good," she said with her French accent.

"Did Mrs. Close have other callers?"

"But, m'sieur, everyone in society has many. What does m'sieur mean?"

"Frequent callers--a Mr. Lawrence, for instance?"

"Oh, yes, Mr. Lawrence frequently."

"When Mr. Close was at home?"

"Yes, on business and on business, too, when he was not at home. He is the attorney, m'sieur."

"How did Mrs. Close receive him?"

"He is the attorney, m'sieur," Marie repeated persistently.

"And he, did he always call on business?"

"Oh, yes, always on business, but well, madame, she was a very beautiful woman. Perhaps he like beautiful women--eh bien? That was before the Doctor Gregory treated madame. After the doctor treated madame M'sieur Lawrence do not call so often. That's all."

"Are you thoroughly devoted to Mrs. Close? Would you do a favour for her?" asked Craig point-blank.

"Sir, I would give my life, almost, for madame. She was always so good to me."

"I don't ask you to give your life for her, Marie," said Craig, "but you can do her a great service, a very great service."

"I will do it."

"To-night," said Craig, "I want you to sleep in Mrs. Close's room. You can do so, for I know that Mr. Close is living at the St. Francis Club until his wife returns from the sanitarium. To-morrow morning come to my laboratory"--Craig handed her his card--"and I will tell you what to do next. By the way, don't say anything to anyone in the house about it, and keep a sharp watch on the actions of any of the servants who may go into Mrs. Close's room."

"Well," said Craig, "there is nothing more to be done immediately." We had once more regained the street and were walking up-town. We walked in silence for several blocks.

"Yes," mused Craig, "there is something you can do, after all, Walter. I would like you to look up Gregory and Close and Lawrence. I already know something about them. But you can find out a good deal with your newspaper connections. I would like to have every bit of scandal that has ever been connected with them, or with Mrs. Close, or," he added significantly, "with any other woman. It isn't necessary to say that not a breath of it must be published--yet."

I found a good deal of gossip, but very little of it, indeed, seemed to me at the time to be of importance. Dropping in at the St. Francis Club, where I had some friends, I casually mentioned the troubles of the Huntington Closes. I was surprised to learn that Close spent little of his time at the Club, none at home, and only dropped into the hospital to make formal inquiries as to his wife's condition. It then occurred to me to drop into the office of Society Squibs, whose editor I had long known. The editor told me, with that nameless look of the cynical scandalmonger, that if I wanted to learn anything about Huntington Close I had best watch Mrs. Frances Tulkington, a very wealthy Western divorcee about whom the smart set were much excited, particularly those whose wealth made it difficult to stand the pace of society as it was going at present.

"And before the tragedy," said the editor with another nameless look, as if he were imparting a most valuable piece of gossip, "it was the talk of the town, the attention that Close's lawyer was paying to Mrs. Close.

But to her credit let me say that she never gave us a chance to hint at anything, and--well, you know us; we don't need much to make snappy society news."

The editor then waged even more confidential, for if I am anything at all, I am a good listener, and I have found that often by sitting tight and listening I can get more than if I were a too-eager questioner.

"It really was a shame,--the way that man Lawrence played his game," he went on. "I understand that it was he who introduced Close to Mrs. T.