The Silent Bullet Part 9

Kennedy paused to emphasise the statement, then continued. "I am now going to ask Dr. Leslie to give us a little talk on a recent discovery in the field of typhoid fever--you understand, Commissioner, what I mean, I believe?"

"Perfectly. Shall I mention names?"

"No, not yet."

"Well," began Dr. Leslie, clearing his throat, "within the past year or two we have made a most weird and startling discovery in typhoid fever.

We have found what we now call 'typhoid carriers'--persons who do not have the disease themselves, perhaps never have had it, but who are literally living test-tubes of the typhoid bacillus. It is positively uncanny. Everywhere they go they scatter the disease. Down at the department we have the records of a number of such instances, and our men in the research laboratories have come to the conclusion that, far from being of rare occurrence, these cases are comparatively common. I have in mind one particular case of a servant girl, who, during the past five or six years, has been employed in several families.

"In every family typhoid fever has later broken out. Experts have traced out at least thirty, cases and several deaths due to this one person.

In another case we found an epidemic up in Harlem to be due to a typhoid carrier on a remote farm in Connecticut. This carrier, innocently enough, it is true, contaminated the milk-supply coming from that farm.

The result was over fifty cases of typhoid here in this city.

"However, to return to the case of the servant I have mentioned. Last spring we had her under surveillance, but as there was no law by which we could restrain her permanently she is still at large. I think one of the Sunday papers at the time had an account of her--they called her 'Typhoid Bridget,' and in red ink she was drawn across the page in gruesome fas.h.i.+on, frying the skulls of her victims in a frying-pan over a roaring fire. That particular typhoid carrier, I understand--"

"Excuse me, Commissioner, if I interrupt, but I think we have carried this part of the programme far enough to be absolutely convincing," said Craig. "Thank you very much for the clear way in which you have put it."

Craig snapped the announcer, and a letter appeared on the screen. He said nothing, but let us read it through.

To whom it may concern:

This is to certify that Bridget Fallon has been employed in my family at Shelter Island for the past season and that I have found her a reliable servant and an excellent cook.

A. ST. JOHN CASWELL-JONES.

"Before G.o.d, Mr. Kennedy, I'm innocent," screeched Bridget. "Don't have me arrested. I'm innocent. I'm innocent."

Craig gently, but firmly, forced her back into her chair.

Again the announcer snapped. This time the last page of Mr. Bisbee's will appeared on the sheet, ending with his signature and the witnesses.

"I'm now going to show these two specimens of handwriting very greatly enlarged," he said, as the stereopticon plates were s.h.i.+fted again.

"An author of many scientific works, Dr. Lindsay Johnson, of London, has recently elaborated a new theory with regard to individuality in handwriting. He maintains that in certain diseases a person's pulse beats are individual, and that no one suffering from any such disease can control, even for a brief s.p.a.ce of time, the frequency or peculiar irregularities of his heart's action, as shown by a chart recording his pulsation. Such a chart is obtained for medical purposes by means of a sphygmograph, an instrument fitted to the patient's forearm and supplied with a needle, which can be so arranged as to record automatically on a prepared sheet of paper the peculiar force and frequency of the pulsation. Or the pulsation may be simply observed in the rise and fall of a liquid in a tube. Dr. Johnson holds the opinion that a pen in the hand of a writer serves, in a modified degree, the same end as the needle in the first-named form of the sphygmograph and that in such a person's handwriting one can see by projecting the letters, greatly magnified, on a screen, the scarcely perceptible turns and quivers made in the lines by the spontaneous action of that person's peculiar pulsation.

"To prove this, the doctor carried out an experiment at Charing Cross Hospital. At his request a number of patients suffering from heart and kidney diseases wrote the Lord's Prayer in their ordinary handwriting.

The different ma.n.u.scripts were then taken and examined microscopically.

By throwing them, highly magnified, on a screen, the jerks or involuntary motions due to the patient's peculiar pulsations were distinctly visible. The handwriting of persons in normal health, says Dr. Johnson, does not always show their pulse beats. What one can say, however, is that when a doc.u.ment, purporting to be written by a certain person, contains traces of pulse beats and the normal handwriting of that person does not show them, then clearly that doc.u.ment is a forgery.

"Now, in these two specimens of handwriting which we have enlarged it is plain that the writers of both of them suffered from a certain peculiar disease of the heart. Moreover, I am prepared to show that the pulse beats exhibited in the case of certain pen-strokes in one of these doc.u.ments are exhibited in similar strokes in the other. Furthermore, I have ascertained from his family physician, whose affidavit I have here, that Mr. Bisbee did not suffer from this or any other form of heart disease. Mr. Caswell-Jones, in addition to wiring me that he refused to write Bridget Fallon a recommendation after the typhoid broke out in his country house, also says he does not suffer from heart disease in any form. From the tremulous character of the letters and figures in both these doc.u.ments, which when magnified is the more easily detected, I therefore conclude that both are forgeries, and I am ready to go farther and say that they are forgeries from the same hand.

"It usually takes a couple of weeks after infection for typhoid to develop, a time sufficient in itself to remove suspicion from acts which might otherwise be scrutinised very carefully if happening immediately before the disease developed. I may add, also, that it is well known that stout people do very poorly when they contract typhoid, especially if they are old. Mr. Bisbee was both stout and old. To contract typhoid was for him a virtual death-warrant. Knowing all these facts, a certain person purposely sought out a crafty means of introducing typhoid fever into Mr. Bisbee's family. That person, furthermore, was inoculated against typhoid three times during the month before the disease was devilishly and surrept.i.tiously introduced into Bisbee Hall, in order to protect himself or herself should it become necessary for that person to visit Bisbee Hall. That person, I believe, is the one who suffered from an aneurism of the heart, the writer, or rather the forger, of the two doc.u.ments I have shown, by one of which he or she was to profit greatly by the death of Mr. Bisbee and the founding of an alleged school in a distant part of the country--a subterfuge, if you recall, used in at least one famous case for which the convicted perpetrator is now under a life sentence in Sing Sing.

"I will ask Dr. Leslie to take this stethoscope and examine the hearts of everyone in the room and tell me whether there is anyone here suffering from an aneurism."

The calcium light ceased to sputter. One person after another was examined by the health commissioner. Was it merely my imagination, or did I really hear a heart beating with wild leaps as if it would burst the bonds of its prison and make its escape if possible? Perhaps it was only the engine of the commissioner's machine out on the campus driveway. I don't know. At any rate, he went silently from one to the other, betraying not even by his actions what he discovered with the stethoscope. The suspense was terrible. I felt Miss Bisbee's hand involuntarily grasp my arm convulsively. Without disturbing the silence, I reached a gla.s.s of water standing near me on Craig's lecture-table and handed it to her.

The commissioner was bending over the lawyer, trying to adjust the stethoscope better to his ears. The lawyer's head was resting heavily on his hand, and he was heaped up in an awkward position in the cramped lecture-room seat. It seemed an age as Dr. Leslie tried to adjust the stethoscope. Even Craig felt the excitement. While the commissioner hesitated, Kennedy reached over and impatiently switched on the electric light in full force.

As the light flooded the room, blinding us for the instant, the large form of Dr. Leslie stood between us and the lawyer.

"What does the stethoscope tell you, Doctor?" asked Craig, leaning forward expectantly. He was as unprepared for the answer as any of us.

"It tells me that a higher court than those of New York has pa.s.sed judgment on this astounding criminal. The aneurism has burst."

I felt a soft weight fall on my shoulder. The Morning Star did not have the story, after all. I missed the greatest "scoop" of my life seeing Eveline Bisbee safely to her home after she had recovered from the shock of Denny's exposure and punishment.

IV. The Deadly Tube

"For Heaven's sake, Gregory, what is the matter?" asked Craig Kennedy as a tall, nervous man stalked into our apartment one evening. "Jameson, shake hands with Dr. Gregory. What's the matter, Doctor? Surely your X-ray work hasn't knocked you out like this?"

The doctor shook hands with me mechanically. His hand was icy. "The blow has fallen," he exclaimed, as he sank limply into a chair and tossed an evening paper over to Kennedy.

In red ink on the first page, in the little square headed "Latest News,"

Kennedy read the caption, "Society Woman Crippled for Life by X-Ray Treatment."

"A terrible tragedy was revealed in the suit begun today," continued the article, "by Mrs. Huntington Close against Dr. James Gregory, an X-ray specialist with offices at Madison Avenue, to recover damages for injuries which Mrs. Close alleges she received while under his care.

Several months ago she began a course of X-ray treatment to remove a birthmark on her neck. In her complaint Mrs. Close alleges that Dr.

Gregory has carelessly caused X-ray dermat.i.tis, a skin disease of cancerous nature, and that she has also been rendered a nervous wreck through the effects of the rays. Simultaneously with filing the suit she left home and entered a private hospital. Mrs. Close is one of the most popular hostesses in the smart set, and her loss will be keenly felt."

"What am I to do, Kennedy?" asked the doctor imploringly. "You remember I told you the other day about this case--that there was something queer about it, that after a few treatments I was afraid to carry on any more and refused to do so? She really has dermat.i.tis and nervous prostration, exactly as she alleges in her complaint. But, before Heaven, Kennedy, I can't see how she could possibly have been so affected by the few treatments I gave her. And to-night, just as I was leaving the office, I received a telephone call from her husband's attorney, Lawrence, very kindly informing me that the case would be pushed to the limit. I tell you, it looks black for me."

"What can they do?"

"Do? Do you suppose any jury is going to take enough expert testimony to outweigh the tragedy of a beautiful woman? Do? Why, they can ruin me, even if I get a verdict of acquittal. They can leave me with a reputation for carelessness that no mere court decision can ever overcome."

"Gregory, you can rely on me," said Kennedy. "Anything I can do to help you I will gladly do. Jameson and I were on the point of going out to dinner. Join us, and after that we will go down to your office and talk things over."

"You are really too kind," murmured the doctor. The air of relief that was written on his face was pathetically eloquent.

"Now not a word about the case till we have had dinner," commanded Craig. "I see very plainly that you have been worrying about the blow for a long time. Well, it has fallen. The neat thing to do is to look over the situation and see where we stand."

Dinner over, we rode down-town in the subway, and Gregory ushered us into an office-building on Madison Avenue, where he had a very handsome suite of several rooms. We sat own in his waiting-room to discuss the affair.

"It is indeed a very tragic case," began Kennedy, "almost more tragic than if the victim had been killed outright. Mrs. Huntington Close is--or rather I suppose I should say was--one of the famous beauties of the city. From what the paper says, her beauty has been hopelessly ruined by this dermat.i.tis, which, I understand, Doctor, is practically incurable."

Dr. Gregory nodded, and I could not help following his eyes as he looked at his own rough and scarred hands.

"Also," continued Craig, with his eyes half closed and his finger-tips together, as if, he were taking a mental inventory of the facts in the case, "her nerves are so shattered that she will be years in recovering, if she ever recovers."

"Yes," said the doctor simply. "I myself, for instance, am subject to the most unexpected attacks of neuritis. But, of course, I am under the influence of the rays fifty or sixty times a day, while she had only a few treatments at intervals of many days."

"Now, on the other hand," resumed Craig, "I know you, Gregory, very well. Only the other day, before any of this came out, you told me the whole story with your fears as to the outcome. I know that that lawyer of Close's has been keeping this thing hanging over your head for a long time. And I also know that you are one of the most careful X-ray operators in the city. If this suit goes against you, one of the most brilliant men of science in America will be ruined. Now, having said this much, let me ask you to describe just exactly what treatments you gave Mrs. Close."

The doctor led us into his X-ray room adjoining. A number of X-ray tubes were neatly put away in a great gla.s.s case, and at one end of the room was an operating-table with an X-ray apparatus suspended over it. A glance at the room showed that Kennedy's praise was not exaggerated.