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Page 32
"You have placed this money somewhere?"--Doctor James's voice was
toiling like a siren's to conjure the secret from the man's failing
intelligence--"Is it in this room?"
He thought he saw a fluttering assent in the dimming eyes. The pulse
under his fingers was as fine and small as a silk thread.
There arose in Doctor James's brain and heart the instincts of his other
profession. Promptly, as he acted in everything, he decided to learn the
whereabouts of this money, and at the calculated and certain cost of a
human life.
Drawing from his pocket a little pad of prescription blanks, he
scribbled upon one of them a formula suited, according to the best
practice, to the needs of the sufferer. Going to the door of the inner
room, he softly called the old woman, gave her the prescription, and
bade her take it to some drug store and fetch the medicine.
When she had gone, muttering to herself, the doctor stepped to the
bedside of the lady. She still slept soundly; her pulse was a little
stronger; her forehead was cool, save where the inflammation of the
bruise extended, and a slight moisture covered it. Unless disturbed, she
would yet sleep for hours. He found the key in the door, and locked it
after him when he returned.
Doctor James looked at his watch. He could call half an hour his own,
since before that time the old woman could scarcely return from her
mission. Then he sought and found water in a pitcher and a glass
tumbler. Opening his medicine case he took out the vial containing the
nitroglycerine--"the oil," as his brethren of the brace-and-bit term
it.
One drop of the faint yellow, thickish liquid he let fall in the
tumbler. He took out his silver hypodermic syringe case, and screwed the
needle into its place, Carefully measuring each modicum of water in the
graduated glass barrel of the syringe, he diluted the one drop with
nearly half a tumbler of water.
Two hours earlier that night Doctor James had, with that syringe,
injected the undiluted liquid into a hole drilled in the lock of a safe,
and had destroyed, with one dull explosion, the machinery that
controlled the movement of the bolts. He now purposed, with the same
means, to shiver the prime machinery of a human being--to rend its
heart--and each shock was for the sake of the money to follow.
The same means, but in a different guise. Whereas, that was the giant in
its rude, primary dynamic strength, this was the courtier, whose no less
deadly arms were concealed by velvet and lace. For the liquid in the
tumbler and in the syringe that the physician carefully filled was now a
solution of glonoin, the most powerful heart stimulant known to medical
science. Two ounces had riven the solid door of the iron safe; with one
fiftieth part of a minim he was now about to still forever the intricate
mechanism of a human life.
But not immediately. It was not so intended. First there would be a
quick increase of vitality; a powerful impetus given to every organ and
faculty. The heart would respond bravely to the fatal spur; the blood in
the veins return more rapidly to its source.
But, as Doctor James well knew, over-stimulation in this form of heart
disease means death, as sure as by a rifle shot. When the clogged
arteries should suffer congestion from the increased flow of blood
pumped into them by the power of the burglar's "oil," they would rapidly
become "no thoroughfare," and the fountain of life would cease to flow.
The physician bared the chest of the unconscious Chandler. Easily and
skilfully he injected, subcutaneously, the contents of the syringe into
the muscles of the region over the heart. True to his neat habits in
both professions, he next carefully dried his needle and re-inserted the
fine wire that threaded it when not in use.
In three minutes Chandler opened his eyes, and spoke, in a voice faint
but audible, inquiring who attended upon him. Doctor James again
explained his presence there.
"Where is my wife?" asked the patient.
"She is asleep--from exhaustion and worry," said the doctor. "I would
not awaken her, unless--"
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