BOOK V
THE MAN WITH THE WHITE TEETH
CHAPTER I
BLADES OF GRa.s.s
When Margaret Murchie, sitting in the interior of the limousine, with the arc light playing through the thousand raindrops on the window pane spotting a face lined with the strength of a stolid old maid, had finished her narrative, there was no sound but that of the storm mourning down the avenue. Estabrook sat with his forehead in his hands.
I had had enough experience in my practice with those who are struggling to overcome a great shock, not to speak until some word from him had disclosed the effect that Margaret"s story had produced. His face was hidden, but his fingers moved on his temples as if he were grinding some substance there into powder. When at last he raised his head, his expression astounded me. It had, I thought, softened rather than hardened. A little patient smile almost concealed the fear that looked out of his eyes.
"The daughter of a murderer?" he asked, touching my knee.
What could I say?
"She must be in some distress, Doctor?" he whispered.
I nodded.
It was then that the true Estabrook went tearing up through the crust of custom, manners, traditions, egotism, smugness, and self-love. From the depths of his personality, the man for whom I have since that moment had a deep regard, then called his soul and it came. He leaned forward and looked through the misty gla.s.s in the door, across the wind-swept street, at the dripping front of his home, at the dim light that burned there.
"G.o.d, sir!" he said, turning on me with his teeth set like those of a fighting animal. "What"s all this to me? I love her! She"s mine! She"s the most beautiful--the best woman in all the world!"
Margaret Murchie shivered.
After a moment Estabrook"s hands were both clutching my sleeve.
"You"ll stand by now?" he said, looking up into my face. "I can"t ask any one else. You can see that. You"ll help? What shall we do?"
"Depend on me," I answered him. "We must be careful. Wait! Just let me review these facts. The first move must be for us to send Margaret back into the house. Do you suppose your wife knows she is out of it?"
"I don"t believe so," said he. "I watched the window all the time we were taking Margaret into this limousine. The curtains never moved."
"Good!" I cried. "Now, Miss Murchie, listen to what I say. How often does your mistress call you during the day?"
"Every three or four hours, I think, sir."
"Very well. Take this umbrella and go back. Use Mr. Estabrook"s key.
Enter as quietly as possible. Say nothing to any one. If your mistress should allow more than five hours to go by without calling you, go to her door and knock. If there is no answer, telephone my office. You mustn"t allow a second of delay. It will mean danger."
Estabrook listened to these instructions with staring eyes.
"You know something!" he cried. "Tell me!"
I shook my head, opened the door, and the old servant, getting out, went waddling off across the street, her dress flapping in the wet wind.
"Come, Mr. Chauffeur!" I said to him. "You are to spend the night with me. To-morrow--"
"To-morrow?"
"Exactly," said I brusquely.
"And what then?"
"To-morrow I shall search for truth lying hidden among blades of gra.s.s!"
said I. "In the mean time all the sleep I can pile into you may count more than you know!"
I had spoken with a note of authority because each moment I feared that he would become stubborn. I feared that, taking offense at my theories, he would reject my services and plunge into some folly at the moment when a most delicate balance between good and evil, life and death, safety and danger, might be overthrown on the side of terrible calamity.
I was thankful when he once more showed himself tractable by climbing on the driver"s seat and turning our course homeward. It was the small hours of morning that found me under the lamp in my study, giving the distracted young man a narcotic. When his head was nodding, he struggled once to open his eyes.
"I don"t understand--anything--blades of gra.s.s--or anything," he a.s.serted sleepily, as I closed his door.
Exhaustion had brought its childlike petulance, but I knew that drowsiness would do its work, and that he was now safely stowed away for at least ten hours. He would not interfere with my plans before noon.
For a few moments that night I sat on the edge of my own bed.
"What if I am right?" I whispered to myself. "What a drama! What a peep into the unexplored corners of our souls!"
I went to the window. An early milk cart clattered along the thoroughfare with a figure nodding on its seat. When the mud-spattered white horse had reached a circle of light shed from the lamp on the street corner, the figure arose and, looking up at the stars in the rifts of the sky, pulled off and folded a rubber coat. The storm had blown away.
"He does a simple little act," I said to myself as I watched the figure seat itself again. "His thoughts may be as simple. But the consequences of either! Who can say? Life itself is all on one side of a blue wall!"
Physicians, however, make good detectives. I mention this not to point out my own case particularly, but merely to call your attention to the fact that a good surgeon or pract.i.tioner has a training in those qualities of mind which produce a great solver of mysteries. A good physician must develop the powers of observation. In any physical disorder, knowing the cause, he must forecast the effect, or with the evidences of some effect before him, he must deduce the cause. Above all he must keep his mind from jumping at false conclusions, even though these conclusions are in line with all his former experiences.
Physicians learn these principles by their mistakes in following clues.
A good diagnostician has in him the material for an immortal police inspector. I speak modestly, and yet I must say that the next morning proved that I was not mistaken in these theories.
Before nine o"clock I had arrived at the Marburys". The banker himself opened the door.
"Doctor!" he cried, his face drawn out of its mask of eternal shrewdness and suspicion by a beaming smile, "what can I say? How can we ever show our grat.i.tude?"
"Not so fast!" I reproved him. "There is danger in too much optimism.
The disease is treacherous."
"But Miss Peters, the nurse--she sees it, too! There can be no doubt.
Our little Virginia is saved! You have done it!"
I shook my head.
"Not I."
"Not you? Who, then?"
"Marbury," said I, "I am just beginning to learn that there are other contagions than those of the body. Can we be sure, my good sir, that fear is not a disease? Do we know that love is not an infection? Can the criminal"s gloves, saturated with his personality, be safe for the hands of an honest man? Don"t we weaken by rubbing elbows with the weak? Are there not contagious germs of thought?"