Part 7 (2/2)
”Knock, knock--” the next knock would be upon his own heart.
Whatever design the doctor had held of not appealing to the police for protection against his invisible foes, his affairs had now reached a point where the intervention of the officers of the law could no longer be avoided. Poor Jacques could be consigned to earth without the intervention of priest or police, but the murder of Olga was a matter for official investigation. With that crafty and subtle way the astute sleuths of the Chicago constabulary have of informing the public through the intermediary of the press of all measures projected against evil-doers, of moves to be made, of arrests to be attempted, all citizens were in possession of the fact that owing to the startling plot just brought to light, all gatherings and coteries of men, especially at late hours, were to be watched, investigated, and made to give accounts of themselves. Dr. McDill fumed at the turn affairs had taken. That the confederacy of thieves would abandon their attempts upon his life, was not to be dreamed of. But they would forego the pleasure of witnessing his death in the presence of all a.s.sembled together. They would now delegate the attack to a single individual, and in event of his death, he could hope to carry with him but one of his enemies.
Again was Dr. McDill called to the hospital for a night operation.
Leaving his driver without, he cautioned him.
”August, I don't want you to be fooled the way you were before. If any man comes out of the hospital and says I send word for you to drive home without waiting for me, pay no attention to him. Take no orders from anybody but me.”
”All right. They can't fool me vonce again already.”
But when a cab drove up and let out a tall gentleman in a silk hat, who went into the hospital, and after a little the cab driver, a friendly and talkative person of Irish extraction, offered August a flask full of a beverage also of Irish extraction, August took a drink.
”He told me not to take no orders yet already from n.o.body but him. But he didn't say nothin' about takin' a drink vonce.”
”Take a drink twice, then, Hans,” said the person of Irish extraction, ”already, yet, and by and by, too.”
It was all of four hours later that Dr. McDill stepped out of the hospital door. He paused under the light of the globe over the porch and examining a large bag of water-proof silk, he thrust therein a sponge upon which he poured the contents of a small phial, after which, seeing that a noose of string that closed the mouth of the bag was not entangled, he strode briskly toward his buggy. The side curtains were on and consequently the interior was in a dark shadow.
Pausing a moment on the step, as if to arrange his overcoat, he made a quick, dexterous movement toward the person in the carriage and, throwing the bag over his head, pulled the noose. A terrific blow struck the doctor in the breast, but the arm that struck it fell powerless before it could be repeated and the striker lurched forward on the dashboard in the utter limpness of complete insensibility.
”It is not August,” said the doctor, straightening up the hooded figure and taking the reins. ”How well was my precaution taken! I believe that was the last knock that any member of that band of diabolical a.s.sa.s.sins will ever strike.”
In the private laboratory of his own home, the doctor sat facing his captive, whom, after binding hand and foot, he had restored to his senses. The outlaw was the first to break the silence.
”You've got me and you think you'll do me,” said the outlaw, with a succession of oaths and vile epithets it would be needless as well as improper for me to repeat. ”But if you harm me, my friends will more than pay you up for it, just as they have everybody that crossed them.”
”Your friends are of a mind to kill me, whatever befall. Sparing or killing you, will in nowise affect their purpose. Whatever may come to-morrow, to-night you must obey my commands.”
”I won't do a thing you tell me to. I don't have to, see? My friends will look for you just as soon as I don't turn up, and it will go hard with you.”
”Just as soon as you do not turn up with the news you have killed me.
We'll see whether you will do what I tell you to.”
”You da.s.sen't kill me. You're afraid to kill me. My friends would fix you and the law would get you, if they did not.”
”Your profession relies upon the forbearance and softheartedness of the public. You know that those you rob hesitate to shoot. No such hesitation hampers you. It is part of your stock in trade to keep the public terrorized. You kill all who disobey your orders, for if people began to resist you successfully you must needs go out of business.
Did all put aside their repugnance to shed blood and kill your kind as they would wolves, we would have no more of you.”
”You da.s.sen't kill me, you da.s.sen't kill me,” cried the robber. It was the snarl of the wild beast, hopelessly held in the toils.
”It is true that I hesitate to kill. I am not proud of this hesitation, for the trend of the best medical and sociological thought is now toward the execution of all degenerates and criminals, that they may not contaminate the race with descendants. However, my office is to save life and I cannot do otherwise. But I am a surgeon, and every day I do things in the effort to save and prolong life that to a layman are repulsive and awful, more revolting to him than the sight of bloodless death itself. From the taking of human life I draw back.
But no repugnance, no horror, unsteadies my hand elsewhere. The end of the crimes of your devilish confederacy has come. The law has not restrained you, could not. Your own unparalleled wickedness has delivered you into my hands. Many a man have you brought low, many a family have you desolated. Widows and orphans cry out against you, and not in vain. I shall so knock your gang that never again shall one of you harm even the weakest. You shall all live, but it shall be your prayer, if you black hearts can utter prayer, that you be dead.”
The outlaw's tongue moved thickly in a mouth that dried suddenly at these solemn words of the doctor. ”You can't do it, you can't do it, you can't do it, you duffer----” and his voice rumbled on in a long string of imprecations.
The doctor seized him and carrying him to the cellar, lay him against the coal bin. Then the captive heard him in a room above engaged upon some sort of carpentry, and whether it was the captive's imagination, or design of the doctor, or whether unconsciously the doctor's mind had become possessed, the sounds of the hammer as it drove nails and struck pieces of wood into place echoed in the cellar; ”knock, knock--knock; knock, knock--knock.” Soon the stairs groaned under the weight of the doctor carrying some great contrivance, and the outlaw found himself lying stretched out upon some sort of operating chair, his ankles held in a pair of stocks below, his outstretched arms held by the wrists in a pair of stocks above. All was black in the cellar, all but where a single blood red bar of light from the open door of the furnace fell upon the doctor turning at the winch of the bed of torture upon which lay the robber.
Hardly ten turns did he make, for at the first little twinges of pain, premonis.h.i.+ng the agonies to come, the caitiff chattered in terror promises to do all the doctor should order, and so was released.
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