The Second Nick Carter MEGAPACK®, page 26
“And now,” said Deever, “may I ask what more you need in the way of evidence?”
“I need proof of your brother’s death.”
“In short, we must find the body.”
“Exactly.”
“Very well,” sneered Deever, “I suppose I must do it myself. I’ve got nearly all the evidence thus far.”
“By all means do it,” said Nick, with his calm smile, “if you can.”
Deever stared at him for more than a minute without speaking. Then he said:
“Colton, why do you treat this case as you do?”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t seem to want to go ahead with it.”
“I don’t want to go ahead with it any faster than the facts will justify. If you had had more experience in such matters you would know the folly of arresting a man first and getting facts to warrant the arrest afterward. As I say, I want more facts, and you must help me to get them.”
The last part of this conversation was held as Nick, Deever and Klein passed out upon the street.
A ragged young man who was leaning against a tree heard it, and was much surprised.
For the ragged young man was Patsy, and he had never heard Nick Carter ask anybody except his regular assistants to help him in that way before.
CHAPTER II.
THE DEAD MAN’S HEAD.
Dr. Jarvis, chief of the staff of St. Agnes’ Hospital, was well known as a peculiar man.
He was rich enough to take his leisure, but he worked like a slave. He had an elegant house on St. Nicholas avenue, but he spent all his days and more than half his nights at the hospital.
A rude cot in a little room adjoining his laboratory in the hospital was his bed four nights in seven on the average. His only recreation was found in the care of a little garden in the hospital grounds; and it was the common talk of the younger physicians that Dr. Jarvis enjoyed finding fault with the gardener more than he did cultivating the flowers.
He had a wife and a young, unmarried daughter, whom he loved devotedly, but to whom he gave only a few hours of his time in the course of a week.
A negro named Caesar Augustus Cleary was the doctor’s assistant in the laboratory.
The other physicians in the hospital said that Cleary had become so accustomed to Jarvis’ ways that, like a Mississippi mule, he had to be cursed before he could be made to understand anything.
Cleary slept in a little closet similar to the doctor’s, and on the opposite side of the laboratory. He was asleep there, about twelve o’clock on the night after Nick’s visit to Lawrence Deever, when Nick crept softly through the window.
All these rooms were on the ground floor and entrance was easy.
Nick had spent a part of the evening in the garden. He had watched till the light went out in the laboratory and another appeared in the doctor’s bed-room. Then he was ready for a search of the premises.
If, in a moment of anger, Dr. Jarvis had struck Patrick Deever and killed him, it was likely that the laboratory would hold some trace of the secret.
The best way to hide a human body is to utterly destroy it. This is no easy task for an ordinary man, but to a scientist, like Dr. Jarvis, it would be comparatively easy.
However, it would take time. Patrick Deever had disappeared on Monday night. Forty-eight hours had elapsed, but yet Nick hoped to find a trace, if the work of destruction had been attempted in the laboratory.
Nick had entered Cleary’s room with the purpose of guarding against any interruption from the negro. He found Cleary sleeping heavily; but when Nick left the room and glided into the laboratory, Cleary’s sleep was even deeper than it had been before.
An adept in chemistry, Nick knew how to produce a slumber from which no ordinary means could arouse the sleeper. His drug was sure and it left no bad effects.
The laboratory was unlighted, except by the moon, which shone in over the shutters, which covered the lower parts of the windows, preventing observation from without.
The first object which attracted Nick’s attention was a corpse which lay upon a stone table in the middle of the room.
Nick had made a hasty search of the laboratory some hours before, while the doctor had been at dinner. He had then seen this corpse, and had assured himself that it was not Patrick Deever’s; but he had been unable to do much more before the doctor returned. Therefore, he had made this late visit.
He first examined some instruments which lay near the dissecting-table. They revealed nothing. Then for perhaps half an hour, he searched various parts of the room without result.
Beneath the laboratory was a cellar in which, as Nick knew, were electric apparatus and a furnace which the doctor used for his experiments.
Nick was about to descend into this cellar when a noise in the direction of the doctor’s room attracted his attention.
He turned and beheld Dr. Jarvis entering the laboratory.
Realizing the possibility of such an event, Nick had disguised himself as Cleary, yet he wished to avoid being seen if possible.
He got into the darkest corner available and watched.
Dr. Jarvis had on only his night-shirt, a skull-cap and a peculiar red dressing-gown, which he wore whenever he worked in the laboratory or in the garden. This dressing-gown and the queer red skull-cap were so old that nobody about the hospital could remember when they had been new. Cleary once said that he believed they were born and grew up with the doctor.
Without noticing Nick, Dr. Jarvis advanced directly toward the dissecting-table. He had no light, but the moon’s rays glanced brightly around the slab.
The doctor drew back the sheet which covered the figure, revealing the head and naked breast.
Then he drew some instruments from a case, and proceeded to sever the head from the body.
This secret action in the dead of night surprised Nick greatly. Could it be that some clever trick had been accomplished? Had the body which Nick had seen been removed, and that of Patrick Deever substituted?
From where he stood Nick could not see the face of the body clearly enough to form a decision. If, however, this was only an ordinary subject for the dissecting-table, why did Dr. Jarvis mutilate it with such caution and at such an hour?
To cut off the head was the work of a very few minutes to the skillful physician.
He soon held it in his hands; and it seemed to Nick that the old physician gazed at it with peculiar attention in the moonlight.
Suddenly Dr. Jarvis turned, and, carrying the head in one hand, holding it by the hair, he advanced toward Nick. In his other hand the doctor held a knife which he had used in his ghastly work.
Nick had little hopes of escaping discovery. Evidently it was the doctor’s intention to carry the head into the cellar, and the detective was concealed close by the stairs.
But Nick was not discovered. Dr. Jarvis stalked by, within six feet of him, and looked neither to the right nor to the left.
Still bearing the head, he descended the stairs, and Nick crept after him.
The cellar was perfectly dark except where a faint glow around the little furnace could be perceived. Nick was therefore able to follow the doctor closely.
But suddenly the place was made light. Dr. Jarvis had touched a button in the wall, and a row of electric lights, suspended before the furnace, flashed up.
Nick had barely time to drop flat on the floor behind a row of great glass jars full of clear fluid, the nature of which he could not determine.
These jars were set upon a sort of bench made of stone, rising about two feet from the floor. Between them and the furnace stood the doctor. Nick was on the other side.
It seemed tolerably certain to the detective that Dr. Jarvis would throw the head into the furnace. Nick determined to get a sight of the head at once. He was yet uncertain whether it was Patrick Deever’s.
Rising on his hands and knees he peered between two of the jars. The head was not more than a yard from Nick’s eyes, but the face was turned away.
By the hair, and the general outline, it might be Deever’s. At all hazards Nick must get a sight of it before it was consigned to the furnace in which a fire, supported by peculiar chemical agencies and much hotter than burning coal, raged furiously.
Suddenly, when it seemed as if the doctor was about to raise an arch of fire-brick in order to throw the head into the fire, he turned and dropped the grim object into the jar almost directly above Nick’s head.
It was carefully done, though quickly. The head sank without a splash. Only a single drop of the fluid—a drop no bigger than a pin’s point—fell upon the back of Nick’s hand.
It burned like white, hot iron. It seemed to sink through the hand upon which it fell.
Nick sprang to his feet, not because of the pain of the burning acid, but because he knew that he must instantly obtain a sight of the head or it would be dissolved.
It lay face upward in the jar, but the acid, even in that instant, had done its work.
All semblance to humanity had vanished. As Nick gazed, the head seemed to waver in the midst of the strange fluid, and then, suddenly, Nick saw, in a direct line where it had been, the bottom of the jar.
The head had been dissolved.
Nick raised his eyes to Dr. Jarvis’ face.
There stood the doctor, entirely unmoved. He looked directly at Nick but seemed not to see him.
His eyes were fixed, and their expression was peculiar. One less experienced than Nick would have supposed Dr. Jarvis to be insane.
Certainly his conduct as well as his appearance seemed to justify such a
But Nick knew better. He recognized at once the peculiar condition in which Dr. Jarvis then was. He had seen the phenomenon before.
“Walking in his sleep,” Nick said to himself. “Shall I wake him here? I think not. Let me see what he will do.”
CHAPTER III.
THE DOCTOR OFFERS A BRIBE.
Nick was not greatly surprised by his discovery. He knew that Dr. Jarvis was a sleep-walker.
The reader may remember the case of a young woman who, in her sleep, walked nearly a mile on Broadway, and was awakened by a policeman to whom she could give no account of her wanderings.
At that time, the newspapers had a good deal to say about sleep-walking, and several good stories were printed about Dr. Jarvis. The doctor was sensitive on the subject, and he had threatened the most dreadful vengeance if he ever found out who had betrayed his secret to the reporters.
These stories came into Nick’s mind at once. He decided to witness this strange scene to the end.
There was, however, little more to be observed. The doctor extinguished the lights and ascended the stairs.
He paused a moment beside the mutilated body; put away his knife, drew the cloth over the corpse, and then turned toward his room.
Nick followed, and entered the room close behind the somnambulist. It is sometimes possible to question a person in that condition, and to learn what he would not disclose when awake.
Some such intention was in Nick’s mind, but he had no opportunity of executing it. The doctor walked to the window, of which the shade was drawn. Accidentally he touched the cord, and the shade, which worked with a spring, shot up, making a loud noise.
With a peculiar, hoarse cry, the doctor awoke. He exhibited the nervous terror common at such times. He jumped back from the window, and turned toward the bed.
Nick, disguised as Cleary, stood directly before him. It was impossible to avoid discovery. The moonlight flooded the room.
“Cleary!” cried the doctor, “why are you here?”
“I heard you moving about, sir,” replied Nick, imitating Cleary’s voice which had very little of the ordinary peculiarities of the negro. Indeed, he was an educated man.
“Walking in my sleep again,” muttered the doctor. “And such dreams! Great Heaven! such dreams!”
“I thought you must have had a bad nightmare,” said Nick.
“I have. It was dreadful.”
The doctor pressed his hands to his head.
“What did you dream, sir?”
“What business is that of yours, you infernal, inquisitive rascal?”
“Well, sir,” said Nick, respectfully, “I thought from what you did—”
“Did? What did I do?”
Nick very briefly described the scene which he had witnessed.
Dr. Jarvis seemed overcome with horror.
“Is it possible?” he cried.
Then suddenly he turned and hurried out into the laboratory. He went straight to the corpse upon the slab of stone, and drew back the cloth.
Nick followed, and together they gazed upon the mutilated body. It seemed to Nick that it was the same which he had seen before, and which he had known to be not that of Patrick Deever. But in the uncertain light he could not be certain.
Dr. Jarvis gave him little time for making his decision.
He hastily replaced the cloth, shuddering convulsively as he did so. Then he returned to his room.
He sat down upon the edge of his cot, and held his head in his hands. When he looked up his violent mood had passed away. He seemed to wish to talk.
“It was a hideous dream,” he said.
“Murder?” asked Nick.
“There was murder in it,” replied the doctor. “I thought that I had killed—that I had killed a man.”
“Patrick Deever?”
“How the devil did you know that?” cried the doctor, springing to his feet.
“Well, sir, the man has disappeared, and—”
“And somebody has been filling your head with foolish stories. Who was it?”
“Mr. Deever was asking some questions about his brother.”
“And you told him everything you knew, and a good deal more, I suppose?”
“I didn’t tell him anything.”
“It’s lucky for you that you didn’t. Now, look here, Cleary, you know where your interest lies. Don’t you lose a good job by talking too much.”
“No, sir; I won’t. But there’s something in dreams, and—”
“There was agony in this one. I thought that I had killed Deever, and was obliged to hide his body. I felt that the police were close upon me.
“It seemed as if I had only one night in which to make myself safe. I thought first of burning the body in the furnace. Then it seemed best to use the acid. Heavens, I am glad to be awake again!”
“Such a dream as that means something, sir.”
“It means this—that miserable, drunken rascal has disappeared, and I am likely to have trouble about it.”
“He’ll come back.”
“I don’t know about that. Perhaps he won’t come back.”
“Have you any idea where he is, sir?”
“Do you think I killed him, Cleary?”
“No, sir; certainly not.”
“But suppose I did? What then?”
“Well, sir; it’s a terrible thing. I—”
“Would you betray me?”
“I would not say a word unless I was sure that you were guilty.”
“Even then, why should you speak?”
“There’s a conscience, and—”
“Nonsense! What business is it of yours? Now look here; you think a good deal more about money than you do about your conscience. I’ve got money, and I’m willing to pay well to keep out of trouble.”
“But I don’t want to get into any.”
“You won’t. All you’ve got to do is to keep still.”
“Keep still about what, sir?”
“This sleep-walking to-night.”
“I won’t say a word, unless—”
Nick hesitated. He wished to give the doctor the impression that his innocence was by no means clear, and that the idea of shielding a murderer was not to be entertained.
His acting was evidently successful.
“Look here, Cleary,” said the doctor, “I don’t trust you. There’s just one thing that will satisfy me. You must get away.”
The doctor was trembling violently. Evidently fear had taken possession of him.
“Get away?” asked Nick, as if surprised.
“Yes; I’m afraid of you. You will talk.”
“But where shall I go?”
“Go to Australia,” said Dr. Jarvis, after a moment’s reflection. “You have no family. It makes no difference to you where you go, so long as you have money.”
“How much money?”
“In that safe,” said the doctor, pointing to a steel box in the corner, “there is enough to start you. I have about five thousand dollars in cash there, and I will send ten times as much more after you. Is that enough?”
“You take my breath away,” said Nick. “When must I go?”
“At once; to-night.”
“But, Dr. Jarvis—”
“Don’t talk. Do it. If fifty thousand dollars isn’t enough, you shall have a hundred thousand within six months.”
“How do I know that you will send it?”
“If I don’t, come back and denounce me.”
“But how will you explain my going?”
“I will say that you have gone to Europe for me as you did go three years ago.”
Nick shook his head.
“Dr. Jarvis,” said he, “I’ve worked for you twenty years, and I think as much of you as of any man living, but I can’t do this.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t shield a guilty man.”
“Nonsense, you idiot; I am as innocent as you are.”
“Then why do you send me away? No, Dr. Jarvis, this is plain to me. You killed him.”
“I killed him?” cried the doctor.
“Yes; but you are not a murderer at heart. Some accident led to this. Tell me how it happened, and if it is as I think, I will go.”
“I tell you I am innocent. I had nothing to do with this man’s disappearance.”
Despite all Nick’s ingenuity, Dr. Jarvis stuck to this assertion. There was nothing left for Nick, in the character of Cleary, except to pretend to believe it.
He resolved to accept the doctor’s bribe. This was almost necessary, for in any case he would be obliged to remove Cleary.
