The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories Part 38

"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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sistants 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 a.s.sistant 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 a.s.sured 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-s.h.i.+rt, 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 n.o.body 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 subst.i.tuted?

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.