Pretty Madcap Dorothy Part 41

"Quite sure, ma'am. He also has had a message to come to the sick-room.

I stopped and gave it to him myself on my way here."

Thus a.s.sured that he had not yet left the house, Dorothy breathed a great sigh of intense relief.

"I--I do not mind going to the sick-room with you now," she whispered, in a low, unsteady voice; and, all unconscious of what was to accrue from it, Dorothy followed her companion from the room and up to Jessie's chamber.

The silence of death was upon all things as she parted the silken _portieres_ and entered the room where the sick girl lay, white and gasping, upon the couch.

The two doctors made way for her, motioning her to advance to the couch.

"Oh! she is not dying--not dying?" gasped Dorothy, with a wild wail of terror. "You must not tell me that!"

"Are you so very much surprised?" asked Doctor Crandall, slowly and impressively.

"Oh, she must not die---she must not die!" she cried. "Where is all your vaunted skill if you can not save her life?"

"Man can work against the skill of man," significantly replied Doctor Crandall, "but not against the will of Heaven."

"But is she dying?" wailed Dorothy, grasping the ice-cold hands.

"She shall not die if we can save her," simultaneously echoed both doctors.

They uttered the words in so strange a tone that Dorothy turned and looked at them in wonder.

At that moment Mr. Garner entered the room. His face was still very pale, but he was outwardly calm.

He was just in time to catch the last words, and he stepped up hurriedly to the doctor ere he could utter another word to Dorothy.

"Do you say that my betrothed is dying?" he cried, hoa.r.s.ely, flinging himself on his knees beside the couch, on the side opposite to where Dorothy was.

"What we have to say had better be deferred for a few moments, until he is more calm and better able to bear the shock," said Doctor Schimpf, nodding in the direction where Mr. Garner knelt prostrated with grief.

Dorothy had become strangely calm, and both doctors noticed that she intently watched the actions of young Mr. Garner.

"I think I have unearthed the secret of the whole affair," whispered Doctor Crandall to his friend. "Watch the gaze Mrs. Brown is bending upon the betrothed lover of the girl who lies sick unto death!"

He motioned the doctor back into the recess of the bay-window.

"Let me finish my story here," he whispered under his breath. "This is what I would say: This strange woman in the black dress loves Mr.

Garner. Ah! you start, my friend. So did I when the thought first flashed across my mind. Within the last few moments this thought has settled into a conviction. She is the only one interested in the death of Miss Staples. Look carefully into the chain of evidence I present to you, and you will have the same opinion that I have formed, no doubt.

"In the first place, as we both know, Miss Staples' sudden attack of illness dated from a few days after this mysterious young woman crossed this threshold.

"Who she is, or whence she came, no one seems to have been clever enough to find out.

"She has come and gone from this house, alone, and at all hours, no one questioning her movements.

"She has taken full charge of the patient, from midnight until early morning, and each forenoon our patient seems to have grown alarmingly worse. We have both discovered the presence of a.r.s.enic, which has been administered to her.

"And now last, but by no means least, I have been observing this mysterious woman with keen scrutiny. I could stake my life upon it she wears a wig, that her complexion is a 'made-up' one. By this you will understand me to say that the lines we see traced upon her face are the work of art, not time. The eyes covered by those blue gla.s.ses are bright as stars. In short, she is not the middle-aged personage that she appears, but is a young woman, or rather a fiend incarnate, in disguise.

"I propose within the next few moments to lay the matter before Mr.

Garner, and to gain his sanction to compel her to throw off this disguise before she leaves this room, to confront her with the evidence of her crime, and to force her to make a full confession at the bedside of her would-be victim."

"I quite agree with your plan," a.s.sented the other. "But there is one precaution which we must not forget: the key must be turned in the lock and removed, if you would have your bird securely caged. Delays are dangerous. Let Mr. Garner be told the terrible truth without a moment's delay, and we will rest the case wholly with him."

Without attracting attention, Doctor Crandall called Mr. Garner into the recess of the bay-window, while Doctor Schimpf engaged Dorothy in conversation to pa.s.s the time away.

To attempt to describe Jack Garner's astonishment, which gradually deepened into the most intense horror as the terrible story was unfolded to him, can better be imagined than described.

"Jessie suffering from the effects of poison?" he gasped, incredulously.

"Great Heaven! how can I believe such an uncanny tale? Miss Staples has not an enemy in the whole world, I am sure. No one could have a motive in attempting to put her out of the way."

"Will you answer one question?" said the doctor, looking earnestly at the young man.

"Anything which you may ask," quickly returned the other.

"Did you ever have any other sweetheart than Miss Staples? Did any other woman ever love you in the past?"

For a moment Jack hesitated, and his fair, handsome face flushed; then he frankly raised his eyes and met the keen gaze fixed upon him.

"I have no hesitancy in acknowledging that I did have a romance in my life before my betrothal to poor Jessie. But she knew about it from beginning to end."

"Did you give this girl up for Miss Staples? Pardon me for asking such a direct question, but your answer is vitally important."

The handsome face into which the old doctor gazed grew very white, and the lines about the firm mouth deepened into an expression of pain.

"My little sweetheart disappeared one day with a handsomer man than I,"

he said, huskily, "and from that time to this I have never looked upon her false but fair face."

"Did she love you in those days?" was the next query.

"I wonder that you can ask the question," said Jack, with a touch of haughty bitterness. "Does it look very much as though she loved me when she ran away with another man? On the contrary, any one could see that, in pursuing the course she did toward me, she must have detested me. I never saw this Mrs. Brown before we engaged her as a companion to my mother, nor has Jessie, I am sure. I am completely at sea," Jack added, "and therefore I leave the matter entirely with you. If Jessie is dying of slow poison, I beseech you to discover the perpetrator of the deed, at any cost--aye, and though it takes every dollar of my fortune, the wretch shall be punished to the full extent of the law."

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

Quietly the doctors filed into the room, and one of them turned the key in the door.

It was Dr. Crandall who undertook the delicate task of unmasking the suspected would-be murderess.

"I will tell you," he said, slowly. "The poor girl on the couch beside which you have often knelt is dying of slow poison, administered to her by some person beneath this roof."

Dorothy sprang from her chair and reeled backward, looking at him with widely dilated eyes. She never knew how it happened, but in that instant of time a terrible thought came to her. Could Jack Garner be guilty of administering it to her, to free himself from the bonds he so cruelly hated?

Oh, G.o.d! how the thought tortured her. She would not--she could not believe it.