The Oxford Book of American Det (23 page)

“No,” he resumed, “it is just a case of what we call narcolepsy—pathological somnolence—a sudden, uncontrollable inclination to sleep, occurring sometimes repeatedly or at varying intervals. I don’t think it hysterical, epileptic, or toxemic. The plain fact of the matter, gentlemen, is that neither myself nor any of my colleagues whom I have consulted have the faintest idea what it is—yet.” The door of the office opened, for it was not the hour for consulting patients, and a tall, athletic young fellow, with a keen and restless face, though very boyish, entered.

“My son,” the doctor introduced, “soon to be the sixth Doctor Haynes in direct line in the family.”

We shook hands. It was evident that Cynthia had not by any means exaggerated when she said that he was frantic over what had happened to his fiancée.

Accordingly, there was no difficulty in reverting to the subject of our visit. Gradually I let Kennedy take the lead in the conversation so that our position might not seem to be false.

It was not long before Craig managed to inject a remark about the red spot over Virginia’s nose. It seemed to excite young Hampton.

“Naturally I look on it more as a doctor than a lover,” remarked his father, smiling indulgently at the young man, whom it was evident he regarded above everything else in the world. “I have not been able to account for it, either. Really the case is one of the most remarkable I have ever heard of.”

“You have heard of a Dr. Carl Chapelle?” inquired Craig, tentatively.

“A beauty doctor,” interrupted the young man, turning toward his father. “You’ve met him. He’s the fellow I think is really engaged to Cynthia.” Hampton seemed much excited. There was unconcealed animosity in the manner of his remark, and I wondered why it was. Could there be some latent jealousy?

“I see,” calmed Doctor Haynes. “You mean to infer that this—er—this Doctor Chapelle—“ He paused, waiting for Kennedy to take the initiative.

“I suppose you’ve noticed over Miss Blakeley’s nose a red sore?” hazarded Kennedy.

“Yes,” replied Doctor Haynes, “rather refractory, too. I—“

“Say,” interrupted Hampton, who by this time had reached a high pitch of excitement,

“say, do you think it could be any of his confounded nostrums back of this thing?”

“Careful, Hampton,” cautioned the elder man.

“I’d like to see him,” pursued Craig to the younger. “You know him?”

“Know him? I should say I do. Good-looking, good practice, and all that, but—why, he must have hypnotized that girl! Cynthia thinks he’s wonderful.”

“I’d like to see him,” suggested Craig.

“Very well,” agreed Hampton, taking him at his word. “Much as I dislike the fellow, I have no objection to going down to his beauty-parlour with you.”

“Thank you,” returned Craig, as we excused ourselves and left the elder Doctor Haynes.

Several times on our journey down Hampton could not resist some reference to Chapelle for commercialising the profession, remarks which sounded strangely old on his lips.

Chapelle’s office, we found, was in a large building on Fifth Avenue in the new shopping district, where hundreds of thousands of women passed almost daily. He called the place a Dermatological Institute, but, as Hampton put it, he practised

“decorative surgery.”

As we entered one door, we saw that patients left by another. Evidently, as Craig whispered, when sixty sought to look like sixteen the seekers did not like to come in contact with one another.

We waited some time in a little private room. At last Doctor Chapelle himself appeared, a rather handsome man with the manner that one instinctively feels appeals to the ladies.

He shook hands with young Haynes, and I could detect no hostility on Chapelle’s part, but rather a friendly interest in a younger member of the medical profession.

Again I was thrown forward as a buffer. I was their excuse for being there. However, a newspaper experience gives you one thing, if no other—assurance.

“I believe you have a patient, a Miss Virginia Blakeley?” I ventured.

“Miss Blakeley? Oh yes, and her sister, also.”

The mention of the names was enough. I was no longer needed as a buffer.

“Chapelle,” blurted out Hampton, “you must have done something to her when you treated her face. There’s a little red spot over her nose that hasn’t healed yet.” Kennedy frowned at the impetuous interruption. Yet it was perhaps the best thing that could have happened.

“So,” returned Chapelle, drawing back and placing his head on one side as he nodded it with each word, “you think I’ve spoiled her looks? Aren’t the freckles gone?”

“Yes,” retorted Hampton, bitterly, “but on her face is this new disfigurement.”

“That?” shrugged Chapelle. “I know nothing of that—nor of the trance. I have only my specialty.”

Calm though he appeared outwardly, one could see that Chapelle was plainly worried.

Under the circumstances, might not his professional reputation be at stake? What if a hint like this got abroad among his rich clientele?

I looked about his shop and wondered just how much of a faker he was. Once or twice I had heard of surgeons who had gone legitimately into this sort of thing. But the common story was that of the swindler—or worse. I had heard of scores of cases of good looks permanently ruined, seldom of any benefit. Had Chapelle ignorantly done something that would leave its scar forever? Or was he one of the few who were honest and careful?

Whatever the case, Kennedy had accomplished his purpose. He had seen Chapelle. If he were really guilty of anything the chances were all in favour of his betraying it by trying to cover it up. Deftly suppressing Hampton, we managed to beat a retreat without showing our hands any further.

“Humph!” snorted Hampton, as we rode down in the elevator and hopped on a ‘bus to go up-town. “Gave up legitimate medicine and took up this beauty doctoring—it’s unprofessional, I tell you. Why, he even advertises!” We left Hampton and returned to the laboratory, though Craig had no present intention of staying there. His visit was merely for the purpose of gathering some apparatus, which included a Crookes tube, carefully packed, a rheostat, and some other paraphernalia which we divided. A few moments later we were on our way again to the Blakeley mansion.

No change had taken place in the condition of the patient, and Mrs. Blakeley met us anxiously. Nor was the anxiety wholly over her daughter’s condition, for there seemed to be an air of relief when Kennedy told her that we had little to report.

Upstairs in the sick-room, Craig set silently to work, attaching his apparatus to an electric-light socket from which he had unscrewed the bulb. As he proceeded I saw that it was, as I had surmised, his new X-ray photographing machine which he had brought. Carefully, from several angles, he took photographs of Virginia’s head, then, without saying a word, packed up his kit and started away.

We were passing down the hall, after leaving Mrs. Blakeley, when a figure stepped out from behind a portiere. It was Cynthia, who had been waiting to see us alone.

“You—don’t think Doctor Chapelle had anything to do with it?” she asked, in a hoarse whisper.

“Then Hampton Haynes has been here?” avoided Kennedy.

“Yes,” she admitted, as though the question had been quite logical. “He told me of your visit to Carl.”

There was no concealment, now, of her anxiety. Indeed, I saw no reason why there should be. It was quite natural that the girl should worry over her lover, if she thought there was even a haze of suspicion in Kennedy’s mind.

“Really I have found out nothing yet,” was the only answer Craig gave, from which I readily deduced that he was well satisfied to play the game by pitting each against all, in the hope of gathering here and there a bit of the truth. “As soon as I find out anything I shall let you and your mother know. And you must tell me everything, too.” He paused to emphasize the last words, then slowly turned again toward the door.

From the corner of my eye I saw Cynthia take a step after him, pause, then take another.

“Oh, Professor Kennedy,” she called.

Craig turned.

“There’s something I forgot,” she continued. “There’s something wrong with mother!” She paused, then resumed: “Even before Virginia was taken down with this—illness I saw a change. She is worried. Oh, Professor Kennedy, what is it? We have all been so happy. And now—Virgie, mother—all I have in the world. What shall I do?”

“Just what do you mean?” asked Kennedy, gently.

“I don’t know. Mother has been so different lately. And now, every night, she goes out.”

“Where?” encouraged Kennedy, realising that his plan was working.

“I don’t know. If she would only come back looking happier.” She was sobbing, convulsively, over she knew not what.

“Miss Blakeley,” said Kennedy, taking her hand between both of his, “only trust me. If it is in my power I shall bring you all out of this uncertainty that haunts you.” She could only murmur her thanks as we left.

“It is strange,” ruminated Kennedy, as we sped across the city again to the laboratory.

“We must watch Mrs. Blakeley.”

That was all that was said. Although I had no inkling of what was back of it all, I felt quite satisfied at having recognised the mystery even on stumbling on it as I had.

In the laboratory, as soon as he could develop the skiagraphs he had taken, Kennedy began a minute study of them. It was not long before he looked over at me with the expression I had come to recognise when he found something important. I went over and looked at the radiograph which he was studying. To me it was nothing but successive gradations of shadows. But to one who had studied roentgenography as Kennedy had each minute gradation of light and shade had its meaning.

“You see,” pointed out Kennedy, tracing along one of the shadows with a fine-pointed pencil, and then along a corresponding position on another standard skiagraph which he already had, “there is a marked diminution in size of the
sella turcica
, as it is called.

Yet there is no evidence of a tumour.” For several moments he pondered deeply over the photographs. “And it is impossible to conceive of any mechanical pressure sufficient to cause such a change,” he added.

Unable to help him on the problem, whatever it might be, I watched him pacing up and down the laboratory.

“I shall have to take that picture over again—under different circumstances,” he remarked, finally, pausing and looking at his watch. “Tonight we must follow this clue which Cynthia has given us. Call a cab, Walter.”

We took a stand down the block from the Blakeley mansion, near a large apartment, where the presence of a cab would not attract attention. If there is any job I despise it is shadowing. One must keep his eyes riveted on a house, for, once let the attention relax and it is incredible how quickly any one may get out and disappear.

Our vigil was finally rewarded when we saw Mrs. Blakeley emerge and hurry down the street. To follow her was easy, for she did not suspect that she was being watched, and went afoot. On she walked, turning off the Drive and proceeding rapidly toward the region of cheap tenements. She paused before one, and as our cab cruised leisurely past we saw her press a button, the last on the right-hand side, enter the door, and start up the stairs.

Instantly Kennedy signalled our driver to stop and together we hopped out and walked back, cautiously entering the vestibule. The name in the letter box was “Mrs. Reba Rinehart.” What could it mean?

Just then another cab stopped up the street, and as we turned to leave the vestibule Kennedy drew back. It was too late, however, not to be seen. A man had just alighted and, in turn, had started back, also realising that it was too late. It was Chapelle! There was nothing to do but to make the best of it.

“Shadowing the shadowers?” queried Kennedy, keenly watching the play of his features under the arc-light of the street.

“Miss Cynthia asked me to follow her mother the other night,” he answered, quite frankly. “And I have been doing so ever since.”

It was a glib answer, at any rate, I thought.

“Then, perhaps you know something of Reba Rinehart, too,” bluffed Kennedy.

Chapelle eyed us a moment, in doubt how much we knew. Kennedy played a pair of deuces as if they had been four aces instead.

“Not much,” replied Chapelle, dubiously. “I know that Mrs. Blakeley has been paying money to the old woman, who seems to be ill. Once I managed to get in to see her. It’s a bad case of pernicious anemia, I should say. A neighbour told me she had been to the college hospital, had been one of Doctor Haynes’s cases, but that he had turned her over to his son. I’ve seen Hampton Haynes here, too.” There was an air of sincerity about Chapelle’s words. But, then, I reflected that there had also been a similar ring to what we had heard Hampton say. Were they playing a game against each other? Perhaps—but what was the game? What did it all mean and why should Mrs. Blakeley pay money to an old woman, a charity patient?

There was no solution. Both Kennedy and Chapelle, by a sort of tacit consent, dismissed their cabs, and we strolled on over toward Broadway, watching one another, furtively. We parted finally, and Craig and I went up to our apartment, where he sat for hours in a brown study. There was plenty to think about even so far in the affair.

He may have sat up all night. At any rate, he roused me early in the morning.

“Come over to the laboratory,” he said. “I want to take that X-ray machine up there again to Blakeley’s. Confound it! I hope it’s not too late.” I lost no time in joining him and we were at the house long before any reasonable hour for visitors.

Kennedy asked for Mrs. Blakeley and hurriedly set up the X-ray apparatus. “I wish you would place that face mask which she was wearing exactly as it was before she became ill,” he asked.

Her mother did as Kennedy directed, replacing the rubber mask as Virginia had worn it.

“I want you to preserve that mask,” directed Kennedy, as he finished taking his pictures. “Say nothing about it to any one. In fact, I should advise putting it in your family safe for the present.”

Hastily we drove back to the laboratory and Kennedy set to work again developing the second set of skiagraphs. I had not long to wait, this time, for him to study them. His first glance brought me over to him as he exclaimed loudly.