THE HOSPITAL HOMICIDES MURDER CASE
A Gillian Hazeltine Courtroom Mystery
By 
George F. Worts

A Deerstalker Classic – Selected and Introduced by Jean Marie Stine
Copyright © 1936 – reprinted by arrangement with an agent for the author's estate.
A Renaissance E Books publication
ISBN 1-58873-042-5
All rights reserved
Special Contents Copyright © 2001 by Jean Marie Stine
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.
For information contact:
Renaissance E Books
P. O. Box 494
Clemmons, NC 27012-0494
USA

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter
I.  At the Airport
II. Where is the Ghost?
III. The Harridan
IV. Sudden Death
V.  Mad Doctor
VI. Arsenic
VII. An Ambitious Woman
VIII. Gillian Decides
IX. Damaging Testimony
X.  Accused
XI. The New Will
XII. A Fit of Temper
XIII. Gillian's Last Trick
XIV. The Guilty One

INTRODUCTION

Get ready to return to those thrilling days of yesteryear for murder done right.  The Hospital Homicides Murder Case was penned in 1936, and hailed by the New York Times as the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction."  If you love John Dickson Carr, Agatha Christie, Earl Stanley Gardner and other writers in the classic 'tec tradition, you'll love lawyer-sleuth Gillian Hazeltine and The Hospital Homicides Murder Case.  
Gillian, who is anything but handsome and urbane served as the inspiration for the handsome, urbane Perry Mason.  E.  S.  Gardner, Mason's creator and an attorney himself, was a writer for the same publications where the Gillian Hazeltine stories appeared.  Having created a slew of not very successful private detective characters, Gardner decided to try something a little closer to home and emulate the highly-successful Hazeltine stories by creating his own lawyer-sleuth.  The rest is history.
The Hospital Homicides Murder Case starts with a literal bang when a young woman, fleeing from a mysterious man with a scar, collides with Gillian Hazeltine at the local airport.  The story moves into high gear when Gillian is called to investigate "ghosts" at the city's most prestigious hospital.  And it boils over with a double homicide, when a patient and surgeon are both murdered on the same night.  When Gillian discovers a young doctor and his wife are being framed for the killings by a powerful politician, he decides to take the case – though it seems hopeless.  Even Gillian doubts if his famous courtroom trickery will be enough to extricate his clients from a double date with the electric chair.  His only clues: a small oblong shape pressed into fresh paint and the total absence of fingerprints on the metal plate in a dead man's skull.
See if you can match wits with the famed lawyer-detective and spot the killer's identity before he does.  And watch for the other Gillian Hazeltine mysteries from Deerstalker Classics and the PageTurner imprint of Renaissance E Books.

Jean Marie Stine
10/2/2001

Watch for the next Deerstalker Gillian Hazeltine release, and be sure to visit the Deerstalker Classics Home Page for free stories, articles, interviews, movie stills, rare book and magazine covers, and news of our forthcoming classic mysteries in e-book format.  URL: http://www.hometown.aol.com/pulplady/DEERSTALKER.html/ 

CHAPTER I
AT THE AIRPORT

WHEN the evening passenger plane from New York, thundering into a black gale, finally arrived at the Greenfield airport, it dropped one of its passengers into the very heart of a romantic mystery.  The passenger was Gillian Hazeltine, the famous – or infamous – criminal lawyer, whose business was mysteries.  Yet his interest in them was not wholly professional.  He loved to shake the truth out of a baffling situation as a terrier loves to shake the life out of a rat.
Alighting from the big monoplane, tired and stiff from the rough passage, the lawyer walked briskly into the administration building.  He intended to telephone his wife, who was not at all air-minded, that he had arrived safely.
The lobby was crowded.  Passengers from his ship were filing through it.  Passengers were being assembled for another ship due out shortly.  Friends and relatives were greeting or saying good-by to friends and relatives.  Porters were trotting about with suitcases.  Airport employees were busy at the desk, making out tickets, answering questions, weighing in luggage.
One of the brisk young men behind the counter was attending to a girl so exceptionally beautiful that Hazeltine's glance steadied to a sparkling gaze of appreciation.
She was a little thing, slim and very Irish – the Dublin type of Irish – with curling black hair under a pert little hat, deep blue eyes with fine thick upcurling lashes that needed no mascara, a rose-bloom complexion, and a small red mouth that was, in profile, charming.
As Mr. Hazeltine passed, on his way to the phone booths, he clearly heard the girl say, "I want two reservations on the 3 A.M. plane to Dallas Thursday.  My name is Mary Brown."
The criminal lawyer was interested in Mary Brown's voice.  In and out of the courtroom he had learned to place great importance on tone shadings of the human voice.  He knew that this girl was agitated.  He could all but hear the heartbeat in her voice.  Because she was so beautiful and at the same time so agitated, he was curious.
He went to the phone booths, of which there were three.  Two were occupied, with their glass-paneled doors closed.  The nearest was empty.  He went in, dropped a nickel in the slot, and dialed the number of his house.  He did not close the door.  Some recent occupant had evidently been smoking a pipe loaded with horsehair.
Through the open door the lawyer commanded a full view of the ticket office, including an intriguing rear view of Mary Brown.  She had small, trim feet and delicate, shapely ankles.  Her blue dress fitted her slender figure neatly.
From any view, she afforded a masculine eye pleasure.
The man in the phone booth saw her open her purse and give money in exchange for two long green tickets.  And at this point the mystery began.  In the crowd about the door which gave upon the tarmac a face suddenly stood out – the pale, handsome face of a young man with sharp black eyes and a neatly trimmed black mustache.  He was further distinguished by a jagged scar, several shades paler than his skin, which zigzagged upward from the inner corner of his left eye to the line of his thick black hair.  He wore no hat.
The scar made his face striking and slightly sinister, and Gillian Hazeltine was aware that Mary Brown, in the act of turning from the desk and stuffing the two green tickets into her purse, had seen the young man, too.
In an impulsive gesture she clutched the purse to her heart with both hands.  She stared across the crowd at the man with the scar, then she looked wildly about her.  She turned and started impetuously for the phone booths.  She evidently saw the open door of the lawyer's booth, but did not immediately see that it contained a lawyer.  She bolted for it.  When she saw that it was occupied, she hesitated, but only for a moment.
She panted, "I've got to hide!  Quick!  Let me in here!"
She darted in past him and crouched at the back of the booth.  At that moment the measured buzzing in the receiver ended, and Gillian Hazeltine's Japanese horseman said in his precise English, "Gillian Hazeltine's residence."
"One moment, Toro," the lawyer gasped.
The tall young man with the interesting scar strode past the booth without glancing at it and vanished in the direction of the doors to the parking area.
The girl hiding behind Mr. Hazeltine gave a tremulous gasp, then huskily breathed, "Thank God!"  It was the only explanation she made.
With no word of thanks or apology, she wriggled past the lawyer and walked rapidly, with a sharp clicking of her little high heels, toward the door that opened on the tarmac.  She vanished into the night, leaving Gillian Hazeltine a faint breath of some springtime perfume to remember her by.
He now asked Toro for Mrs. Hazeltine, and was presently telling her that he had landed safety and would take a taxicab home.  He was curious about the beautiful Mary Brown.  He had glimpsed a mystery that had neither beginning nor end, but only the haunting wisp of a middle.  But it was obviously a mystery that hinted merely at romance – at intrigue of a sort that involved jealous suitors, a beautiful lady and possibly an elopement.
Absorbed as he was by any mystery, he would soon have forgotten the delicious Miss Brown and the moment of exciting intimacy they had shared in a phone booth, if she had not shortly come to his attention under even more mystifying circumstances.
On the second afternoon following the airport episode Dr. Hobart Creed telephoned him at his office and urgently requested his presence at dinner that evening.
Some baffling things have come up that I want to consult you about, Gillian."  Dr. Creed said.  "Cocktails at seven."
Gillian Hazeltine would have broken almost any engagement to keep this one, for Dr. Hobart Creed was, in his opinion, one of the greatest men alive.  The Hobart Creed Hospital was the largest not only in the city but in the State.  Sufferers from maladies of every description from all parts of the country, and from as far away as Europe, Asia, and Australia, came to be diagnosed, treated, and operated on.
The Hobart Creed Hospital was really an amazing institution.  Hobart Creed had started his professional life as a poor but ambitious general practitioner.  He had been dissatisfied with the hospitals of the time.  When he became successful as a surgeon, he started his own hospital.  He was now almost ninety.  In fifty years his hospital had grown until it now occupied an entire city block and part of another – a great orderly mass of white stone buildings, housing hundreds of patients – and the most modern equipment known to surgical and medical science.
Although his income was tremendous, he was not a rich man.  Over those fifty years his income had gone back into his hospital – into one of the largest and finest clinics in the world, into the finest operating rooms that money could build, into such costly items as radium and the most powerful and delicate X-ray machines that electrical engineers could devise, and into the hiring of specialists who were outstanding in their fields.
In this hospital he had realized every doctor's and surgeon's ideal.  It was perfection.  It was a living monument to one of the world's greatest of great men.  And it was, to its creator and owner, a child, a passion, an obsession.
Creed's house was a small, very modest white stone building not far from the hospital.  One servant, an old Frenchman, known affectionately to the doctor's friends as Pompom, attended to his needs.
Pompom opened the door that evening to Gillian Hazeltine, and ushered him into the book-lined study where the great surgeon was waiting.
Dr. Creed put down a cigar and a thick book, and got up, heartily welcoming his guest, crisply giving orders to Pompom, creating in a matter of seconds an atmosphere of genial hospitality.
"We won't talk about my troubles until after dinner, Gillian," the old man said.  "If you want to live forever, never worry at mealtimes.  If everybody kept laughing through every meal, there wouldn't be stomach trouble."
His eyes were sparkling, his face, even his bald dome, was flushed.  With his fringe of white hair, his little white spike of a chin whisker, he looked so happy, so hugely satisfied with life and himself, that Gillian laughed.
Dr. Creed was one of the most amazing personalities he had ever known, anyhow.  Verging on ninety, he looked, perhaps, sixty-five.  And his mind was as clear, as vigorous as that of a man of half that age.  Slim, of medium height, he carried himself with the erectness of a drill sergeant.  Invariably he told reporters who interviewed him that the secret of his success was laughter.
"Men take themselves too seriously.  They worry too much.  They poison themselves grieving over what never happens.  Laughter would empty every hospital in the world!"
Pomporn arrived with cocktails – perfect Daiquiris.  The two men went into the doctor's small but famous dining room – a gourmand's paradise.  They dined and laughed and drank fine vintage wines.  And over their brandy, cigars and black coffee Dr. Creed said suddenly, "Gillian, I'm getting old.  The old machine is wearing out.  I've had the valves ground, the cylinders re-bored, and new spark plugs put in for the last time.  I'm nothing but an eighty-seven-year-old pile of junk.  I've had myself X-rayed and prodded and probed by the best men on my staff.  My time's almost up."
Gillian made protesting noises.
Dr. Creed held up the sensitive, delicate fingers of his right hand.  "That long."
"Five years?" the lawyer gasped.
"Months!  Don't argue with me.  I'm not complaining.  I never complain.  Name me one man my age who's had more fun out of life than I have!"
Gillian began to puff angrily at his cigar.
The old man said, "I wanted to talk to you tonight about my will.  You won't approve of it.  You'll say I'm mentally unfit – but you'd better not try to prove it in court!  I'm a bachelor.  I haven't a living relative, thank God.  The only love I've ever had has been this hospital.  It's the most modern, the best equipped, the best running hospital on earth.  If it isn't, it ought to be."
Creed frowned and contemplated Gillian mysteriously over the end of his cigar.  "My will is going to be a peculiar will.  Gillian, I'm going to bequeath my hospital – the whole works – to the man who is in charge on the day of my death.  Go on!  Say it!"
Gillian said thoughtfully, "Eccentric – perhaps a little dangerous."
Dr. Creed chortled.  "It might give you a brand new motive for a murder, eh?"
"Who is the fortunate fellow?"
"A brilliant young surgeon named Dan Starbuck – perhaps the cleverest abdominal man in America."
Gillian nodded.  He had heard of Dan Starbuck.
The old man said, "I'll tell you about him in due course.  What I want your advice and help on is a mystery – a baffling and sinister mystery!  My hospital has suddenly become demoralized.  It's haywire!"
"You just said it's the smoothest running hospital on earth."
"I said it ought to be.  It isn't.  There is something going on under cover.  I know the pulse of this institution as well as I ever knew the pulse of a patient.  It's skipping beats."
"Specifically, what has happened?"
"Mysterious things – and mistakes.  Bad mistakes.  The esprit de corps is gone.  The newest little probationer feels it.  Specifically, there have been three mysterious occurrences.  They began about a month ago."
"Are you sure of this date?" Gillian asked.
"Yes, quite sure.  It was just about a month ago that cocaine began vanishing from the dispensary.  We've had narcotic thefts before, but never so clever, never so systematic.  I'm convinced it's an inside job.  The next item is – a mystery woman!  She visited Dan Starbuck's room late at night – and got drunk there."
"Is that so mysterious?" Gillian smiled.
"You'll think so when you hear the rest of it," the old man answered.  Our surgeon's rooms are in the top of a wing off the main operating building.  Women are not permitted on floor.  One morning at about two o'clock I was hailed by an orderly in one of the lower floors of the building."  
"Is it your custom," Gillian interrupted, "to visit the hospital at such hours?"
"It's my custom to prowl about any and all of these buildings at all hours.  I was stopped by this orderly.  He's a prim, old-maidish fellow who's been on my payroll for fifteen years.  He told me he thought I ought to know that he had seen a woman, a very flashily dressed woman, go into Dan Starbuck's room about two hours previously.  She was evidently a beautiful showgirl type of blonde.
"I went at once to Dan Starbuck's quarters.  I was doubtful, because Dan Starbuck is not the kind to entertain women in his room – or to violate any of the hospital rules.  Outside the door I met Dr. Steffens, one of my older surgeons.  He was very much upset.  He told me that he had just seen a woman – a beautiful blonde – leave Starbuck's room.  What are you grinning about?"
"It doesn't seem so mysterious to me."
"Wait a minute.  The mystery is coming.  I went into Starbuck's room.  I turned on the light.  There was an empty gin bottle and two glasses on the table.  And in Starbuck's bed was not Starbuck but Dr. Hoyle, one of my best anesthetists, sound asleep.  I had a hard time waking him.  He had not even seen this woman.  At a little before eleven he had dropped in for a chat with Starbuck.  Hoyle had been overworking and could not sleep.  In Starbuck's presence he took a pretty stiff dose of luminol, and his last recollection was talking to Starbuck.  Starbuck walked out and left him sleeping there."
"Where was Starbuck?"
"Over at Bellevue Hospital, on an emergency case.  He was at Bellevue from a little past eleven until almost three.  What do you make of that?"
"Do you believe Dr. Hoyle's story?"
"Implicitly!"
"There was no chance, in your mind, of Dr. Hoyle's having staged this little rendezvous in Starbuck's room, knowing Starbuck would be gone for some time?"
"But he didn't know Starbuck was going.  It was an emergency call.  Now, what was that woman doing in that room?  What was behind it all?"
Gillian puffed frowningly at his cigar.  "There's something curiously familiar about this," he murmured.  "The woman was never seen again, of course.  And no one who saw her – either the orderly or Dr. Steffens – recognized her."
"No."
"And neither Starbuck nor Hoyle recognized her from your description?"
"No.  Any more questions?"
"Nope.  Go on."
"The next – and latest – mysterious occurrence happened this morning.  It prompted me to call you in.  Do you know what a hemophiliac is?"
Gillian shook his head.
"Hemophilia is a strange malady, an inherited weakness, about which medical science still knows very little.  Perhaps the best known cases are the male members of the Spanish royal family.  A hemophiliac is a bleeder.  Once a hemophiliac starts bleeding, there's no stopping him."
"How does he ever grow up?"
"Only through amazing luck or by the exercise of the utmost care.  Certain serum injections are helpful."
"Wouldn't the slightest scratch be fatal?"
"It might.  About a week ago, one of these strange cases came here for observations young man of twenty-four – to see what we could do for what appeared to be chronic appendicitis.  It was not known that he was a bleeder.  It was decided to operate.  Dan Starbuck–" 
"Ah," Gillian breathed.  "Dan Starbuck again."
"This morning at eleven, Starbuck was to operate.  The bleeder went to the laboratory for the usual routine of a blood test.  Then a slip-up occurred – a very mysterious slip-up."
"Don't tell me," Gillian protested in horror, "he was operated on by mistake!"
"He was."
"But didn't Starbuck–" 
"Wait.  The laboratory technician took the blood test and found at once that the young man was a hemophiliac.  He stopped the hemorrhage from the patient's finger with an injection, as it is possible to do when the flow is small.
"The technician sent the bleeder back to his room, and dispatched his assistant with a report to Starbuck.
"Starbuck was not in his office.  She placed it on his desk with the patient's chart, which Starbuck would consult, as a matter of routine, immediately before the operation.  In the meantime Operating Room B was ready, the patient was prepared by his nurse, and at eleven o'clock Dan Starbuck appeared, and operated on the bleeder.  The poor devil died on the table, of course."
"Starbuck claims," Gillian guessed, that the report was not placed on his desk until after the operation!"
"Exactly!"
And what does the technician's assistant say?"
"That she placed it on his desk before the operation!"
"Whom do you believe?"
"Both of them.  Some one must have removed the chart before the operation and returned it afterward."
Gillian said thoughtfully, "Did he examine this hemophiliac before operating?"
"No.  It wasn't necessary.  This is a very large hospital.  Much of his operating is upon patients he has never seen.  He takes the diagnoses of other doctors whose specialty is diagnosis and operates accordingly.  "
"Didn't the patient make any protest against being operated on?"
"He did.  He was hysterical, incoherent.  He had to be strapped to the table.  But many people become hysterical before an operation."
Gillian shook his head.  "Doctor, would you say it might have been negligence on Starbuck's part?"
"I would not!  He is never negligent," the old man said testily; and Gillian realized that, whatever might be said on the subject, Dr. Creed idolized the young surgeon and would hear no ill of him.
"I want you to go in there," Dr. Creed said unexpectedly, "and sift this mystery to the bottom!  All these mysteries!"
"But I know nothing about hospitals," Gillian protested.  "You might as well send me to Africa to find out, in a few minutes, why the war drums are beating and the battle fires burning."
"Ah, you're modest, Gillian – but clever.  Damn your modesty!  What I want is your cleverness."
Gillian laughed.  "I've never been inside the doors of your hospital."
"All the better.  You'll be unprejudiced.  And you won't go at it blind.  I'll be with you every step of the way.  First of all, I want you to size up Dan Starbuck."
"The man," Gillian said dreamily, who inherits the Hobart Creed Hospital, lock, stock and barrel.  A property worth, at a conservative estimate, fifteen millions."
"And worthy of it!" the old man declared.
"And you wonder," Gillian went on in the same dreamy manner, "why your hospital is haywire, why the esprit de corps is shot, and why attempts are being made to discredit Dan Starbuck!"
Dr. Creed leaned forward and pointed a finger at the lawyer.  "That's just where you're wrong.  No one knows about it!  He doesn't know about it.  You're the first person I've mentioned it to.  No one can possibly suspect that I'm making him my heir."
Gillian raised an eyebrow.  His steel-blue eyes were alive with little fires.  "That makes it harder," he admitted.  "But since I'm your lawyer and you are paying me for my advice, you'll get my honest opinion.  I think it's a great risk to leave this valuable property to one man.  Why not establish a foundation – name a directorate of responsible business men and hard-boiled doctors who will do their utmost to carry out your wishes to the letter?"
"Nothing stirring," the old man chirped.  "Petty politics would soon enter into it.  I don't believe in the committee system of running a hospital.  I've proved that a one-man hospital can be – must be – the most successful."
"The trouble is," Gillian argued, "you'll never find another Hobart Creed."
Dr. Creed laughed.  "You haven't met Dan Starbuck!" he cried.  "He combines, to my utmost satisfaction, every quality I've wanted in my successor.  You won't find his equal in ten thousand doctors!"
At this point Pompom entered the dining room.
Dr. Starbuck is on the phone, doctor," the plump little Frenchman said.  He says it is urgent."
Dr. Creed went out of the room.
When he returned, in a moment, his eyes were glinting and his face was flushed with excitement.
"Another mystery!" he cried.
"With Dan Starbuck at the bottom of it?"
"No, no.  One of the nurses.  She just saw a ghost!"
"Now, doctor."
"She swears it.  She fainted.  They're just bringing her around.  Come on!"
The two men left the house and went to the great stone-and-glass cube which housed the operating rooms and some hundreds of patients.

CHAPTER II
WHERE IS THE GHOST?

AN immense noiseless elevator whisked the two men to the ninth floor.  Dr. Creed took Gillian down a corridor to an open door from which light streamed and the murmurs of voices issued.  It proved to be Dr. Starbuck's office.
A pale girl with platinum-blond hair was stretched out on her back on a divan at one end of the room.  A group of three people stood near a flat walnut desk.  Two were men, the third was a young woman – a handsome young woman – with bright red hair.
The girl on the settee had one arm thrown over her eyes, but she did not stir when Dr. Creed said heartily, "Ghosts now, eh?  Well, we'll soon get at the bottom of all this mystery."  And he added in the triumphant voice of a toastmaster introducing the speaker of the evening, "This is Gillian Hazeltine!"
Then he grasped one of the young men by the arm, and said, with an air of pride, "Gillian, this – this is Dan Starbuck."
Gillian shook hands with the young man, and guessed his age at thirty.  There was nothing remarkable about Dr. Starbuck's appearance.  Of a little more than the average height, he looked to Gillian like a typical surgeon – clear-eyed, healthy and crisp.  His hair was blond, and he had the tan of a golfer.  He was dressed in a white operating gown, as was the woman with red hair.
"We're beginning to wonder, Mr. Hazeltine," the famous young surgeon said, "whether this is a hospital or a haunted house."An expert at judging people, Gillian decided, after one shrewd, appraising glance, that Dan Starbuck was all that old Dr. Creed had claimed for him.  That he was a great surgeon, Gillian had not doubted, but now he was convinced also that Starbuck was a fine young man, and a person to be trusted.
Dr. Creed now introduced Gillian to the red-haired woman.  She was very good looking.  Her name, it appeared, was Dr. Claudia Barnum.
"Dr. Barnum," Dr. Creed explained, "is Dr. Starbuck's assistant, and one of the most brilliant surgeons on our staff.  She is always improving her skills.  Went to Germany, France and Italy to study techniques there on her vacation.  I wish all my surgeons were as conscientious as she is."
Dr. Barnum held out her hand, and Gillian saw that she had not removed her rubber operating-room gloves.  The glove felt smooth and powdery, but he could feel the firm, warm flesh through it.
"Nurse Green," she said, "won't be able to talk for a moment, The poor child had quite a shock."
Gillian liked the woman surgeon's voice.  It was serene and musical.  He was now introduced to the third member of the trio, a young man slightly taller than Dr. Starbuck.  He had crisp black hair, whimsical eyes and a friendly grin.  His handshake was hearty.
"This is Dr. Hoyle," Dr. Creed explained, "our chief anesthetist.  We consider him the greatest anesthetist in America."
"You mean," Dr. Starbuck said, "he does."
Dr. Hoyle, grinning, remarked, "And a bogey man who goes around scaring poor little nurses in my spare time."
"Nonsense!" the red-headed woman surgeon laughed.  "You weren't anywhere around."
The tall young anesthetist looked at her lovingly and said, "Thank you for that alibi, Claudia.  I may need it."
"Aren't you the man," Gillian asked him, "who was asleep in Dr. Starbuck's room the night the beautiful and mysterious blonde polished off that quart of gin?"
"I am always asleep," Dr. Hoyle answered, "when young and beautiful women come looking for adventure.  When Nurse Green fainted – whose arms did she fall into?  Mine?  Not at all.  Dr. Starbuck's!  I am always just too late – usually a block or two away – when beautiful women faint."
There was a groan from the settee.  Nurse Green had removed the hand from her eyes, and was staring up dazedly at them.
"Do you feel well enough to talk?" Dr. Starbuck asked crisply.
"I will in a moment," the girl whispered, smiling up at him sweetly.  She had, Gillian observed, large and beautiful blue eyes.  She was strikingly pretty, in a sharp, sophisticated way.
"We had just finished an operation in Amphitheater D," Dr. Starbuck explained to Gillian.  "I walked out and heard her scream, then the tray she was carrying fell with a crash.  She said she'd seen a tall man wearing a black robe.  He had luminous eyes."
"And she fainted in your arms?" Gillian asked quietly.
"And I," Dr. Hoyle put in, "came down the stairs at the end of that corridor – where she'd seen this strange specter – about six seconds later."
"What did you see?"
"My old pal, here, scooping her up in his arms.  And a very pretty picture it was – he so strong and willing!"
"No man with luminous eyes?"
"No, Mr. Hazeltine.  Except for the touching scene I've described, the corridor was empty."
"What was she doing with that tray?" Gillian asked.
Dr. Barnum answered, "Taking it to a special diet case at the end of the corridor."
And Dan Starbuck added, "I've had the stairways, and all elevators and entrances, including the ambulance entrance, checked.  No one saw such a creature."
The girl on the settee groaned again.  I-I'm sorry I'm causing all this trouble."
Gillian walked over to her.  Nurse Green gazed up at him with large, troubled blue eyes.
"Have you been overworking, Miss Green?"
She moved her head slightly in the negative.  "No.  There's no reason for me to be having hallucinations.  I-I swear I saw that-that man."
"And his eyes were luminous?"
"Yes.  They-they glowed.  He came walking toward me from that end of the corridor.  It's-it's rather badly lighted.  He had those awful eyes fixed on me.  And when he got close he said, in this low, horrible voice, 'The hour grows late.'"
"Have you any theories as to what that meant?"
"No, Mr. Hazeltine.  And it utterly terrified me."
"How long have you been a nurse in this hospital?"
"Eight months, since my probation."
"A total of three years and eight months?"
"Yes, sir."
She was gazing at young Dr. Starbuck with a look so wistful, so yearning, that Gillian was inclined to think that this matter of the ghost had a very simple solution indeed.
"Dr. Hoyle," Gillian said, turning, "how long after she had seen this mysterious figure did you come out into the corridor?"
"Only a few seconds."
"Did you hear her scream?"
"Yes, sir.  I was at the top of the stairs."
"And none of you saw this man with glowing eyes?"
Evidently, no one had.
Gillian, at this point, became aware that the lovely red-headed surgeon was gazing steadily at Dan Starbuck with a strange, speculative look.  Gillian glanced at Starbuck.  The young man was staring at the floor.  He appeared to have forgotten the presence of the people in his office.  He was frowning a little, as if in deep thought.  He looked worried.
At this moment a girl walked into the room, another nurse, and at sight of her Gillian gave a little grunt of surprise.
It was the first surprise of several which were to enliven this night.  For the nurse who walked in was none other than Mary Brown!  His little mystery ship that had passed in the night!  The girl who had crowded into the telephone booth to hide from the young man with the scar!
But she was lovelier in the crisp white of a nurse's uniform.  The white simplicity emphasized her Irish loveliness – the dark hair, the deep-blue Irish eyes, the wonderful complexion.  She looked at Gillian, and he saw that she did not remember him.  And he suddenly realized that this girl had bought two tickets on the plane for Dallas, leaving Greenfield at 3 A.M. Thursday.  And tonight was Wednesday!
She said, in that charming voice which Gillian had admired so, "I beg your pardon, Dr. Starbuck; but I've just heard that Miss Green saw a ghost."
"Yes, Miss Kelly," Dr. Starbuck answered.
"I was at the opposite end of the corridor," Miss Kelly – or Miss Brown – said in a firm little voice.  "I beard her scream, I saw her drop the tray, and I saw her faint in your arms.  But I saw no ghost – or anything else."
"This," Dr. Creed murmured, "is really amazing."
But Gillian was looking at the girl on the settee.  For a moment – for only the shortest measurable interval of time – he saw an expression in her eyes as she stared at Miss Kelly.  It was stark and awful hatred.  It was the hatred of a woman fully capable of murder.  And then it was gone – and the dazed and troubled look was back.
Dr. Barnum was questioning Nurse Kelly.  The girl insisted that she had commanded an excellent view down the corridor for the length of it; she reiterated that she had seen Miss Green drop the tray; had heard her scream; had seen her fall into Dr. Starbuck's arms.  But she was positive there had been no ghost.
"Why didn't you report this sooner?" Dr. Creed asked.
"Because I didn't attach any importance to it.  I just heard that there was a ghost."
Gillian was trying to see some connection between all this and that episode at the airport, when he received another shock.
He heard crisp footfalls in the corridor, and a man came into the room – a tall young man, a pale young man with a black mustache and intensely dark eyes, and a pale scar zigzagging from the inner corner of his left eye across his forehead to his hairline.
At his entrance the little group fell silent, and Gillian's heart gave a great thump, for there was no question that this was the young man from whom the beautiful Miss Brown – or Miss Kelly – had hidden that night at the airport!
The man with the scar glanced at the group in the room.  Then his eyes remained fixed on the red-haired woman's face for a long moment.  Gillian saw her flush pinkly, but she did not look away.
Gillian, always sensitive to atmospheres, was intrigued by the impression of strange undercurrents in this room.
The man with the scar looked at the tall anesthetist, Dr. Hoyle.  He said, drawling, "Jeff, my anesthetist wants your advice.  Can you spare a moment?"
Dr. Hoyle seemed to stiffen a little, or so it seemed to the watchful Gillian, and said, "Dan, how soon are we doing that duodenal?"
Dr. Starbuck glanced at a round-faced wrist watch and answered, "Fourteen minutes."
The anesthetist shrugged.  "I can spare a moment."
"Lee," Dr. Creed broke in, "I want you to meet the great criminal lawyer Gillian Hazeltine.  Gillian, this is Lee Tichman, our brain specialist."
Dr. Tichman nodded at Gillian, but did not offer his hand.  And Gillian, so sensitive to personal atmospheres, believed he sensed a general hostility to the man with the scar.
When the anesthetist and the brain specialist went out, Gillian was conscious of a definite bewilderment.  He felt angry.  When anything bewildered him, he always felt angry.  Something definitely was going on here.
What connection was there between that mysterious episode at the airport and tonight's mysterious stranger with glowing eyes?
Who was lying and who wasn't and why?
Dr. Barnum seemed to sense the irritation in him, for she touched his arm and said, "Mr. Hazeltine, could you spare me a moment?  My office is just down the hall."
And when the blond girl on the settee started to rise, the red-headed surgeon said, "No, Miss Green.  Please lie there.  Mr. Hazeltine will want to talk to you in a moment."
Dr. Starbuck glanced at his watch again and mentioned, "We have a duodenal in twelve in minutes, Claudia.  I'll see you in F."

CHAPTER III
THE HARRIDAN

GILLIAN accompanied Dr. Barnum to her office, farther along the same corridor.  She closed the door, seated herself on the edge of the desk, and requested Gillian to sit down.
He did so and looked at her expectantly.  He liked her forthright manner.  He liked her clear, unflirtatious eyes, and her smile, which definitely had great charm.  She was not a beautiful woman.  Once she might have been, but the demands of her career had changed soft loveliness into a decided handsomeness.  He was always amazed at beautiful women who took up these difficult careers.
The serene, musical voice was saying, "I honestly don't think there's anything very mysterious about tonight's business, Mr. Hazeltine.  Nancy Green is a fairly familiar type.  Until five years ago, she was the spoiled daughter of a very rich man – Mortimer Green, the banker.  When he lost his fortune, Nancy took up what struck her as being a romantic career – nursing.
"She is really a decided neurotic – actually, an exhibitionist.  What she did tonight was to put on a little exhibition – to attract attention, to get the center of the stage.  In addition to that, she has a terrific crush on Dr. Starbuck.  She timed it rather neatly to faint in his nice, strong arms."
Gillian said, "I wonder if it's as simple as that.  Has this other nurse, Miss Kelly, a reputation for honesty?"
"Carolyn Kelly is one of our most reliable nurses – a splendid young woman."
"How do you account for these other mysterious occurrences, doctor?"
"The missing narcotics – and the mysterious and beautiful visitor to Dr. Starbuck's room?  I have no theories, although I do think there's a certain undercurrent in this hospital.  There is dissatisfaction, and there's, trouble brewing.  But you must remember that Dr. Creed is old."
"Losing his grip?"
"I suppose it really amounts to that."
There was a knock at the door.  Dr. Starbuck's voice said, "Ready for that duodenal, Claudia?"
"Coming," she answered crisply.
"Is Dr. Hoyle a practical joker?" Gillian asked.
The red-headed surgeon's handsome eyes seemed to sparkle.
"I wouldn't call him that – no, Mr. Hazeltine.  He had a grand sense of humor.  He's really a delightful person – and not cruel.  Practical jokers are cruel."
She got up and went to the door, and Gillian followed.  When she and Dr. Starbuck had gone, he went into Dr. Starbuck's office.  Nancy Green was now sitting on the settee and was alone.
She said, "Dr. Creed left word for you to drop in at his house when you're through with your investigation.  The excitement has tired him."
Gillian closed the door.
"Miss Green," he said bluntly, "what was your object in lying to us?"
And for a moment he saw, as if a mask had been withdrawn, that same stark look in her eyes he had glimpsed for an instant earlier.  It was gone so quickly that he could hardly have said he actually saw it, yet he had seen and it made him uneasy.  It was hatred in the raw.
Her eyes were glowing dreamily at him now.
"I don't know what you mean," she said sweetly.  "I didn't imagine it, Mr. Hazeltine.  I'm sure–"
"You're still lying," he said harshly.  But he did not surprise that murderous look again.
The nurse looked meek and submissive.
"But I did see that – that man," she said.
He did not think he could bluff this girl, but he would try.  "Too many mysterious things have been happening, Miss Green.  I'm going to get at the bottom of them.  There will be an extensive investigation.  Whoever is involved will get into serious trouble.  If you can be helpful in clearing up these mysteries, I will promise to protect you."
He had said the same thing on many previous occasions.  Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn't.
Miss Green said calmly, "If I could help you, I would.  I've heard these rumors, but I know nothing more about these mysteries than you do."
She got up and went gracefully to the door.  She reminded Gillian a little of a yellow panther he had once seen.  She was as graceful and quite as dangerous.
As she went out, the telephone on Dr. Starbuck's desk rang.  He hesitated, then answered it.  A woman's voice said, "Is this Mr. Hazeltine?"
"Yes."
"I am speaking for Miss Hannah Starbuck.  This is Miss Halliday, the floor nurse in charge of her case.  Miss Starbuck heard you were in the hospital and is most anxious to see you.  It's Room 319.  Can you come?"
"I'll be there immediately," Gillian said.
He went to the third floor and found Room 319.  A plump, pretty young brunette let him in.  She whispered, "I don't think she should talk to you very long, Mr. Hazeltine.  She is not at all strong, and this has been a very bad day."
A shrill voice from the bed said, "Is that Gillian Hazeltine, Nora?"
"Yes, Miss Starbuck."
"Have him come in.  And stay out of here."
The nurse went out and Gillian went in.  The woman in the bed looked like an old harridan.  She had the eyes of a hawk-sharp and bright and piercing – and the lantern jaw and the thin-lipped, large, grim mouth of a woman accustomed to having her way.
She snapped, "Sit down, young man.  It's high time you were sent for to probe into this mess.  If you want to smoke, smoke.  I don't mind smoke."
Gillian, a little uncomfortable under this barrage, sat down, but he did not smoke.
"In case you don't know who I am," the edged voice went on, "I am Dan Starbuck's aunt, obviously, on his paternal side.  It's scandalous, the goings on in this hospital.  And that ghost Nancy Green claims she saw is just about the limit."
"Oh, you heard about Miss Green's ghost?" Gillian said.
"I hear about everything that goes on in this hospital," Miss Starbuck barked.  "Every hospital is always a hotbed of rumors and malicious gossip, but I've never been in one as bad as this.  I know all about the narcotic pilferage, and I know all about that mysterious blond woman who drank the bottle of gin in Dain's rooms, and I know all about this hemophiliac case."
"You mean," Gillian said hopefully, "you know who or what is at the bottom of it all?"
"Of course I don't!" Miss Starbuck cried.  "But I've got my theories.  I do nothing all day long but lie in this bed, thinking these things out.  Hasn't it occurred to you that these so-called mysteries are a little too systematic?"
"It has."
"And what conclusions have you drawn?"
"None – yet."
"Do you want my theories?"
"I do, very much."
"Are you sure that door is closed?"
He looked.  "Yes, Miss Starbuck."
"Then see if any one is eavesdropping outside."Gillian was sure now that he was wasting his time on a woman with a sick mind.  But to humor her he went to the door, opened it quickly and looked.
A man, dressed as a hospital orderly, had been crouching close to the door, probably with one ear to the keyhole.  He sprang up in confusion and backed away.  He wore a fox-like grin.
"You must have dropped something," Gillian said dryly.
"Yes.  That's right.  I dropped something, and I was stooping down to pick it up, just as you opened that door."
The orderly was backing away.
"Wait a minute!" Gillian snapped.  "What's your name?"
The man turned and ran.  The voice of the woman in 310 cried shrilly, "Never mind.  I recognized his voice.  It's Cleve Salter."
Gillian reentered the room and closed the door.
Miss Starbuck said, "And there's another mystery.  He's always skulking around outside this room.  But I don't attach much importance to him.  He just knows that this room is a clearing house for gossip.  Sit down, young man."
Gillian sat down.
"Now, I'll tell you what my theory is."  She pitched her voice very low.  It was hardly audible.  "My theory is that Dr. Creed is going crazy!"
Gillian found himself getting bewildered again.  The bright, piercing eyes danced with lively lights.
"He knows he can't live long," the whisper went on.  "He himself is at the bottom of these mysteries.  He's doing it," she concluded triumphantly, "to test out his staff!"
Gillian saw the futility of arguing with Miss Hannah Starbuck.  "Perhaps you're right," he said.  "I'll look into it from that angle."
She seemed pleased.  As he started to rise, she said sharply, "Wait a minute!  There's something else I want you to do for me.  I want you to draw me a new will.  I want to cut off Nancy Green.  My old will leaves her fifty thousand dollars.  I made it when I'd been here a month.  She was my day nurse.  I thought she was the sweetest, kindest girl I'd ever known.  I've found out she's a hypocrite and a liar and a little snake.  I want to leave every dollar I possess to Dan, except for one hundred dollars to you, for your services.  That will enable you to probate the will, and to probate it properly."
Gillian realized that, while Miss Starbuck might have a sick brain, she knew her law.
"In this State," she said, "a holographic will is as legal as one typed and witnessed.  So we'll draw a holographic will.  Hand me that pad and that pen.  You dictate it and I'll write and sign it.  It's simple enough – everything to my nephew Dan."
"Very well."  Gillian gave her the pad and the pen and told her what to write.
When she had dated and signed it, she gave it to him and said, "Lock this away.  When I die, probate it.  And if any one contests it, on the grounds that I'm mentally incompetent fight them tooth and claw."
And as Gillian picked up his hat and started for the door, she said, "If you want to get to the bottom of these mysteries, begin with that crazy old man!"
Gillian made his escape.  As he went out the door he almost fell over Cleve Salter, the orderly.  The man had a small broom and dustpan – and was brushing up the floor just outside the door of 310.
When he saw Gillian he started to move away.
Gillian closed Miss Starbuck's door and said politely, "Have you lost something?"
The man gave him a quick, sidewise glance and a foxy grin.
"Just sweeping up a bit," he said.  "Just sweeping."
"If you find anything of interest," Gillian said dryly, "let me know."He walked on and turned right, into another corridor, at the end of which were the elevators.  And as he turned, he came upon a tableau that stopped him.
Dr. Starbuck, still in his operating gown, was in earnest and intimate conversation with a slim, small nurse.  The brilliant young surgeon was standing so close to the little nurse that her shoulder was touching his arm.  Her face was uplifted to his, her large eyes were staring up hungrily into his.  If it had not been for some quality of despair in their faces, Gillian would have guessed that they were about to kiss.
And then he saw who the pretty nurse was.  Mary Brown – alias Carolyn Kelly!
They had sprung apart.  Dr. Starbuck was blushing.  And the blush emphasized his appearance of cleanness.  He had a rosy look as if he had just been boiled.
The nurse was blushing, too, and smiling nervously.  But it was obvious that she did not recognize, in Gillian, the man with whom she had, for a breathless few seconds, shared a telephone booth.
Gillian nodded to them and passed on to the elevators.  His mind was busily turning over the intriguing things he had observed in this hospital, especially in Dr. Starbuck's office.  Mentally he listed them.  Nancy Green first, of course, and her ghost.  Why was she lying?  Nancy Green's glare of hatred at Nurse Carolyn Kelly, too.  And young Dr. Starbuck's worried preoccupation.  The red-headed Claudia Barnum's strange look of speculation as she had gazed at Starbuck, and the effect on her of the sinister Dr. Tichman's hypnotic eyes.  To say nothing of the effect of Tichman's presence on every one in the room, especially on Dr. Hoyle, the tall, amiable anesthetist.  And on top of all this, the odd behavior of Dr. Starbuck's old aunt – and the eavesdropping orderly – and the furtive conference between Dr. Starbuck and Nurse Kelly in the corridor – the mysterious episode at the airport – and the original three strange occurrences which had prompted Dr. Creed to consult Hazeltine.  What did all these things mean?  What was going on?
When Gillian reached Dr. Creed's house, the old man was waiting for him in his study.
"Well," he chirped, "did you find Nancy Green's ghost?"
Gillian answered wearily, "Doctor, I don't know that that girl is at the bottom of these other mysterious doings, but I'd get rid of her.  She's a dangerous trouble-maker."
Dr. Creed's mouth tightened.  "I can't do it, Gillian.  Her father died in my hospital.  I promised him I'd look after that girl.  We were life-long friends.  I can't let him down.  Besides, I'm sorry for her.  What she did tonight – if she did it deliberately, without seeing any luminous-eyed creature – wasn't very malicious.  No one was hurt.  I don't think she had a thing to do with these other affairs."
"It's quite likely," Gillian said amiably, "I'm mistaken in my judgment."
"Her work has really been very satisfactory.  I had just made up my mind to promote her to Dr. Starbuck's operating crew, as a scrub-nurse.  She's an exceedingly clever young woman."
"What can you tell me about an orderly named Cleve Salter?"
"Cleve is the orderly who reported having seen the mysterious blond woman go to Dan's room.  He's been in my service for years."
"Would it spoil your trust in him to learn that he eavesdrops on conversations in patients' rooms?"
Dr. Creed laughed.  "No!  Cleve is nothing but an old woman.  He lives on gossip.  Whose room was he spying on?"
"Miss Hannah Starbuck's."
"That old witch.  Did you talk to her?"
Gillian nodded.  "She's very much upset over all these mysterious occurrences."
"She would be!  She's nothing but a pest.  She's been a patient here almost a year.  She's a hypochondriac, with a really bad heart.  One of these days she's going to pop off like this!"  And the doctor snapped his fingers.  "Pay no attention to anything she said, Gillian.  Now – tell me what did you think of Dan Starbuck?"
Gillian had liked Dan Starbuck very much.  He said so.
Dr. Creed beamed.  "Do you think you can find out who is at the bottom of these mysteries?"
"I'm going to work on it.  But my advice is the same: let me announce through the newspapers that you've made a will leaving everything to the Hobart Creed Foundation."
"Never!"
"Then don't blame me if your troubles grow much worse before we find who – or what – is at the bottom of them."
"You're clever," Dr. Creed chirped.  You'll find out."
Gillian left him, got into his car and drove home.  His mind was a whirl of conjectures, but through it all ran a single design.

CHAPTER IV
SUDDEN DEATH

HIS house, when he reached it, was dark.  His wife, Vee, was in bed.  Gillian went to his study, mixed himself a highball, sipped it with relish, and fixed his mind on the problems that Hobart Creed had presented to him.  There were several arresting facts to think about.  The foremost was that an old man, owning property worth at least fifteen million, was soon to die.  Of equal importance was the fact that this old man had made no will.  And another fact of weight was that Hobart Creed was determined to leave this valuable property to a young surgeon named Starbuck.
These were the facts on the one hand.  The mysterious happenings Dr. Creed had mentioned were the facts on the other.  Gillian was sure that these two sets of facts were related.
He was not sure of the passage of time.  He was on the trail of an idea, but it was elusive.  Much later he heard the pattering of rain against the study window.  Still later he was surprised when the window became coldly gray.  Of the mysteries Dr. Creed had mentioned, Gillian was most interested in the one presented by the woman who had visited Dan Starbuck's room.  From the beginning it had had a vaguely familiar pattern.
The strong cold light of a rainy day was shining into the smoke-filled study when Gillian caught up with that elusive idea.  This capture was so startling to him that he leaped up from his desk.
Mark Storm!  The plot against the Creed millions – if it should prove to be a plot – had all the familiar earmarks of that clever rogue!  It was typical of the way Mark Storm's mind worked.
Mark Storm had been, until about a year ago, Gillian Hazeltine's most powerful, most active, most dangerous enemy.  But Mark Storm was abroad in France or Italy.  He had gone abroad, he had announced at the time, for his health.  Actually, he was one jump ahead of a grand jury investigation into his activities as district attorney of Greenfield.  He was still the district attorney, with a year of his term unexpired.
Pacing up and down the study, with a cold cigar in his teeth, Gillian reflected that if Mark Storm were only in town, he would know where to lodge his suspicions.  But if Mark Storm were here, he would have heard.
The telephone rang.  He picked up the receiver.  Dr. Creed was on the wire, incoherent with excitement.  He wanted Gillian to come to the hospital at once.
"Dan Starbuck has vanished!" the old man sputtered.  "Simply packed up his bags and vanished – after he'd done some very strange things.  Will you come at once?"
"Yes."
Gillian drove to the hospital.
An orderly met him at the main hospital entrance and conducted him to Dr. Creed's private office.  The old man was slumped down in a chair with his elbows on the desk, his face in his hands, his whole attitude conveying forlornness and dejection.  When Gillian spoke, he looked up.  His fringe of white hair was rumpled, his little white spike of a chin whisker was askew, his eyes were blurred and red.  He lifted his hands in an empty, weary gesture and let them slowly fall to the desk.
"It's the most mysterious thing that's happened so far," he said in a weak, tremulous voice.  "He finished the operation he had scheduled for last night.  Then he vanished – just packed his bags and lit out without a word to me or any one!"
Gillian threw his raincoat and hat on a chair.
"What time did he vanish?  Who saw him?"
"An orderly saw him running through the halls with a suitcase in each hand.  That was about one thirty.  But you haven't heard the strangest part yet, Gillian.  Dan's aunt died quite suddenly last night, and he buried her hurriedly, before he left.  I can't understand why he'd want to do that in such a rush–" 
"What!" exclaimed Gillian.  "He buried her, and then disappeared?  Wait!  Did he go alone?  Maybe that will give us a hint?"
"I don't know whether he went alone or not," Creed answered.
"Does that nurse – the one we met with Dr. Starbuck in the corridor last night – I think her name's Miss Kelly – does she live in the hospital?"
"Yes.  In the nurses' quarters."
"See if her baggage is missing from her room."
Dr. Creed dialed a number on the house telephone.  In a moment he said, "Please look in Miss Kelly's room.  If she isn't there, see if her baggage is there.  I'll hold the line."
He looked at Gillian with a tired smile.  "I think you're barking up the wrong tree, Gillian.  Half the girls on my payroll are infatuated with Dan Starbuck."  His smile faded as a voice spoke in the receiver at his ear.  "Are you sure?  I see.  No.  That's all, thanks."
He hung up the receiver with a look of bewilderment that would have been amusing if he had not looked so old and so forlorn.
"Her bed wasn't slept in.  Her things are gone."
"I think," Gillian said gently, "I can tell you where they are."
The old man sputtered, "How the devil do you know?"
I think," Gillian replied, "they are aboard a westbound passenger plane that stopped here this morning at three."  And he erased the bewildered look from Dr. Creed's face by describing, briefly, his little encounter with the nurse at the airport.
"But what about Miss Starbuck's death?" Gillian demanded.
"What do the hospital records show concerning her death?"
"Oh, that's all clear," Creed replied, as if to reassure himself as much as Gillian.  "Dr. Barnum treated her for an attack, about nine-thirty.  She had another about ten, and the floor nurse sent for Dr. Barnum a second time.  Dr. Barnum was alarmed at the old lady's condition, and called Starbuck.  Dan gave her caffeine sodium benzoate – then hurried on to F for a splenectomy.  It's a difficult and bloody operation.  She died a few minutes after he left."
Gillian gazed at him thoughtfully, but said nothing.  And the old man blustered, "She died of an attack of angina pectoris.  I told you last night she'd pop off without a moment's warning.  She did."
"Let's clear this up as much as possible," Gillian suggested.  "You say Dr. Starbuck buried her before he disappeared.  Who embalmed her?"    "The Stinson and Weatherby Funeral Parlors."    From Stinson and Weatherby Gillian learned that Miss Hannah Starbuck's body had been embalmed and delivered to Elmwood Cemetery at 2 A.M.  She had been buried.  Dr. Alexis Parkman had read the burial service.  Gillian now called Dr. Alexis Parkman.  The clergyman sounded sleepy and confused.
"Dr. Parkman, do you know why Dr. Starbuck was in such a hurry to have his aunt buried?"
"I-I gave my word of honor to say nothing."
"Wasn't a pretty little Irish girl named Kelly with him?"
"As a matter of fact, she was."
"Did you marry them at the cemetery?"
Gillian listened to the answer, hung up the receiver, and swung around to Dr. Creed.  "Dan Starbuck was married to Carolyn Kelly by Dr. Parkman in the sexton's house immediately after the burial service."The old man groaned.  "Why–" he began.
"Let's clear up a few points.  You say Miss Starbuck died suddenly in an attack of angina pectoris.  Her nephew, to whom she willed all her money, immediately had her embalmed and buried.  Her nephew then flew to Mexico."   Hobart Creed jumped up.  His lined old face was no longer waxy pale, but flushed with anger.  "You're insinuating that he murdered that old harridan!  I tell you she died of angina pectoris!" he shouted.
As if he had not heard, Gillian said musingly, "The girl bought tickets for Dallas.  There's a connection from Dallas to Brownsville for the Pan American Tampico-Mexico City plane.  It's hard to extradite a man from Mexico, even on a murder charge.  And Mexico City is only a short jump from Honduras, where you can't extradite a man on any charge."
The old man shouted furiously, "He did not murder that woman!"
"Murder?" a calm, deep voice said inquiringly.  "Has some one been murdered?"
Gillian whirled about.  A tall man was standing in the doorway.
The color drained from Gillian's face.  The man in the doorway was Mark Storm!

CHAPTER V
MAD DOCTOR

Gillian stared at his most powerful and dangerous enemy, Mark Storm held out his right hand.  "Ah, Gillian," he said, with enthusiasm, "what an unexpected pleasure!"
Unprepared for this meeting as he was, Gillian felt a wave of anger surge through him.  Mark Storm, with his suave, courtly manners, invariably made him feel awkward and clumsy and furious.
This time it was worse.  For the district attorney, that ruthless and clever scoundrel had made his entrance in time to hear that unfortunate word "murder" – and perhaps more.
Gillian said harshly, "When did you get back?"  And he ignored the outstretched hand.
The district attorney withdrew his hand, but he continued to smile.  "Late yesterday afternoon," he answered in his rich, deep voice.  "What a wonderful trip it was!  What a really fascinating place Italy is, Gillian!  The sunshine!  The flowers!  The music!  The wines!"
At that moment, with the ill-timed word "murder" still echoing in his mind, Gillian's hatred of Mark Storm attained heights it had never reached before.  He had always hated the district attorney.  Certainly, he had never envied him, in spite of the man's handsomeness, his tallness, his manners of a Continental diplomat.  On legal battlefields he had proved himself Storm's equal – or superior.  Time after time he had outwitted, outsmarted Storm.  Yet it had given him very little satisfaction.  And each time they met, Storm's suavity, his unfailing charm, infuriated Gillian – and turned his fingers to thumbs.
Dr. Creed had been standing with his back to a window, staring uneasily at Storm.  The district attorney smiled at him, then slowly walked toward him.  In this hostile atmosphere he was perfectly at ease.  His manners were always perfect and easy.  And in his dress he was perfect, too.  The dark suit he was wearing had no doubt been made for him by a London tailor who catered exclusively to royalty and wealthy Americans.  A full head taller than Gillian, with wide shoulders and the figure of an athlete, Mark Storm wore his clothes beautifully.
As if he were greeting a fellow ambassador, he said, "Ah!  Good morning, Dr. Creed.  You know me, of course?  I am Mark Storm, the district attorney.  Isn't it a wretched morning?"
Staring at him rather wildly, the old man answered shrilly, "What are you doing here?  What do you want?"
And with the charming, easy smile, the district attorney said, "It's really hardly more than a social call, doctor."
"At this hour of the morning?" Dr. Creed cried.
"As a matter of fact, doctor, I was a little curious about the speedy embalming and burial of one of your patients – a Miss Hannah Starbuck.  The coroner's office notified me that a death certificate had been issued, and I learned that this patient was embalmed and buried, all within a matter of hours – and at night.  Of course, it can be explained to every one's satisfaction."
"Miss Starbuck," Gillian said quietly, "died in an attack of angina pectoris.  The hospital records show it."
"Her nephew, Dr. Starbuck, attended her in that fatal attack, didn't he?"
"He did," Gillian snapped.
The district attorney shrugged and made a foreign gesture with his hands, as if to indicate how simply the entire matter could be cleared up.
"If you will call Dr. Starbuck in here, I'm sure everything can be explained very nicely."
Dr. Creed sat down heavily in a chair.  He looked exhausted.
Gillian was thinking rapidly.  He knew now, very definitely, that his suspicions of last night had been correct.  He knew, very definitely, that Mark Storm was somehow at the bottom of the mysterious troubles Dr. Creed had been having.
"Is this matter really important enough," he asked, "to justify your coming here in person?"
Mark Storm smiled at him almost affectionately.  "My dear Gillian, I made it a point to come in person, not because I knew you were here, and therefore–" 
"We'll pass that," Gillian said.
"Very well.  I came in person because of the possibility of a scandal.  Like any other public-spirited citizen, I would hate to see Dr. Creed and his wonderful hospital involved in any scandal.  I simply considered it my duty to offer my services."
"They aren't needed," Dr. Creed snapped.  "There is no scandal.  There is going to be no scandal."
"Of course not," Storm suavely agreed.  "We're going to clear up the slightest possibility of a scandal by calling Dr. Starbuck in here to answer a few simple questions."
Dr. Creed looked helplessly at Gillian, and Gillian said curtly, "Dr. Starbuck is not here."
Mark Storm made a grimace involving eyes and mouth, as of surprise and shock.
"He eloped," Dr. Creed wearily added, "immediately after his aunt's burial, with one of the nurses here."
"How romantic!" Storm exclaimed.  But unfortunate.  It really places us in quite a quandary, doesn't it?"
"It doesn't," Gillian answered, "unless one of us should happen to have an ax to grind.  Dr. Starbuck is one of the best known surgeons in the State – a man of unquestioned honor.  Simply because he had his aunt, who happened to die suddenly in a heart attack – simply because he had her embalmed and buried in a hurry doesn't make a murderer of him.  Or does it, Mr. Storm?"
"I have the utmost respect for your judgment, Gillian," Storm answered.  "In fact, I wouldn't have made this call if I'd known the situation was in such capable hands.  But now that I'm here, suppose we try to clear everything up.  Didn't I hear Dr. Creed discussing a murder when I came in?"
"A purely academic argument," Dr. Creed said nervously.
"Ah, I see.  But tell me, where is Dr. Starbuck?"
"He is flying to Mexico, we believe."
"And you're not suspicious?"
"Not in the least."
There was a knock at the closed door.  Gillian went to it and opened it.  A messenger boy was in the corridor with a radiogram for Dr. Creed.
Gillian gave it to the old man, who tore open the envelope, nervously read the typed sheet of paper it contained, then cried, "Read this, Gillian!  It's all right!  Everything's all right!"
Gillian read the radiogram.  It was dated 7 A.M., aboard Transcontinental Plane No. 11, in flight.

Your radiogram received.  Was terribly sorry to leave under such circumstances, but must remind you I have tried and tried for five months to get away and you have repeatedly refused me leave of absence.  My work is all cleared up and I will be back on the job in three weeks.
Please wire forgiveness and blessings to Carolyn and me, Hotel St.  Regis, Mexico City.                  
                                                             DANIEL STARBUCK.

When he looked up, Dr. Creed cried jubilantly, "It's all right.  I don't blame him.  I overloaded him with work and responsibility.  He certainly had a right to run off and have a honeymoon"
Gillian had passed the radiogram to Mark Storm.  The district attorney read it and said, "It does seem to clear things up, doesn't it, Gillian?"
"It does," Gillian confirmed.  "I happen to know that the young lady he married bought their airline tickets several days ago."
"That's splendid," Storm said heartily.  "And of course he had no motive for killing his aunt."
"Certainly not!" Dr. Creed shrilled.
"She didn't," Storm persisted, "by any chance name Dr. Starbuck as her beneficiary under a will disposing of a considerable estate?"
Gillian removed from his pocket the sheet of paper which contained Miss Starbuck's Last Will and Testament.  In silence Storm read it.  When he had finished he looked up inquiringly at Gillian.
"It really proves nothing, of course," he murmured.
There was a confused sound of fumbling and scratching at the corridor door, a sharp rattling of fingernails against the frosted glass panel, then the door burst open.
A white-faced nurse with wildly staring eyes came staggering in.
"Dr. Creed!" she panted.  "Dr. Creed!  There-there's been a murder!  Dr. Hoyle was stabbed!  The painter just found him!"
The old man groaned, "Oh, no!"  Gillian was watching Mark Storm.
The district attorney merely stopped smiling.  There was not the slightest trace of surprise or shock in his face.  And Gillian wondered if he had had private information, hours ago, about this shocking new development.
"Who is – or was – Dr. Hoyle?" Storm asked quietly.
Dr. Creed groaned, "Starbuck's anesthetist"
"Not really!" Storm said, with an air of sudden excitement.  "How long has he been dead?" he asked swiftly.
But the girl did not know.  Dr. Hoyle's office was being decorated.  He hadn't been using it for several days.  That was why he hadn't been found earlier.  The painter had just gone in to begin his day's work and found the body.
"With-with a knife in his throat!" the white-faced girl whimpered.
"And he was Starbuck's anesthetist!" Storm said dreamily.  "This is really amazing."
"Why?" Gillian snapped.
"That he should have been Starbuck's anesthetist – and Starbuck is now on his way to Mexico.  Perhaps we'd better investigate this, Gillian."  And graciously to the nurse, "If you'll show us the way?"
Dr. Creed started up from his chair, and Gillian said quickly, "You'd better not come, doctor."
"You'd better," Storm gently added, "leave everything to Mr. Hazeltine.  I assure you, you can depend absolutely upon his judgment.  I've never known him to be wrong, or to make a mistake."
And he bowed slightly to Gillian, indicating that Gillian was to precede him through the doorway.  Gillian had suffered under many such compliments from Mark Storm.  And when Storm was at his politest, he was also at his wiliest.
Gillian knew that Storm was so sure of himself, so confident of the success of his present dark plans, that he was, behind this mask of suave courtesy, laughing at him.
The nurse conducted them down the corridor to an elevator.  Dr. Hoyle's office was on the same floor as Amphitheaters D, R, and F.
The corridor about the entrance to the anesthetist's office was crowded with people in white – nurses, doctors, interns and orderlies, all excitedly chattering.  Some peered in at the open door, and a familiar voice said, "Better not go in.  The police will want nothing touched."
Gillian glanced sharply at the speaker and met the steady black eyes of the young man with the scar.  The scar, zigzagging from the inner corner of his left eye to his hairline, looked paler this morning.
Dr. Tichman said, with a headshake, "What a horrible thing!"  And Gillian nodded.
Just beyond the man with the scar he had seen another familiar face, the handsome, somewhat willful face of the red-haired Dr. Claudia Barnum.
She gave Gillian a wan smile, then her eyes filled with tears and she turned away.
In a small, neck-craning group at the door was the platinum blond nurse who had seen the ghost.  She was talking rapidly and with energy.  It was her theory that poor Dr. Hoyle had been stabbed and dragged into this office.  Then she turned her head, saw him, and loudly whispered, "Look!  Here's Gillian Hazeltine and the district attorney already!"
The crowd parted for the two men.  Gillian's heart was beating rapidly, with a sickly thump.  He was afraid of dead men.  He hated corpses.
The room had been stripped bare of all furniture, and the floor covered from wall to wall with sheets of coarse brown paper.  Against one wall between two windows stood a stepladder, and in a corner were buckets of paint, and brushes.
The air of the room was heavy with the odors of volatile oils, turpentine, linseed oil and Japanese dryer.  And in a corner of the room was stretched the body of the anesthetist.  He wore a white operating-room gown.  He lay on his back, with his arms beside him, his knees drawn up slightly, his dark eyes glassily regarding the recently painted ceiling.
Gillian glanced at his throat, and shivered slightly.  The bone handle of a knife protruded from the left side of the dead man's Adam's apple.  A quantity of blood had spurted from the wound, spattering on the white gown, and there was a small dried and blackened river of it on his neck.
Mark Storm, staring down at the dead anesthetist, made a clicking sound with his tongue and teeth.  He said sadly, "What a pity!  He was one of the greatest anesthetists in this part of the country!"
"Really?" Gillian drawled.  "A moment ago, in Dr. Creed's office, you had to ask who he was."
The district attorney made no acknowledgment of this thrust.  He looked behind him at the group of men in white who had followed them in, and said briskly, "Can any of you gentlemen answer a couple of rather important questions?  We'd like to know whose knife this is, if possible, and how long this poor fellow has been dead."
A gray-haired doctor answered, "That knife belongs to Dr. Starbuck."
"And that," Gillian said with irony, "will prove to be the first of a series of amazing coincidences.  Who saw Starbuck stab this man?  Any eye witnesses?"
There were no answers.  The gray-haired doctor said, "I examined the body, Mr. Storm, a moment ago.  Rigor mortis undoubtedly set in several hours ago.  He is quite rigid now.  I should say he died about midnight."
"Not within the past couple of hours?" Storm said sharply.
"Oh, no.  He has been dead at least since midnight."
"Thank you, doctor.  Gillian, it's beginning to look as if Dan Starbuck will have a very brief honeymoon.  Things look pretty dark for him."
"Very dark," Gillian agreed.  "Has any one a pocket microscope?"
One of the nurses had one.  She gave it to Gillian.  He bent down and examined the bone handle of the knife through the powerful lenses.
"No fingerprints," he announced.  Well, we expected that, didn't we, Storm?  Wouldn't you say that this is the kind of murder in which no fingerprints would have been left?"
"In such matters," Storm suavely answered, "I prefer to depend on your infallible judgment, Gillian."
A nurse said, "Pardon me, gentlemen, but I think the time of Dr. Hoyle's death might have been earlier than midnight.  Dr. Hoyle was to have given the anesthetic to a patient Dr. Starbuck operated on at eleven-thirty last night.  We could not find Dr. Hoyle anywhere.  I was one of the nurses Dr. Starbuck sent out to try to locate him.  But no one had seen him since he finished with the splenectomy in V.  We had to use another anesthetist.  It never occurred to any of us to look in here, as we all knew this office was being painted and was empty."  
The district attorney courteously thanked her and said, "Have any of you any suspicions?"
The platinum blond nurse said quickly, "Isn't that knife suspicious?  I know it was Dr. Starbuck's.  I've seen it on the little shelf beside his desk dozens of times."
Gillian asked her where Dr. Starbuck's office was.
"Three doors down this hall."
"Can any one tell us anything more about this knife?" Gillian asked.  Once again his eyes were met by the clear, hard black eyes of the young man with the scar.
"It's a double-edged amputation knife," Dr. Tichman said.  "It's an heirloom of Starbuck's.  He inherited it from his grandfather, who was an army surgeon on the Rebel side in the Civil War."
"A double-edged amputation knife?" Gillian repeated.
"Yes, sir.  It was used in amputations – to slash away flesh, muscle and so on in the amputation of a limb."
"Why has it two edges?"
"So that the operating surgeon can slash quickly in both directions.  The two edges gives greater speed in an amputation, and in any amputation speed is very important."
Mark Storm had been staring at the dead man's face.  He said, "Gillian, do you believe this poor fellow was stabbed outside and then placed in this room?"
"No.  There would be a trail of blood from the door.  He was stabbed in that corner."
"I'd like to see Dr. Starbuck's office and his room, if he lived here in the hospital.  Will some one show me?"
"I will," Miss Green said promptly.
"Would you care to come, Gillian?"
"No," Gillian curtly answered.  And I'd like every one out of this room."

CHAPTER VI
ARSENIC

WHEN they were gone and the door was closed, Gillian began a methodical inspection of the room.  He expected to find nothing of the slightest interest.  He was convinced that this murder had been carefully, deliberately planned and executed and that, beyond the knife, no clues would be found.
Yet he surprised in himself the beginnings of doubts as to Dan Starbuck's innocence.  He had all along had feelings of sympathy for the young man, and had accepted Dr. Creed's praises of him at their face value.  But it was hard to maintain his belief in that brilliant young surgeon's innocence in the face of all that had happened.  On the other hand, Mark Storm's very interest in this case made Gillian suspicious of all obvious evidence.
On hands and knees he went over the floor of the office.  He found nothing of interest until, finally, he reached the corner where the dead man lay.
Gillian sat back on his haunches and stared at the freshly painted wall.  The ivory paint was hardly dry.  A faint irregularity on the painted surface caused him to stand up.  The faint mark on the wall proved to be an impression of a rounded oblong shape, about three-quarters of an inch long by a little less than half an inch wide.  Definitely, it was an impression that had been made in the fresh paint last night, doubtless at the, time of the murder.  It might, indeed, prove to have something to do with the murder.  It was at about the height of Gillian's eyes.  He studied it a long time, but it meant nothing to him.
He was about to step back, when the lower periphery of his vision was attracted by a faint metallic gleam.  This gleam originated in the crisp black hair of the dead man, at a point just above the medulla oblongata.  Bending down for a closer inspection, Gillian found that it was a circular metal plate, presumably silver, embedded in the skull.  It meant, of course, that at some time Dr. Hoyle had had a brain operation, and that this plate had been placed over the hole in the skull to replace the bone that had been removed.
The dead man's hair had been habitually brushed over the plate, to conceal it, but in the struggle previous to his death – if indeed there had been a struggle – the carefully brushed lock had been disturbed and the plate exposed.
Trying to visualize the last moments of Dr. Hoyle's life, Gillian studied the position of the fallen body, gazed long at the freshly painted wall, unsullied except for that mysterious oblong impression.  And gradually he reconstructed, to some extent, that moment of violence which had ended Dr. Hoyle's life.  Excited, he bent down and, with the pocket microscope, examined the silver plate.
As well as he could determine without dusting powder, the plate was barren of fingerprints.  Its slight sheen, due to natural oil from the hair, was unmarked.
He decided he would have a fingerprint expert from headquarters examine the plate with the proper equipment, but he was disappointed when the results came back negative.  The only possible clue proved meaningless.  And the small, faint rectangular impression in the fresh paint was likewise without meaning.
Gillian went to the door and opened it.  A knot of nurses and doctors was still gathered in the corridor, whispering.
He said to them, "Do any of you know if Dr. Hoyle, at some time, had an operation on his skull?"
None of them, it appeared, knew of such an operation.  He said to a young doctor, "Will you make a careful inquiry and find out, if you possibly can, if any one in this hospital knows of such an operation on Dr. Hoyle's brain?"
As he walked away Dr. Claudia Barnum came out of a room into the corridor.  She looked pale and tired.  She put her hand on Gillian's arm and said quietly, "You don't think he murdered Dr. Hoyle, do you?"
Gillian, looking down into her lovely eyes, said, "I don't know.  I hope not."
"It's a horrible thing."  She shuddered.  "I-I feel lost, Mr. Hazeltine.  I worked with both of them for so long.  And now Dr. Starbuck's gone, and Dr. Hoyle–" 
She sighed unhappily.
Gillian said, "Do you think Starbuck did it?"
She looked up quickly.  "I don't know what to think.  But somehow I don't think he's the sort of person who could.  When you've worked side by side with a man, Mr. Hazeltine, you come to know him very well.  I've never respected any one as much as I respect Dan Starbuck.  And I don't believe he's a murderer!"
There was a little color in her cheeks now, and her handsome eyes were flashing.  Looking at her, Gillian wondered if she was sincere.
"Would you," he said, "take me to Hannah Starbuck's room, and tell me just what happened there last night?"
"Certainly."  Quietly, briskly, Dr. Claudia Barnum led the way.  As she opened the door of 310 she said, "The bedding has been removed, of course, but aside from that I believe everything is just the same as it was when she died."
Gillian glanced around.
"Tell me," he said, "what happened when you were called up here."
"Well, she was having an attack when I got here, but she responded to treatment and seemed better.  I left to assist Dr. Starbuck with an appendectomy, and afterwards came immediately back here.  Miss Starbuck was beginning to have another attack.  It was worse than the first."
"That was when you sent for Dr. Starbuck?"
"Yes.  When he came in she tried "to say something to him, and he asked me to leave.  I went out in the corridor.  After a while I looked in.  He said he had given her an injection of caffeine sodium benzoate, and she seemed better.  It was time for him to go to operate on young Mr. Van Dorne, so he left, and I waited here and looked at Miss Starbuck again.  She was quieter.  Then I went down to assist Dr. Starbuck with the splenectomy, and, according to the chart, his aunt died just a few minutes after I left.  She was dead when the floor nurse got back."
Gillian nodded thoughtfully.
"Thank you, Dr. Barnum."
The red-haired woman sighed wearily and turned toward the door.  "I must see a patient, Mr. Hazeltine.  Will you excuse me?"
"Of course.  Just one more thing.  Who is the nurse who was attending Miss Starbuck last night – the one who called you here?"
"Miss Halliday – the head floor nurse."
"Please send her here."
With speculation in his eyes, he watched her go.  Then he glanced once more about the room.  On the floor near the washstand a sparkle of light caught his attention.  He bent down.  It was a tiny particle of glass.  Near it were others.  Gillian studied them, wondering if they could mean anything.
At the moment they did not.  But he mentally filed away their presence on the floor for future attention.
Presently the plump, pretty nurse who had admitted him to Miss Starbuck's room, the night before, came in.  She smiled at him.  "Yes Mr. Hazeltine?"
"There are a few things I would like to know, Miss Halliday.  I understand that Miss Starbuck's fatal attack started about ten last night."
"That's right."
"And she died a little before ten-thirty?"
"Yes, Mr. Hazeltine."
"Aside from Dr. Barnum and Dr. Starbuck, did any one enter this room during that time?"
"No one.  At least, not that I know of."
Gillian frowned.  "Do you recall having seen an orderly named Cleve Salter in the corridor or in the neighborhood of this room during that time?"
Miss Halliday looked surprised.  "I don't remember seeing him.  But I might have, Mr. Hazeltine.  I wouldn't be apt to remember.  He's around so much of the time, you see.  He's ... well, he's everywhere!"  She smiled.
"Do you recall seeing any one else in the corridor during that half hour?"
Her answer startled him.  "Just Dr. Hoyle.  After Dr. Starbuck and Dr. Barnum took charge of Miss Starbuck I went on making my rounds.  When I started back here to 310 I saw Dr. Hoyle standing by the elevators.  But I don't remember seeing any one else."
Gillian thought for a minute, then pointed to a door near the bed.
"Where does that lead?"
"Into a bathroom that connects this room with 312."
Gillian was interested.  "Any one in 312?"
"A pneumonia case.  Mrs. Janson."
"How long has she been in there?
"She was brought in about midnight last night."
"Was 312 empty until then?"
"Yes.  Nurse Green went in about ten o'clock to prepare the room for Mrs. Janson."
Gillian raised an eyebrow.  "Nancy Green?"
"Yes."
"The girl who sees ghosts?"
Miss Halliday smiled.  "Yes."
"How long was she in there?"
"I don't know, Mr. Hazeltine."
"Was this door into the bathroom locked – or the one from the bathroom into 312?"
"No.  Neither one."
Gillian thanked her, and took an elevator to the ninth floor.  He went directly to Dr. Hoyle's office.
When he was a few feet away from the door he saw Mark Storm and the pretty platinum blond nurse, Nancy Green, coming along the hall.  The nurse was talking rapidly, and Mark Storm, with his head courteously inclined, his expression attentive, was listening.
Gillian studied Miss Green speculatively.  He was curious about that ghost she had seen; but he was more curious about Miss Green herself.
Approaching him, Storm said, with a sad shake of the head, "It's beginning to look as if our brilliant young surgeon wasn't flying his true colors."
"You should have seen what we found under his bed!" Miss Green cried.
"Another corpse?" Gillian said dryly.
"No, no!  Bottles!  Dozens of them!  Empty gin and cocaine bottles!"
"I understand," Storm said gravely, "that there have been mysterious thefts of cocaine from the dispensary."
"Of course," the platinum blond said eagerly.  "Dr. Starbuck couldn't have robbed the dispensary so systematically."
"Why not?" Gillian asked.
"Heavens, Mr. Hazeltine, he isn't that kind!"
"It's very mysterious, isn't it, Miss Green?"
"It's simply ghastly!" she said.
"The young man," Mark Storm somberly went on, "was apparently a secret drinker and a drug addict."
"It's such a pity," the nurse added.  "Dr. Creed had such faith in him.  It'll simply break his poor old heart."
"I've just heard about another curious happening in connection with Starbuck," Storm said.  "A few days ago, he performed an operation on a hemophiliac – a bleeder.  And the poor chap died on the table of hemorrhage."
"Who told you about that?"
"I did," Miss Green said.  "It was so tragic."
"Or could it have been," Storm asked, "criminal negligence?  What do you think, Gillian?"
"I haven't an opinion."
"If Dr. Starbuck was a drunkard and a dope fiend, as he seems to have been," the blond girl put in, "what can anyone think?"
Gillian looked at her steadily, for a long time, until Miss Green suddenly dropped her large, beautiful, and somewhat bold blue eyes.
"That's what I've been wondering," he drawled.  "Just what to think."
The girl quickly blushed, then as quickly lost her color.
She said, in some confusion, "You'll have to excuse me, Mr. Storm.  I'm on duty."  She left them hurriedly.
The district attorney was gazing into the room at the dead man.  "What did you find, Gillian?"
"Nothing of consequence."
"What do you think about it all?"  And when Gillian hesitated: "I've learned in the past – sometimes to my discomfiture – that your judgment is infallible.  I will act on your opinion."
Gillian smiled wearily.  He wished that he could remember to be as suave, as charming, as courteous as Mark Storm under all conditions.
"Perhaps those bottles were planted there."  And he added, drawling, "As his knife was planted in this poor devil's throat."
"You mean – you still think Starbuck is innocent – in his aunt's death and in this?"
Looking up into Mark Storm's velvety brown eyes, Gillian said bluntly: "What do you think, Storm?"
"Ah, I prefer to act entirely on your judgment.  Should we have Dr. Starbuck stopped at the Mexican border?"
Gillian glanced at his watch.  It was almost noon.
"Too late.  He's across the border.  He undoubtedly connected with the morning plane out of Brownsville for Mexico City.  You'll have to extradite him now."
Courteously, Storm persisted: "Do you think we should?"
Gillian felt the temperature of his blood rising.  He knew he was being kidded and had been kidded from the moment of Mark Storm's arrival at Dr. Creed's office.
But he said quietly, "If I were in your shoes, I'd extradite him.  Isn't that double-edged amputation knife enough to hang him?"
Gillian walked on through the crowd, and found a telephone at the end of the hall.  He called Aaron Savage, one of his assistants.
"Aaron," he said, "I want you to over to the Hobart Creed Hospital as fast as you can."  He explained, crisply what had happened.  "I want you to check up on the alibis of every soul in this hospital.  Find out, as far as possible, what they were doing between ten last night and one this morning.  I'll see that you're given the authority from Dr. Creed.  It's a long job.  Get busy."
He hung up and stopped a nurse who was passing.  "Where can I find Dr. Tichman?"
The nurse indicated a door five removed from Dr. Hoyle's.  Gillian went to it and knocked.  An irritable voice said from inside, "Come in!"
Gillian opened the door and entered.  Dr. Tichman was seated at his desk, looking pale and worn.  When he saw Gillian he made an involuntary gesture of annoyance.
"I wonder," Gillian said amiably, "if you'd mind answering a few questions?"
"What are they?" the young man said curtly.
Gillian seated himself in a chair and asked quietly, "Do you think Starbuck killed Doctor Hoyle?"
The young man with the scar said irritably, "I haven't the faintest idea."
"Did you know that Starbuck drinks a great deal?"
Tichman's hypnotic black eyes narrowed.  "Of course.  He always has!" 
"And drugs, too?"
"Yes."
"But," Gillian said, "this wasn't generally known, was it?"
"I doubt it."
"Did you like Starbuck?"
The dark young man raised his eyebrows.  "I admired his ability.  I can't say I liked him."
"Any particular reason?"
"None."
Gillian stood up.  "Ah well I must be going.  Thank you for your trouble, Dr. Tichman."
He went out and closed the door behind him.  "Charming fellow," he murmured to himself, and shrugged his shoulders.
Gillian went on to Dr. Creed's office, where a secretary told him that Dr. Creed had collapsed and been taken to his house.
Gillian called at the house.  Pompom answered his ring, and informed him that several doctors were with Dr. Creed in his bedroom.
The old man's voice came shrilly through the quiet house.  "If that's Gillian Hazeltine, send him up here, Pompom!"
Gillian went up the stairs and into the bedroom.  Dr. Creed looked to Gillian as if he would not live another hour.
His voice, however, when he ordered the doctors and nurses out of the room, was surprisingly strong.
When the door was closed, he said anxiously, "Gillian, did Dan kill that man?"
Hazeltine shook his head.
"I don't know.  I wish I did.  Doctor, will you phone the hospital that they're to show every courtesy to a Mr. Aaron Savage, who will ask questions of everyone in the place?  He's my assistant.  I want him to check up on alibis."
"Certainly.  I'll attend to it right now."  The old man telephoned the hospital and gave orders.  Then he looked at Gillian hopefully and said, "What clues did you find?"
"None of importance.  The knife in Hoyle's throat is Starbuck's."
"Do you think Starbuck killed him?"
"I honestly haven't formed an opinion.  Storm found dozens of empty gin, whisky and cocaine bottles under Starbuck's bed.  They could have been planted there – or Starbuck may be a secret drinker and the man who's been pilfering your cocaine.  But Storm will certainly have a case."
Dr. Creed was thoughtful for a moment, then, defiantly, "I never smelled liquor on Starbuck's breath or saw any symptom of cocaine."
"No.  He doesn't look like a drinker – or a hophead.  I'm convinced that Mark Storm is somehow involved in this mess.  He's damned clever.  Once again, doctor, I wish you'd let me draw your will, leaving all this property to a foundation.  Whatever Storm's game is, that is the surest way to beat him."
But the old man was stubbornly shaking his head.  "I don't believe in directorates for institutions like this."
"Are you still determined to make Starbuck your heir?"
"I don't know," Dr. Creed said wearily.  "I'm confused.  I'll wait for developments."
Gillian went to the door.  With his hand on the knob, he turned.
"If anyone on your staff – or any one else – makes any kind of suggestion that you substitute another man for Starbuck in your will – will you let me know?  Has any one ever done it?"
"No.  But I'll let you know.  And if Dan Starbuck is the scoundrel he appears to be, I'll certainly leave my property to one of my other men!"
Gillian returned to his car and drove downtown to his office.
The mystery of the Hobart Creed Hospital, however it might resolve, was now out of his hands and in the domain of the Police Department.  But he could not dismiss it from his mind.  It still presented many aspects of a baffling mystery.
Because, to Gillian, any mystery was the very salt of his existence, he could not let this one drop.  His first act, on reaching his office, was to send for the head of his investigation bureau, a sharp-nosed, bright-eyed young man named Henderson.
To Henderson he said: "Get me all you can on these four people at the Creed Hospital: Dr. Lee Tichman, Dr. Claudia Barnum, a nurse named Nancy Green, and Cleve Salter, an orderly.  Check on their activities since ten last night, and have them tailed all day today and tomorrow."
And when Henderson had gone to attend to these matters, Gillian put in a telephone call for an old client and an old friend, one Silky Davis, once a prominent and notorious bootlegger, now a prominent, prosperous and very respectable brewer.  Silky Davis had not lost touch with the underworld of Greenfield, and his old mob, now gone respectable, had lost little of its cleverness.
To Silky Davis, he said, "Mark Storm is back and is up to some dirty work in connection with the Creed Hospital.  The story will break in this afternoon's papers, so I won't go into details.  What I want you to find out is, when did Storm hit town?  He claims he returned last evening.  I think he's been here longer.  Find out where he's been spending his time and who he's been seeing.  Check on all his old hideouts."
And Silky said, cheerfully, "Okay!  Just leave it to Silky.  You'll be hearin' from me."
It was not long before he made a report.  Mark Storm, he had ascertained, had been in Greenfield at least a month.  He's been hiding out in John Redfern's apartment," Silky added.  John Redfern had been acting district attorney in Mark Storm's absence.  "It's hard to check up on all the people who came and went in that month," Silky went on, "but there was one fellow I'm trying to track down – a young fellow of about thirty, with a scar on his forehead."'
Gillian said to himself, "Tichman!"  He put another question to Silky: "Have you a record of a red-headed woman or a platinum blonde going up there?"
"No, boss.  No dames.  Anything else?"
"Yes.  Go to the Creed Hospital and take a good look at an orderly named Cleve Salter.  Then find out if he's been going to Redfern's apartment."
Okay, boss."
There were other reports to consider – the preliminary reports turned in by Gillian's investigation department, on Nancy Green, Dr. Tichman, Cleve Salter and Claudia Barnum.  Gillian saw nothing of importance in these reports, but he told Henderson to keep a check on these four people.
Another report to which he attached no significance at the moment was the one made by the fingerprint expert of the Greenfield Homicide Squad.
"There are old fingerprints, probably of Starbuck's, on the handle, and old fingerprints of Dr. Hoyle himself on the silver skull plate," the fingerprint man said.
"The fresh ones were wiped off," Gillian said.
"Sure.  And the guy who wiped 'em off must have done the job in a hurry, or he'd have caught the old ones, too."
Gillian must have been thinking of something else, for that comment aroused no suspicions.
"Did you see that little oblong dent in the wall?" the fingerprint man asked.
"Yes."
"What did you make of it, Mr. Hazeltine?"
"Nothing."
"Yeah.  It has us stumped, too.
"Anything else I can do?"
"That's all this time.  Thanks."
The Hobart Creed Hospital scandal broke in the early afternoon editions.  The newspapers took up the case with enthusiasm.
On the front pages of the newspapers on the morning following were even more exciting developments.  The district attorney's office had broken its silence.  Mr. Storm would not yet speak for publication, but one of his deputies admitted that the district attorney was very much interested in the highly efficient embalming and burial of Dr. Starbuck's aunt.
This, the deputy said, would be investigated first, the brutal murder of Dr. Hoyle later.
A warrant of disinterment had been issued and the coffin containing the elderly spinster taken from the grave and photographed by perhaps a dozen newspaper photographers at sunup.  The body was rushed to the coroner's office, an autopsy performed.
The stomach was speedily dispatched to the laboratories of Harry Zarrow, the city chemist, and the report was announced early enough for the noon editions that the stomach of Miss Hannah Starbuck contained enough arsenic to kill five strong men!

CHAPTER VII
AN AMBITIOUS WOMAN

GILLIAN had an unexpected caller that afternoon.  His secretary said that Dr. Claudia Barnum was in the waiting room and wished to see him on a rather urgent matter, but would come later if he was busy now.
"Show her in," Gillian said.
The handsome red-headed surgeon was smartly dressed in dark green, with a smart little green hat to match.  It seemed to him that she was paler than usual and that her beautiful eyes were tired.  But her voice was as serene, as musical as ever.
Smiling, she said, "Mr. Hazeltine, I've come to tell you the story of my life – and to retain you as my counsel.  It will probably strike you as a rather unusual request.  Perhaps I should say selfish.  You see, since I was a girl of ten, I've been determined to become a great surgeon.  Nothing has been permitted to interfere, with that ambition.  I've sacrificed everything for it."
"You think," Gillian guessed, "that the scandal of this case – these murders – may hurt your reputation."
"Exactly.  My father and both my uncles, on his side of the family, were great surgeons.  All three were brilliant men.  They might have become famous – they might have built a hospital just like this one – if each of them hadn't had a great weakness.  Each of them drank himself to death.  My father was the last.  I was with him when he died.  It was horrible.  He died in delirium tremens.  And when I saw him dying, I made the vow that I would become not only a brilliant surgeon, but a famous surgeon, a great surgeon – that I would surmount all the weaknesses, that I would let nothing come between me and my goal."
She smiled faintly.  "So far I haven't.  I began studying medicine and surgery when I was ten.  I read books, I watched operations.  I knew it wouldn't be an easy road.  People don't trust women doctors or surgeons.  I'm on the way to a real success.  And as you guessed, I will not let this scandal or any other scandal touch my reputation – spoil my aims.  It's certain that I will be called to the witness stand to testify in this case, isn't it?"
"I'm afraid it is."
"There's no way I can avoid it
"Not unless you run away, and that would ruin your reputation."
"I won't run away.  I'll stay and fight.  But I want your advice."
"There's little advice I can give you, except this: tell the truth.  Tell the whole truth.  If you're caught in a lie, your reputation will be ruined.  Do you think Dan Starbuck killed his aunt and Dr. Hoyle?"
"I honestly don't know, but I think the circumstances are appallingly against him.  If he did kill him, he is the greatest fool that ever lived.  Because he was on his way to becoming the surgeon I'd like to become the greatest in America."
"It may be a close case," Gillian remarked.  "A great many people are under suspicion."
"Including me."
"You will doubtless be cleared of the slightest suspicion."
She bent forward, her eyes steadily on his.  "Mr. Hazeltine, if I am called to that witness stand, and if this case remains as confused as it now stands, do you know what my attitude will be?"
Gillian smiled.  "I could hazard a guess."
"Claudia Barnum," she said, "will come first and second, and third – and all the rest last.  I will certainly not be sacrificed."
"Even if it means sacrificing some one else?"
"I will sacrifice no one if it isn't necessary.  But I will certainly protect myself.  Why, should I throw my life away?  Don't you realize what I've gone through?  I used to be a beautiful girl.  I could have had loads of suitors.  I might have married a man with loads of money and had beautiful clothes and jewels and all that.  I passed that by.
"Long hours, overwork, studying, worrying – all those things killed my beauty and my youth.  What would I have left if my career were nipped in the bud?  Nothing!"
"It doesn't seem to me, doctor, that you need advice – or an adviser."
"But I don't want to make mistakes."
"I'd like to know, doctor, whether or not you believe in hypnotism."
She straightened up, stared at him a moment, then gave a soft little laugh.  "Hypnotism?  That's an odd question."
"Do you believe in it?"
"In the popular understanding of the word – not at all.  In my researches into psychology, I have never yet found a person, man or woman, who could hypnotize another person unless the patient, or the subject, was willing to be hypnotized.  There is no such thing as hypnotism as the public understands the word.  If I were to stretch out on that couch and relax completely, you could make me go to sleep – but only provided that I wanted to let you put me to sleep."
"The enforcement of one's will upon another–" Gillian began.
"Is not hypnotism," Dr. Barnum finished.  "That's merely the domination of a weaker will by a stronger one.  You are a strong-willed man.  Obvious you dominate your wife–" 
"You might be surprised," Gillian chuckled, thinking of the way Vee had of wrapping him around her little finger, then became grave again.  "Would you say that it was utterly impossible for one person, let us say, to have hypnotized another to administer arsenic to Miss Starbuck?"
"Utterly impossible.  Among other things, a person under hypnosis will do nothing immoral or criminal."
"I'm glad to know that," Gillian sighed.  "I'd like to ask a very important question.  Have you heard any rumor, or seen or heard anything directly, that might lead you to suspect that Mark Storm, the district attorney, or any of his representatives, assistants or associates, was in touch with any one at the hospital in the past month?"
Dr. Barnum opened her mouth to reply.  There was that quick sparkle of interest in her eyes which made Gillian realize that she was on the verge of making a prompt and valuable answer to his question.  Then, instantly, the look changed to one of vagueness, the very expression of her mouth changed, and he knew that she had decided to withhold that information.
With a little headshake, she answered, "I'm sorry – I don't, Mr. Hazeltine."  She glanced at a lozenge-shaped platinum wrist watch.  "I have to be back at the hospital soon."
And she got up to go.  She held out her hand and said, "At least, I've paved the way.  If I find myself in hot water, if I need your help, I'm coming back."
"By all means," Gillian said.  "I honestly don't think you have anything to worry about."  And as she started for the door, he added, "If you should want to change your career – there'll always be a place for you in this office.  The public may not be sold on women surgeons, but I'd love to turn you loose on a few juries!"
Evidently that little talk cleared up the problems in Dr. Barnum's mind, or gave her the courage of her resolutions, for she did not return for further advice."
Overnight, Mark Storm petitioned the Governor of the State for an extradition warrant for Dr. Daniel Starbuck on a charge of suspicion of murder, and for Mrs. Daniel Starbuck, as a material witness, from the sovereign state of Mexico.
The next day Silky Davis telephoned Gillian.  He had been able to find no evidence that Cleve Salter, the hospital orderly, had been visiting Redfern's apartment to see Storm.
Aaron Savage reported on the alibis of Dr. Tichman, Claudia Barnum, Cleve Salter and Nancy Green.  He said, "It's hard to dig up any useful information on such alibis.  There is no question that all four were on the ninth floor when Hoyle was murdered, and all four had an opportunity to poison Hannah Starbuck.  Nancy Green was in the room next door, getting it ready for a patient.  Cleve Salter was seen around the third floor at intervals all evening.
"I also found out that Nancy Green and Salter were seen in earnest conversation not long after you talked to Starbuck's aunt, that night.  But getting back to the time Miss Starbuck was killed, Claudia Barnum was alone with Miss Starbuck for a time, so was Starbuck, of course.  And Tichman was on the third floor attending a patient some time between ten and ten-thirty.  I can't find out anything about his activities, but it looks as if he would have had an opportunity to go to Room 310."
"How about the time of Hoyle's murder?" Gillian asked.
"What you told me about the actual time interval needed for the Hoyle murder – that's the main trouble.  I'm convinced that Hoyle was – or could have been – lured into that office and stabbed to death in a matter, actually, of seconds.  It could have been over with, from start to finish, in twenty or thirty seconds.  So that any of these four could have done it and been back at his or her duties before being missed."
"How about Cleve Salter?"
"At the time of Hoyle's murder," Savage answered, "Salter was cleaning up a stretcher in a sort of laundry, only three doors from Hoyle's office.  He would have had ample motive for killing Hoyle.  He knew that Hoyle and Starbuck were good friends.  He hated Starbuck for having reprimanded him several times for carelessness.  He's the type who would brood over a fancied injury.  I'd call him an ugly customer."
"Get me all you can on him," Gillian said.
And on a morning a few days later, Mr. and Mrs. Dan Starbuck, the romantic couple whose pictures adorned the front pages of every Greenfield newspaper, were greeted at the Greenfield airport by upwards of thirty reporters, news photographers, and news reel men and a delegation of about five thousand morbidly curious townspeople.
The young surgeon was spirited off to the Fourth Precinct jail and was there booked formally on a homicide charge.  His bride was, after questioning, permitted her freedom.
Gillian learned all this, or most of it, from the newspapers.  He had already gleaned that the district attorney would bring the young man to trial on the charge of having murdered his aunt by administering to her a lethal dose of arsenic in order to inherit her estate, of which he was the legal heir.
Thus was neatly established a perfect motive for the alleged murder.  The charge of murdering Dr. Hoyle, the anesthetist, would not be pressed, Gillian believed, until Dr. Starbuck's trial for the murder of his aunt was over.  Nor would the third charge be pressed – that of criminal negligence in connection with the death of a hemophiliac, or bleeder, on the operating table.
Seldom in Gillian's career as a, criminal lawyer had he known a case in which the defendant was so hopelessly hemmed in by serious charges.  If Mark Storm failed to convict him for the murder of his Aunt Hannah, he could try him for the murder of Dr. Hoyle; and if, by some legal miracle, the unfortunate young man escaped the chair or a life sentence for this latter charge, the district attorney would bring the criminal negligence charge against him.
It seemed to Gillian that poor young Dr. Starbuck, even if he were as innocent as a new born babe, had as slim chances of running this gantlet of charges and retaining his life and freedom as, say, a rabbit would have in plunging headlong into a pack of whippets.
Shortly before noon of the day of Dan Starbuck's return to the scene of his alleged crimes, Dr. Creed telephoned to Gillian.  He wanted merely to know if Gillian would take Dan Starbuck's case.
"I am pretty thoroughly convinced that he is as guilty as Cain," Dr. Creed said.  "But inasmuch as he was always loyal to me, and a hard worker, I feel it my duty to retain the best lawyer available.  Will you take the case?" 
"I never take a case," Gillian said firmly, "in which I can't see at least a ray of hope.  I can see absolutely no ray of hope for Dr. Starbuck.  Besides, he has good lawyers of his own."
Dr. Creed did not argue or protest.  He shared, Gillian knew, the public's conviction that Surgeon Starbuck was a secret drunkard, a cocaine addict, and thrice a murderer.
"I'll want to see you on another matter in a few days," the doctor said.
"Another will?"
"Yes."
"Another beneficiary?"
"Yes."
"Who is it this time, doctor?"
"I haven't quite made up my mind.  I'll phone you."

CHAPTER VIII
GILLIAN DECIDES

SHORTLY after luncheon Gillian received a caller – a caller whom he had been, in a way, expecting.  She entered his private office heavily veiled, a slim, small person.  She was wearing the veil, obviously, to avoid attracting attention on the street.  And when she lifted the veil, although Gillian had been expecting her, he was greatly shocked, for suffering had refined the little Irish girl's beauty, had given her a tragic kind of loveliness.  Her sapphire eyes in her small white face were enormous, and their beauty was enhanced by soft shadows in the clear white skin about them.
Her eyes were not bloodshot, nor was her nose pink or her mouth raw-looking, so he knew she had not been crying.  And he guessed that she was the kind who took her punishment standing up.
Her bravery was touching, and he was suddenly resentful at the circumstances which had caused an innocent girl such suffering.  He had seen other girls like this one face the future she faced – a future of the faintest hope and the darkest dread – and he pitied her.  He pitied her particularly because he could hold out no hope for her.  Girls in her predicament – girls with husbands or lovers or brothers about to be hurled into the heartless machine of the law – so many of these girls had come to him, expecting him to perform miracles.
This girl surprised him by not bursting into a piteous plea for his help.  She said quietly, in a small, controlled voice, "Dr. Starbuck wondered if you would come to see him at the jail.  He wants very much to ask your advice."
"I'll drop down, of course.  But I'm afraid there's very little useful advice I can give him."
"We want very much for you to take his case."
"But he has an excellent firm of lawyers, Mrs. Starbuck."
She said spiritedly, "I know them!  Tim Harnedy and Orel Lawler are good lawyers, but they're both in Nevada on a mining case.  And Ira MacFarland isn't interested in criminal law.  All he thinks about is his pecan grove.  You are the only lawyer who can get my husband out of this horrible mess.  It's a case for a great detective, as well as a great lawyer, and you're both!"
He told her what he had told Dr. Creed: "I never touch a case in which there isn't some ray of hope."
"Isn't Dan's innocence a ray of hope?  Oh, I know your reputation.  You won't take a case unless you think there's a fighting chance.  But there is a fighting chance!  He is innocent of both these charges.  He did not kill his aunt!  She died of angina pectoris."
"How do you account for the arsenic found in her stomach?"
"I can't account for any of it.  It's a job for some one much cleverer than I am.  But I know he is being made the goat for some one.  All those empty bottles found under his bed!  Mr. Hazeltine, I've known Dr. Starbuck for two years.  I've worked on countless cases with him.  If he ever drank, if he ever used cocaine, I'd know it.  When a girl loves a man, she notices everything.  And he did not kill Dr. Hoyle.  Some one did it and deliberately fastened the guilt on him by using that knife.  Don't you agree that it was pretty crude?"
"Passion is pretty crude, too," Gillian argued.  "Who killed Dr. Hoyle?"
"Tichman!" she cried.
"Can you prove that?"
"If I could, I'd be telling it to the police.  He's always been jealous of Dan.  And when Dr. Creed began showing such favoritism to Dan, Tichman was almost insane.  I could swear that, for a few days, those black eyes of his had a red light in them!  And the way he talked about Dan, behind his back – if he'd been a man I'd have knocked him down!"
"What about this bleeder case that died while your husband was operating on him?"
"A deliberate frame-up!  Tichman was behind that, too.  Oh, I know Tichman.  How I've hated that man!"
She was, Gillian realized more and more, a fighter.  She had not only the beauty of the Dublin type, but the fighting qualities of her race.  And he liked her immensely because, plunged as she was in woe, she was being a good little sport.  She wasn't having hysterics, and she wasn't planning to burst into tears.
He said gravely, "You don't recognize me, do you, Mrs. Starbuck?"
She looked puzzled.  "Of course I recognize you."
"You didn't recognize me the other night."
"At the hospital?"
"At the airport."
"I don't–" she began.  Then, "The airport!"
"The telephone booth."
She was staring at him now with large, startled blue eyes.
"Oh," she gasped.  "You weren't the man in that telephone booth!"
He nodded.
Her eyes glistened.  "I had to hide," she explained.  "I saw Tichman.  I'd just bought the tickets for Dan and me – for our elopement.  We had planned to do it very secretly – to slip away without telling a soul.  If Tichman had seen me there he would have suspected.  It would have spoiled everything."
It was, Gillian felt, a very satisfactory explanation.
He said, "Do you know if Dr. Tichman has ever practiced hypnotism?"
"He practices it every minute of his life!  He knows how hypnotic those black eyes of his are.  He has half the nurses scared out of their wits.  But please talk to Dan.  He can tell you all about Tichman."
They went down to the Fourth Precinct jail, and were presently being led down a corridor to the cell occupied by Dr. Starbuck.  The young surgeon was seated on the edge of his cot.
When his wife and Gillian stopped at the barred door, he jumped up with a wan grin of excitement.  He looked sick.  He was unshaved.  His eyes were gaunt and his face was haggard.  For a moment the bride and groom clung to each other, with the bars between.  Then the young man said in a shaky voice: "It was good of you to come, Mr. Hazeltine.  It all seems like a horrible nightmare.  My God, they're charging me with three murders!  And the only thing I'm guilty of is running off that way without telling them.  I know it looks as if I were running away, with the law at my heels.  I know I was a damn fool to do it.  But for months Dr. Creed had kept me so busy that I didn't have a chance to be alone with Carolyn five minutes at a time.  He kept me operating from the time I got up in the morning until I fell in bed at night, drunk with exhaustion."  
"Not drunk," Gillian said, "on what was in those bottles they found under your bed."
"How could I drink," the young man demanded, "and do the work I was doing?  I'll admit I made two mistakes – to run away, and to bury my aunt in such a hurry.  That was sheer insanity.  I should have realized how it would look.  But you don't know how desperate we were I-I was working sixteen hours a day to clear up my schedule, so we could get away on the date we had planned.  My aunt's death was only another frustration to our plans.  If we hadn't gotten away that night, we'd have never gotten away!" 
"Don't," Gillian advised him, "let a jury hear you say that your aunt's death was just another frustration to your plans."
The young man said passionately, "I'll do what you say if you'll only take my case."  
"He won't take it," Carolyn Starbuck said, "unless you can show him a ray of hope.  You've never lost a murder case, have you, Mr. Hazeltine?"
Gillian shook his head.  "And part of my influence with juries is their knowledge that I never go into court to defend a man who is guilty."
"If I could prove to you I'm innocent," the young man said, "I could have proved it to the magistrate who arraigned me."  
"Did you know that Dr. Creed had been planning to leave you, in his will, his entire establishment – all the buildings, grounds, equipment – everything?"
Dr. Starbuck stared at him with the open mouth of shocked incredulity.  "Good lord, no!" he whispered.  
"He told me you were the best man he has ever had on his staff."
The surgeon made a grimace, as if he had tasted something bitter on his tongue.
"Then that gives us the motive we've wanted.  I thought Tichman was jealous because Creed was pushing me along so rapidly.  Tichman must have heard about that will.  Has Dr. Creed made it yet?"
"Not yet.  And he swears he has mentioned it to no one but me."  
"Tichman is back of it all!" Dr. Starbuck exclaimed.
Gillian said nothing.  He had some definite suspicions of his own.  Back of Tichman was Mark Storm.  Gillian had been willing to believe, all along, in Dr. Starbuck's innocence.  Having talked with him and his wife, he had learned that they possessed a look that he had come to know well in his years of courtroom experience the aspect of innocence.
He decided suddenly that he would take the case.  In doing so, he was violating the strict rule he had laid down – never to take a case in which there was not some satisfactory loophole.  He saw no loopholes in this case.  If he could possibly clear Dr. Starbuck of the charge for which he would be shortly under indictment, the young man would be re-arrested and tried for the murder of Dr. Hoyle, and even if Gillian cleared him of that, he could be again arrested on a criminal negligence and homicide charge in connection with the death, on the operating table, of the hemophiliac.
Gillian believed that somewhere in this maze of circumstance he might find the key, just as a logger finds the key-log in a jam and lets the mass go sweeping clear.
But back of his decision was not merely his wish to help an innocent man establish his innocence.  There was another reason: his hatred of Mark Storm.  Mark Storm had, the other morning at the hospital, thrown down the gauntlet to him – had suavely, urbanely jeered at him.  And Gillian had never refused an invitation to lock horns with that courtly, scheming gentleman.
He said, "Dr. Starbuck, I'm going to take this case.  And I'll want a great deal of help from both of you."
For the first time, there were tears in the eyes of Carolyn Starbuck, but these were tears of gratitude.  "I'll want all the information either of you can give me, bearing on the habits, the little personal habits, of Dr. Tichman, Dr. Barnum, and Nancy Green.  Mrs. Starbuck, do you intend to resume your work at the hospital?" 
"I will if I can be of any help.  But will Dr. Creed let me?"
"I'll arrange that."
Gillian and Mrs. Starbuck left the jail shortly.  Outside the jail, several reporters and newspaper photographers were waiting.  Gillian, answering questions and posing with the beautiful Mrs. Starbuck for the photographers, fired his first shot in the campaign.  He said he had studied the case with the greatest care and was convinced that Daniel Starbuck was an innocent man; therefore he was taking his case.
And if these sentiments had a familiar ring to the newspaper men, it was because Gillian had often expressed it as his belief that most murder cases were tried in the newspapers, and that a verdict was reached in the jury's mind before that jury ever entered the courtroom.
But it was, as an opening shot, a rather late one.  For days, the newspapers had been shrieking with headlines manufactured in the district attorney's office.  The tabloids already referred to Dr. Starbuck as the "Boy Butcher."  It was darkly hinted that more than three deaths could be laid at the door of Dr. Starbuck.
And even as Gillian and the lovely Irish girl stood talking to the reporters, Mark Storm struck again.  A deputy sheriff pushed through the crowd of newspaper men, and served Mrs. Starbuck with a warrant for her arrest on the charge of having been an accessory after the fact, an accomplice, in the murder of Miss Hannah Starbuck.
She was taken back into the jail, this time a prisoner.  Gillian immediately appealed to the nearest magistrate for a writ of habeas corpus.  When, after masterful arguments, he finally secured the writ and returned to the Fourth Precinct jail, it was only to learn that Mrs. Starbuck had been transferred to the Sixth Precinct jail.
He promptly presented himself before another magistrate, secured another writ of habeas corpus, and hastened to the Sixth Precinct jail.  There, he was courteously informed that Mrs. Starbuck had remained only an hour, and had then been transferred to the Clinton Street Jail.
In legal circles, this procedure is known as the merry-go-round.  It could be kept up indefinitely if Mark Storm wanted Mrs. Starbuck kept out of circulation.  He would transfer her from jail to jail as fast as Gillian could secure writs of habeas corpus.
In all his battles with Mark Storm, Gillian had never known him to take such pains.  It appeared that, now that Gillian had entered the lists, Storm was prepared to give him battle every inch of the way.
Gillian had wanted Carolyn Starbuck to work on the case with him.  She was a clever girl, and a fighter, and her help would have been invaluable.  When he was denied this help, he went ahead with the case with his usual methodicalness.
Intending to leave no stone unturned, he put his entire staff to work on the Starbuck case, and he shelved all other cases.
In preparing for the defense of Starbuck, Gillian first of all made himself thoroughly familiar with hospital and, particularly, operating room routine.  He read books on medicine and surgery.  He became a regular patron of the Hobart Creed Hospital.  Overcoming his aversion to operating rooms in action, he spent all his free time watching operations, watching especially Dr. Tichman, Dr. Barnum, and Nancy Green.
He was interested to note that the platinum blond nurse had been transferred to Dr. Tichman's operating crew.  Each of the three, and Cleve Satter in addition, he had watched by his investigation department, and each morning on his desk was a detailed account of their previous day's activities.  Notably was a report that both Nancy Green and Cleve Salter had been seeing a great deal of Mark Storm.
The courtroom fight would be, he knew, a dramatic and sensational one.  It was, perhaps, the strongest case that Storm had ever taken into a courtroom, yet it was, to Gillian, no stronger than its weakest link.  He was still confident that he would, in due time, find that link which would bring about the collapse of the entire case against Dr. Starbuck.
At night he often lay awake, thinking – trying to worry a useful meaning from the little rectangular impression he had seen in the wet paint above Dr. Hoyle's body – that and the absence of fingerprints from the anesthetist's silver skull plate.  He had long since learned that no one in the hospital had known that Dr. Hoyle had once had a brain operation.
Because he was determined to reinstate himself in the good graces of the public, following his flight abroad and his return to active life, Mark Storm saw to it that the case of the People versus Starbuck was given plenty of advance publicity.
When the trail started, in spite of Gillian's exhaustive attempts, he had not yet learned how Dr. Lee Tichman had been instrumental in the poisoning of Hannah Starbuck, the stabbing of Dr. Hoyle or the death on the operating table of the hemophiliac.
So avid was the public's interest in the trial that the courthouse corridors, even the courthouse square, were a mass of humanity early on the day when the trial was schedule to start.

CHAPTER IX
DAMAGING TESTIMONY

MARK STORM was not present during the impaneling of the jury.  In the past, he had always taken the greatest pains in the selection of a jury that might be sympathetic to his case.  His absence during the first two days of the Starbuck trial indicated how sure he was of the outcome.  But to Gillian, not at all sure, the selection of this jury was vitally important.  Often he had won cases simply by appealing to the emotions or prejudices of a single juror.
On the morning of the third day, with the jury complete, Mark Storm came to court with his battery of assistants, and the fight began.  It was refereed by judge Hiram K. Phelan.  And its most prominent spectator was Dr. Hobart Creed, who was assisted to his seat in the first row by Dr. Lee Tichman.  The founder of the greatest hospital in the State looked old, ten years older than on the night when he and Gillian had had such a lively dinner.  His hands shook continuously, and he had a sickly, waxen pallor.  Throughout the trial he sat and stared at witness after witness with hardly a change of expression.  But not once did he glance at Dr. Starbuck.
Mark Storm, entering the courtroom, with the inevitable white carnation in his left lapel, might have been a visiting member of royalty, an archduke perhaps.  As usual, he was dressed for the boulevard – any boulevard as long as it was one of style and distinction.
As he came down the aisle, he smiled and bowed to left and right, and when he neared Gillian he held-out both hands and cried, "Ah!  My dear Gillian!  How fit you're looking!"
He was so charming, so poised, so utterly suave that Gillian, as usual, caught unprepared, felt himself blushing and growing hot at the ears, and his voice, when he responded, was thick and rough with the kind of embarrassment a boy feels when he is called on to recite in front of class.
Going on to his end of the counsel table, Storm left Gillian boiling with helpless wrath.  Why, he angrily demanded of himself, did this great rascal affect him so?
Mark Storm, in his preliminary address to the jury, stated that he would prove that the defendant had boldly and carefully planned the murder of his Aunt Hannah, in order that he might inherit her wealth to which, under her will, he was entitled at her death, and that the co-defendant, who was being tried as an accessory after the fact, aided and abetted the defendant in his plans of murder and escape.
It was, he said suavely, a perfect case of murder, with a motive, with adequate evidence of his commission of the act, and with proof of very suspicious subsequent actions.
He would prove, he declared, that Dr. Daniel Starbuck had with premeditation and with planning and with ruthlessness brought to an end the life of Miss Hannah Starbuck.
The first witness was the coroner of Greenfield County, who was called, in accordance with accepted legal procedure, merely to establish the fact that Miss Hannah Starbuck was dead, and that the corpus delicti which would be referred to throughout the trial was that of Miss Hannah Starbuck.
This formality attended to, the State called as its first important witness Mr. Anderson Lamy.  Mr. Lamy was a tall, crisp young man with alert blue eyes.  He was, he said, an employee of the Federal Air Lines; that he was on the night shift, from 8 P.M. to 4 A.M., and that his duties were to sell airline tickets and to answer questions and render similar services.
Under Storm's gentle questioning, he admitted that he had been on duty at the Greenfield Municipal Airport on the night of May 25th, last.  And he identified the girl sitting at the counsel table between Gillian Hazeltine and the defendant as the one he had served on that particular evening.
"Do you recall her name?" the district attorney asked.
"Yes, sir.  Mary Brown.  She said she wanted two tickets for Dallas on the 3 A.M. plane, the morning of May 28th."
"Are you quite sure, Mr. Lamy, that this is the young lady who told you her name was Mary Brown?"   Mark Storm went to Mrs. Starbuck's chair and placed his hands on the back of it.
"Yes, sir.  That's her, all right."
"And you're sure she said Mary Brown – not Miss Carolyn Kelly?"
"Yes, sir.  The tickets were made out for her and for Mr. George Brown."
Storm went to his end of the counsel table and picked up a pair of square green slips of paper.  He said, "Do you identify these as ticket stubs which you tore from the tickets you sold to Miss Brown – or Miss Kelly now Mrs. Starbuck?"
"Yes, sir.  The name Miss Mary Brown is written on one stub, and Mr. George Brown on the other."
Mark Storm looked meaningfully at the jury.  He had somehow managed cleverly to convey that this bit of subterfuge on Carolyn Starbuck's part on the night of May 25th was fraught with the most sinister significance.  Why, indeed, had this girl used an alias if she wasn't up to something dishonorable?
The State requested that the ticket stubs be admitted as Material Exhibit A for the State.  His questioning of the witness was resumed.
"Did you do anything else for Mrs. Starbuck, or Miss Kelly – I mean Miss Brown – on that evening?"
"Yes, sir.  I made reservations for her through to Mexico City on our line and the Pan-American."
"Did you notice anything special about her that aroused your curiosity?"
"Yes, sir.  She seemed very agitated.  When she had bought the tickets, I heard her say, 'Oh, my God!' and she ran!"
"Do you know why she ran?"
"I believe so.  A man with a scar on his forehead had just come in the door from the field.  She saw this man, and then she ran."
"Will you look about this courtroom and see if you can identify this man you saw?"
The witness looked about the courtroom.  He said, "That's the man."  and pointed to a man in the front row of spectators.
"Dr. Tichman?" Storm asked.
"I don't know his name.  But that's the man."Storm excused the witness, and Gillian waived cross-examination.  He knew that Storm's purpose in introducing this testimony was to establish premeditation – to implant in the jury's collective mind that the defendant and co-defendant had planned the murder of Aunt Hannah and their getaway at least forty-eight hours in advance.
The next witness called by the State was Nora Halliday, a nurse from the Hobart Creed Hospital – a plump, pretty young brunette with bright brown eyes and a birdlike manner.
She was nervous as she went to the stand and was sworn, and when she seated herself in the witness chair, Gillian saw that her lively eyes darted here and there and then steadied on the eyes of the man with the scar.  Watching Dr. Tichman, Gillian saw the surgeon's eyes concentrating on the nurse, with little lines between them in the flesh above the nose, as if holding the girl with those black, intense eyes, Dr. Tichman were actually trying to hold her under his control.
Glancing quickly back at the nurse, Gillian saw her eyes lose their lively sparkle and become dull and strange.  The breathless voice had changed, too, and become curiously dull and mechanical.
Mark Storm was gently questioning her.  She said she was a floor nurse, and that her station was the third floor of the main operating building, and that she had been on duty on the eventful night of May 27th.
Storm: "Was one of your patients a Miss Hannah Starbuck?"
The witness: "Yes, sir."
"Tell us about your duties in connection with her."
"She was one of my patients."
"How long had you known her professionally?"
"About six months."
"Did you notice anything particular about her actions or behavior on the night in question?"
Miss Halliday was staring at Dr. Tichman, her eyes not moving from him.  Gillian got up and stood so that he blocked that line of vision.  But this blockade apparently made little difference.  Either the Tichman brand of hypnotic influence worked regardless of optical barriers, or she was under his spell and would stay under it for some time.
"In the course of my rounds when first went on duty," the witness answered the district attorney's question, "I went in to see Miss Starbuck.  I first looked at her chart, and saw that she had been restless and complaining all day.  She had complained about pains in her head and heart."
Storm: "Had she ever complained about her heart before?"
"Yes, sir.  She was under careful observation because of several attacks of angina pectoris she had had in the past few months.  And she was also under observation – and treatment for a serious anemic condition."
"Do you know what treatment was prescribed for this anemic condition?"
"Yes, sir.  A dilute solution of arsenic, and various kinds of food containing iron – mostly liver and spinach."
"How often was this arsenic solution given to her?"
"Three times a day, after meals."
"Just how was this solution kept?  And where was it kept?"
"It was kept in a bottle on a shelf.  In Miss Starbuck's room."
"How large a bottle?"
"A pint."
"Can you tell the jury, Miss Halliday, just how much of this weak arsenic solution was in this bottle on the night of May 27th?"
"Yes, sir.  It was full within an inch of the top."
"Is angina pectoris a disease of the heart?"
"Yes, sir.  It's a neuralgia of the heart."
"Did anything unusual occur on the evening of May 27th?"
"Yes, sir."  The lively sparkle was not returning to Miss Halliday's eyes.  She was staring steadfastly at a point on Gillian's chest, and if that invisible line were continued, it would reach the eyes of the man with the zigzag scar.
"At a little after nine thirty I went into Miss Starbuck's room and found her very low-spirited and complaining about a pain in her heart.  She was in such distress that I sent another nurse to ask Dr. Starbuck to come."
"Was Dr. Starbuck the physician in charge of her case?"
"No, sir.  Dr. Barnum was in charge of the case, but Dr. Starbuck was supervising.  I mean, he took a very personal interest in the case."
"I should say," Storm said in his most ironical manner, "that he took a very personal interest in her case."
Gillian objected to this, and was sustained.
Storm now asked the witness if, when she sent for Dr. Starbuck, he had come.
"Not just then.  Dr. Barnum came.  By that time, Miss Starbuck's condition was rather acute.  Dr. Barnum gave her a treatment.  I think amyl nitrate.  Miss Starbuck seemed to respond, and she seemed to rest more comfortably, so Dr. Barnum left.  I think she was assisting Dr. Starbuck in an operation."
"Did you stay with Miss Starbuck?"
"For a few minutes.  Then I went my rounds.  But I looked in on her every few minutes.  She was all right for a little less than half an hour, then she began to groan and toss about.  So I called Dr. Barnum again.  He came and looked at Miss Starbuck and told me to send at once for Dr. Starbuck that his aunt's condition was alarming."
"What time was this?"
"About ten five.  The chart shows the exact time."
"Did Dr. Starbuck come?"
"Yes, sir.  Miss Starbuck was in great pain, writhing and groaning and making awful faces and clutching at her heart and throat."
"What did he say to you?"
"He told me to go about my duties."
There was an electrical quickening in the air of the courtroom.
"You mean to say," Storm said sharply, "Dr. Starbuck sent you out of the room?"
"Yes, sir."
"I see.  He dismissed you.  Did you go?"
"Yes, sir."
"When was this?"
"About ten fifteen."
"What was your next observation in connection with this case, Miss Halliday?"
"About ten thirty, or a little before, I went into Miss Starbuck's room."
"Was anyone there with the patient?"
"No, sir.  I looked at her and thought she was asleep – that Dr. Starbuck had given her something to make her sleep.  Then I looked closer and saw her eyes open and staring.  I took her pulse and listened for her heart action.  She was dead."
"What did you do?" Storm snapped.
"I called the amphitheater where Dr. Starbuck was about to operate.  A nurse told me he was just scrubbing up for an operation, and I gave her the message.  I called Dr. Evans, one of the house diagnosticians.  Dr. Evans came and confirmed that Miss Starbuck was dead."
Mark Storm questioned the witness a little further, taking her back especially over that part of her testimony relating to Dr. Starbuck's sending her out of the room.  He seemed to attach great importance to this, and he was, of course, anxious to establish in the jury's mind the obvious inference that Starbuck had sent her from the room to clear the decks for the murder he had been planning.
It was damaging testimony.  Gillian asked the girl only a few questions, chiefly relating to Starbuck's attitude when he had come into the room.
Dr. Evans was the next witness.  A typical general practitioner of the old school, his black suit looked rusty and shiny.  He was a benevolent-appearing man of fifty-odd, with a clipped gray mustache and kindly eyes.
He testified that he had gone into Room 310 and examined the body of Hannah Starbuck, and found that she was dead.  Consulting the chart, he found that Dr. Starbuck had administered caffeine sodium benzoate.
Storm: "At what time did you enter Room 310?"
"About ten twenty-five."
"Didn't you write on the chart that she had died in an attack of angina pectoris?"
"Yes."
"Did you write that because of your observations of the body, or because you knew that caffeine sodium benzoate is used in the treatment of angina pectoris?"
"It was my opinion, based on examination of the body, that she had died of angina pectoris."
Mark Storm walked toward Dr. Evans, and his air matched the kindliness of the diagnostician's.
"Doctor, please tell the jury just what the woman looked like in death."
"Her eyes were open and dilated.  There was a slightly green tinge in the flesh about the mouth.  The mouth was open and there were flecks of foam on the lower lip."
"Wasn't it your opinion that she had died in a convulsion?"
"Not at the time.  The appearance in death of one who dies of arsenic might be similar to that of one who dies in an attack of angina.  Angina pectoris is a strange and terrible, disease, Mr. Storm."
"Will you tell us a little about it, doctor?"
Dr. Evans gravely obliged.  "The victim has paroxysms of great pain in the cardiac regions of the heart, generally extending into the left shoulder and arm and the left side of the neck.  This is accompanied by a strong sense of impending death.  The pain in the heart is of great intensity – of a cold and sickening nature.  Most patients I have treated for angina cried out, in attacks, 'I am going to die!'  It is a horrible disease."
"How would these symptoms compare to those of arsenic poisoning?"
"The patient suffers great pain generally, and goes off into convulsions, dying in convulsions."
"Quickly?"
"It would depend on the amount of the dose, and the constitution of the individual."
"When you learned that Miss Starbuck had actually died of arsenic poisoning, not of angina pectoris, were you surprised?"
Dr. Evans smiled sadly.  "Nothing surprises me, Mr. Storm."
Storm excused him.  Gillian waived cross-examination.  The State called its next witness – Dr. Claudia Barnum.  Tall, strikingly handsome in a severely simple blue dress, with her hair shining like burnished copper, the clever woman surgeon went to the stand.  Her eyes were candid and gentle.  She was, Gillian thought as she crossed the courtroom, typical of the clever, modern professional woman, and he wished that she were on his side.  He did not, could not understand the antagonism he had sensed in her all along, although he was beginning to suspect its reason.

CHAPTER X
ACCUSED!

WHEN she took the stand, her eyes went swiftly, as Nurse Halliday's had done, to the man with the scar who sat, in the front row.  Those black eyes seemed to burn across the courtroom into hers.  And it seemed to Gillian that she suddenly lost most of her charming pink color and went pale, and that she wrenched her clear eyes from the hypnotic black ones of Dr. Tichman only with great effort.
Tichman was, Gillian reflected, a Svengali to a host of Trilbys, a sinister and dangerous individual he had proved to be.
It had been rumored that Dr. Barnum was the State's key witness, but although Gillian was familiar with most of the testimony she would utter, and was prepared for it, he was afraid he had not thought of everything.  For that reason, and her own admission of ruthless selfishness, Gillian considered her the State's most dangerous witness.
And Storm's manner was confident.
In his questioning, he was cheerful, almost blithe.  And he managed to convey to the jury that he had the deepest, the utmost respect for this beautiful red-haired surgeon.
Before she had gone very far with her recital of the events of that momentous evening, Gillian was aware that she had fallen under Dr. Tichman's spell, that the luster was gone from her handsome eyes, the sparkle from her intelligent voice.  Her eyes were fastened on those of the young man with the scar.
Dr. Barnum picked up the testimony of Miss Halliday, and described how she had gone to Room 310, given Miss Starbuck amyl nitrate inhalations, to check an attack of angina pectoris, and had, finally, in despair, sent for Dr. Starbuck.
"At what time was this?"
"Ten-ten," the witness answered in that colorless, mechanical voice, as she stared fixedly at Dr. Tichman.
Crisply, Storm said, "Tell the jury, doctor, just what happened."
"Dr. Starbuck came and sent Miss Halliday from the room.  Then he sent me from the room."
"Why?" Storm snapped.
"He said he didn't require my help."
"Didn't he order you out of the room?" Storm tried.
"He told me to go," Claudia Barnum answered tonelessly.
"Did he say anything else?"
"He said he was going to give her caffeine sodium benzoate."
"Did you see him give her this restorative?"
"No."
"What did you see?  Tell the jury what you saw, doctor!"
There was a tenseness about her that aroused Gillian's suspicions.  He stood up quietly and walked over to where he could get a better view of her pale face with its lackluster eyes.  He glanced at Tichman, and saw that sinister individual staring at her with his fists on his knees, his body inclined forward from the waist, his whole attitude one of intense concentration and purpose.
In a breathless hush, the witness answered the question.
"I went outside, but I did not go away.  I was worried about Miss Starbuck, and puzzled by Dr. Starbuck's orders to Miss Halliday and me.  Then I heard something smash in the room.  It sounded like breaking glass.  I think my hand was on the knob all this time, but I'm not sure.  In any event, I turned the knob and looked in.
"Dr. Starbuck was bending over his aunt, holding up her head with one hand, pouring something – a colorless liquid – into her mouth from a tall glass with the other.  She seemed to be drinking with difficulty.  Then-then I saw that the bottle of arsenic solution was missing from its shelf.  I looked on the floor and saw the broken fragments of it under the washstand."
Gillian had thrust his hands deep into his pants pockets.  He was studying the beautiful surgeon's face with the most curious interest, for this was new.  This was a surprise, a wicked surprise.  He wondered if she knew what she was saying.  Words came sliding off her lips, each one as if clipped; and she was staring, with a strange helplessness, or so it looked, across the room and into the black, compelling eyes of the hypnotic Tichman.
Storm said impatiently, "Go on, go on, doctor!"
She licked her lips.  "That's all I saw."
"Wait a minute!" Storm cried.  "Was the floor where the bottle had fallen and broken wet, or was it dry?"
"It was dry."
Gillian heard Carolyn Starbuck whisper hotly: "It's a lie!"
The beautiful woman on the stand evidently heard her, for she repeated: "It was dry."
"Just a moment, doctor," Storm said.  "You say that this bottle you saw broken was the arsenic bottle from the shelf above the washstand?"
"Yes–"  A whisper.
"Were you well acquainted with that bottle?"
"Yes.  I was the physician in charge of Miss Starbuck's case – acting under Dr. Starbuck's orders.  He had ordered a weak arsenic solution for his aunt's anemia.  It was this bottle – a pint bottle – that was missing from the shelf and lying in fragments on the floor."
Gillian had removed his hands from his pockets and was rubbing them nervously together.  He had anticipated none of this.  It made the case against his client utterly airtight.
Dr. Barnum was saying, in substance, that she had looked into that room and seen Dr. Starbuck pouring a pint of arsenic solution into his aunt's mouth!
According to Starbuck's own recital of the facts to Gillian, he had sent Miss Halliday away simply because she was busy and was not needed.  "I wouldn't have sent Dr. Barnum out," he had said, "except that my aunt seemed to be trying to tell me something – and I gathered that she wanted me alone with her.  When Dr. Barnum had gone out I gave Aunt Hannah an injection of caffein sodium benzoate.  She seemed to be reacting favorably.  I was scheduled to operate in F.  So when she started to come out of it I went out.  Dr. Barnum was still there in the corridor.  She said she'd wait there until the floor nurse came, so I left."
But it was a vastly different story that the beautiful Dr. Barnum was telling to the jury!
"Later," she was saying, "I went back there and examined that broken glass, and the floor.  It had not been wet."
"Did you presume that the bottle when it fell–" 
"Presumption isn't evidence," Gillian snapped.
"I merely wish to establish–" 
"Rephrase your question," judge Phelan ordered.
"You were saying," Storm suavely tried again, "that you went into the room later and found that the floor, all about where the bottle had fallen, was quite dry?"
"Yes, Mr. Storm."
Storm now repeated and rephrased various of these questions, to establish in the jury's mind that, although the bottle of arsenic solution was empty when it fell to the floor, Dr. Starbuck had poured a large glassful of some liquid down his aunt's throat.
"When I talked to you on the morning following Miss Starbuck's death, why didn't you tell me about that broken bottle on the floor, Dr. Barnum?"
"It didn't occur to me as important, Mr. Storm.  The incident puzzled me, but I attached no importance to it until Miss Starbuck's body was exhumed and her stomach was found to contain so much arsenic."
"Have you ever done any post mortem work?"
"I did nothing else for one year."
"Have you ever, in the course of your post mortem work, or your autopsies, examined the stomachs of corpses who had, in life, systematically taken arsenic for some such ailment as anemia?"
"Yes.  A number of such corpses."
"Does the arsenic accumulate in the stomach?"
"No.  It is distributed about the body.  Arsenic assimilates rather rapidly into the blood."
"Then would you say emphatically that if a great quantity of arsenic were found in the contents of Miss Starbuck's stomach, it would indicate that it was not an accumulation of the small regular doses she was taking?"
"Most emphatically!"
"If an amount of arsenic totaling, let us say, six grains, were found in her stomach, would you say that that amount of this poison would have been enough to kill her?"
"I should say so."
"But I should think, doctor, that if this patient had been taking small amounts of arsenic regularly, in doses three times daily, she would have developed an immunity to the poison."
"Not at all.  She might have a greater tolerance for arsenic than a person who had not been accustomed to the poison in small, regular doses, but her tolerance might not have been sufficient to accommodate such a large amount.  In short, she would have died."
"Having been the doctor in charge of Miss Starbuck's case, and being very familiar with her physical state generally, would you say that six grains of arsenic would have been fatal?"
"It would, indeed!"
"That will be all.  Your witness, Mr. Hazeltine."  And the district attorney gave Gillian his courtliest bow, his most urbane smile.
As Gillian strolled toward the witness, a corridor door opened and a court attendant came down the aisle and spoke to Dr. Tichman.  His husky whisper clearly said, "You're wanted urgently on the telephone, doctor."
With a frown, Dr. Tichman got up and followed the attendant out of the courtroom.  Gillian waited until the man with the scar was gone.  And it seemed to him that the witness watched his departure with doubt or misgivings.
Gillian had gone to some pains arrange for that telephone call.
He had simply wanted Tichman out of the courtroom while he cross-examined the red-headed surgeon.  He wanted the girl free from that hypnotic influence.
He deliberately busied himself at his table, glancing at this paper and that, to give Dr. Barnum's mind a chance to be freed of the compelling power of the man with the scar.  And when he believed that the time was ripe, he turned about and gently began to question her.
Her clear, candid eyes met his steel-blue ones, and she answered his questions quickly, thoughtfully, fully.  He attempted to break her down, to make her deny her recent sensational statements.  But the red-headed surgeon would not be broken down.  She remained calm poised – and clever.  She crisply reiterated the story she had related under Storm's examination.
He was just finishing with her when Dr. Tichman, looking coldly furious, returned to his seat.
"That's all," Gillian said wearily.  And he presumed that Mark Storm would now drive the final rivets into his case.Gillian would have given a great deal to know just who had actually poisoned Hannah Starbuck.  Dr. Barnum had had the opportunity – and Gillian strongly suspected her.  But there were so many others to suspect, too.
Dr. Barnum's testimony was not that of an eyewitness to a poisoning.  It presented, rather, a chain of circumstantial evidence of the most damning nature – the pint bottle of arsenic solution, the glass of a "colorless liquid" which she claimed she had seen Dr. Starbuck pouring into his aunt's mouth – and the empty bottle, broken, on the floor near the washstand.
What conclusion could be reached but that Dr. Starbuck had poured the contents of the bottle into a "very large glass," smashed the bottle in an attempt to destroy evidence, and then made his aunt drink the arsenic?
Yet, despite its damning nature, it left Gillian a loophole – an opportunity, later to devise one of the most daring and dangerous tricks he had ever used in a career of clever trickery.
The State's next witness was a nurse who had removed the bedding from Room 310, after Hannah Starbuck's death, and done the preliminary straightening up until the room should be thoroughly cleaned the next day.  She had, she said, found a smashed bottle on the floor near the washstand and had removed the pieces.  She had no other testimony to offer.  Gillian, recollecting the particles of glass he had found on the floor of 310, waived cross-examination.
Court was recessed for luncheon.
Under cover of the hum of conversation as the spectators arose, Gillian said to Dan Starbuck, "How about this smashed bottle?"
The haggard young surgeon said quietly, "As far as I know, that bottle was on the shelf, intact, while I was in the room."
But Gillian had himself found particles of glass in the room.  Who, he wondered, had smashed that bottle?
The first witness of the afternoon session was Nancy Green, her platinum blandness strikingly set off by a smart suit of a burnt orange color, her shapely ankles displayed in sheer chiffon.
She was so striking that the courtroom gasped as she arose and walked to the stand.  Here again was unshakable poise – and here was one more Trilby to Dr. Tichman's amazing Svengali.
In a limpid voice she answered the rapid fire of questions put to her by the suave, poised district attorney.
"How long have you been in the employ of Dr. Creed?"
"Two years and five months."
"What are your duties in the Hobart Creed Hospital?"
"I am a nurse."
She was staring fixedly at Dr. Tichman, and her voice and expression had, like those of the two girls who had preceded her to the stand, swiftly become dull and lifeless and mechanical.
"Were you well acquainted with Dr. Starbuck?"
"Yes.  I knew him very well."
"Did you ever see him take a drink of liquor?"
"Oh, yes.  Many's the time."  The witness was smiling faintly, maliciously.  "He carried it on his hip – a pint flask."
"Did you ever see him take cocaine?"
"Often."
"Tell the jury what you saw."
But the dazzling blonde did not glance at the jury.  With that faint smile of malice she stared into the hot black eyes of the man with the scar.
"He would dump a pill into his hand and then pulverize it between a thumb and finger.  Then he placed it here – in the crotch formed by his thumb and forefinger, and sniffed it."
"Was he aware that you saw him taking the drug?"
"I don't think he minded in the least.  He used to joke about it."
"How do you know it was cocaine?"
"Oh, he told me, it was.  He tried to make me take some."
"Did you?"
"Of course not!"
"Have you ever seen him so badly under the influence of alcohol or this narcotic that he menaced the lives entrusted to him?"
"Yes, Sir," the witness said clearly.  "I saw him kill a man."
There was an excited outburst of murmurs.  A bailiff silenced the uproar with a gavel.
Gillian was on his feet, objecting.  He knew she was referring to that hemophiliac.  And when judge Phelan deferred a ruling until further evidence was taken, Gillian took exception.
Storm went on, "You say you saw him kill a man?"
"Yes, sir."
"Who was this man?"
"Norman Henderson.  He was brought to the Hobart Creed Hospital for observation.  He had a chronic appendix."
Gillian objected again, on the grounds that this entire line of testimony was not related to the charge on which Daniel Starbuck was under indictment.
Storm suavely declared that he was introducing it as character evidence.  He said, "Your Honor, have I not the right to attempt to impeach the character of the accused?"
The Court: "I prefer to defer ruling.  Go on with this examination."
Gillian saw a look almost of joy in Nancy Green's eyes as she met those of Dr. Tichman.  He barked, "Your Honor, I request that a juror be removed."  In other words – that it be called a mistrial.
The judge refused.  He then decided to admit the entire testimony relating to the man called Norman Henderson, on the grounds that it was character testimony.
The blond girl went on: "Dr. Starbuck was so drunk he hardly knew what he was doing.  He was often that way, but of course like most clever, drinking surgeons, the moment he walked into the operating room he was as steady as the rock of Gibraltar."
"Tell us just what happened in the case of Norman Henderson."
"The laboratory technician took a blood test and found he was a bleeder."
"How did he take this blood test?"
"By pricking the end of the patient's finger."
"Didn't the patient bleed?"
"Yes, Mr. Storm.  But he was given an injection which stopped the bleeding.  At a consultation, it had been decided that Mr. Henderson should have his appendix removed.  But then the blood test was taken, proving he was a bleeder, and a report was sent to Dr. Starbuck's office.
"I was in the office when he came in and picked up the report from his desk.  He was so drunk he could hardly see the report.  At least, he didn't read it at all.  He just laughed and said, 'Send the sucker to B, and we'll yank that appendix out in a hurry.'"
"What happened?"
"He operated – and the patient died on the table of hemorrhage."
Gillian angrily insisted that this whole line of testimony be held inadmissible as evidence, on the grounds that it related to a charge already pending against the accused.
"Overruled!"
Storm: "Miss Green, do you recall showing me to Dr. Starbuck's room in the hospital on the morning following his – elopement to Mexico?"
"Yes, sir."
"Will you tell the jury what we saw under Dr. Starbuck's bed?"
"An accumulation of dozens and dozens of empty gin, bourbon, and cocaine bottles."
Mark Storm waved a hand negligently toward Gillian.  "Your witness, Mr. Hazeltine!"
Gillian faced the beautiful blond nurse with a feeling of dislike which he had had for few women.  He knew that this girl was anxious – more than anxious – to see Dan Starbuck go to the electric chair.  She had been desperately in love with Dr. Starbuck, he knew.  He had caught the look of hopeless forlornness with which she had gazed at the young surgeon the night she had seen the "ghost."  But since then Dr. Starbuck had married Carolyn Kelly.  And Nancy Green was now that most treacherous and dangerous of all women – a woman scorned.
Hazeltine said quietly, "Miss Green do you make a practice of seeing ghosts?"
And the nurse answered impudently, "If I only knew what you are driving at Mr. Hazeltine!"
"Please tell the jury just how many ghosts you've seen in your life."
"Just one, Mr. Hazeltine.  I'd forgotten that ghost."  She laughed softly.  "I think now that I must have been having hallucinations.  I was overworked, dreadfully tired.  I was walking along a dusky corridor with a tray for a special diet case – that was before I became a scrub nurse – and I thought I saw this thing.  But I realize now that it was nothing but nerves."
"You didn't happen – of course – to be anywhere near Room 310 at about the time Miss Starbuck died?" 
"Why yes" she said candidly.  "I was."
"Where were you?"
"Well, about ten o'clock I went into 312, the room next to Miss Starbuck's.  I had to get the room ready for a pneumonia patient."
"How long were you in there?"
"I really don't know, Mr. Hazeltine," the blond girl said brightly.
"Room 312 is connected to 310 by a bathroom, isn't it?"
She nodded.
"Both doors between the rooms were unlocked during the time you were in 312, weren't they, Miss Green?"
"I really don't know, Mr. Hazeltine!"
Gillian said softly, insinuatingly, "You didn't happen to go through the bathroom and into Miss Starbuck's room about twenty minutes after ten, did you, Miss Green?"
"Of course not, Mr. Hazeltine!"
"Did you know that Miss Starbuck had named you as beneficiary under a will?"
Miss Green showed surprise.  "No!"
"Then you couldn't have discussed with any one the fact that she disinherited you in a subsequent will?" 
"Doesn't your question answer itself, Mr. Hazeltine?"
Gillian smiled grimly and said, "You had no grudge against Miss Starbuck, of course?"
"I adored Miss Starbuck."
Gillian's Aunt Hepsibah would have called Nancy Green a "brazen hussy."  She was, rather, a modern young woman – utterly self-controlled.
Gillian now referred to some of her answers to the State's questions.  Miss Green glibly answered them all.  He could not trip her up.  Storm's parade of witnesses had, so far, been letter perfect.  From Gillian's viewpoint, the case was pretty hopeless – but he had by no means lost hope.  In most of his trials he turned certain defeat into amazing victory often at the least expected moment.
The State asked Miss Green no questions in reexamination, but placed on the stand the autopsy surgeon who had removed Miss Hannah Starbuck's stomach.
He testified, briefly, that on May 29th last, he had received for autopsy the body of a woman properly identified as the late Miss Hannah Starbuck; that he had removed her stomach at the request of the district attorney's office, and had sent this stomach by a trusted messenger to the laboratories of Mr. Harry Zarrow, the city chemist.
Storm asked him, "Was this body, to your official and absolute knowledge, sent to you following its disinterment from a grave in Elmwood Cemetery?"
"Yes, sir."
Harry Zarrow likewise gave brief but telling testimony.  He had chemically examined the contents of the dead woman's stomach, and had run a quantitative analysis for arsenic.  He had found between six and seven grains of the deadly stuff in the stomach's contents.
And on this somewhat grisly note the day's session ended.  And court was adjourned until the following morning.
Gillian admitted to inquisitive reporters that Mark Storm had, indeed, done a very large day's work.  Actually, what the district attorney had done was to establish premeditation in the murder of Hannah Starbuck, and he had cleverly established, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that her nephew had given her a lethal drink of arsenic.
In all his fights with Storm, Gillian had never seen him conduct any case so brilliantly as this.  How cleverly he had made use of that innocent airport episode!  How clever he had been, indeed, to try Starbuck on the charge of murdering his Aunt Hannah, rather than the killing of the anesthetist!  How cleverly he had dragged in the death of that hemophiliac as character evidence!  He had succeeded in making of Dan Starbuck a drunkard, a dope fiend, a heartless butcher!
Mark Storm, it was evident, was grimly determined – this time – to give Gillian Hazeltine's record – a record to date of one hundred percent acquittals-its first black mark.

CHAPTER XI
THE NEW WILL

ON the evening of that same day, Gillian received a telephone call from Dr. Creed, asking him to come over after dinner.  When Gillian arrived, the old man said, brusquely, "Gillian, I'm ready to have you draw my will.  I'm not feeling at all well.  The Lord knows what would happen to my hospital if I died intestate."
Seating himself in the doctor's study and lighting a cigar, Gillian said calmly, "Who's your beneficiary this time?"
And Dr. Creed, looking him aggressively in the eyes, answered, "Lee Tichman."
"Ah," Gillian breathed "So it's working – working like the splendid piece of machinery it is!"
"What's working?  What do you mean?" old man asked testily.
"Storm's scheme.  Let me tell you all about it.  First of all, through Tischman, he thoroughly discredits your bright young man Starbuck.  Mysterious occurrences happen.  People are murdered, liquor and narcotic bottles are strangely found – and Starbuck is arrested and booked for murder.  In due course, you decide that he is all his enemies have called him."
"I don't believe you."
"Of course you don't!  That's why I say the machine is perfect.  Having eliminated Starbuck from your mind – or your sentiments – as the logical beneficiary under this utterly insane will, you cast about for another candidate.  Tichman is subtly suggested."
"That's a lie!" the old man shrilled.  "Tichman was not suggested to me, subtly or otherwise!"
"I'm afraid, doctor," Gillian said sadly, "you're the victim of conspirators too clever for you.  They've played you like a piano.  This is blunt talk, but I'm your lawyer, and you need blunt talk.  My sole interest is to protect your interests.  Once again, I ask you – hells bells, I'll do more than that – I'll beg you to make a will leaving your hospital to a foundation which will run it absolutely according to your wishes, honestly–" 
"Never!" Dr. Creed shouted.
"Very well.  Just what stipulations do you intend to make in the will bequeathing this property to Lee Tichman?"
"None whatever.  There are to be no strings attached."
"How interesting!  I'll tell you just what will happen.  Shortly after your death, shortly after this will is filed for probate, it will be put up for sale.  And fifty percent of the proceeds will go into the pocket of your good friend Mark Storm!"
"I don't believe it!"
"You mean, you hate to believe it.  But I know Storm.  I know that he is behind this entire conspiracy to electrocute Dan Starbuck, to send his wife to prison for most of her life – and to grab off an estate worth better than fifteen million dollars!"
Dr. Creed jumped up.  "I know my own mind," he cried.  "I know talent and genius when I see it.  Tichman is as good a man as Starbuck – a wonderful surgeon, and very popular with the staff.  He is going to be my heir.  If you will not draw my will, I'll hire another lawyer to draw it.  Will you, or won't you draw it?"
"Doctor," Gillian said grimly, "do just one thing.  If you must leave everything to Tichman, do it with the stipulation that he is not to sell the property or any part of it!"
"No!" the old man shouted.  "There'll be no strings to it.  It has always been a one-man hospital and it always will! To run it properly Tichman's got to have a free hand.  I'm going to bequeath everything to him unconditionally!"
Gillian stood up and reached for his hat.  "Doctor," he said gravely, "in the years I've known you, I've come to have more respect you than any man in this entire State.  You have dedicated your life to the accomplishment of a wonderful ideal – this hospital.  But now, at the end of your life, you're going to undo it.  You're going to smash your ideal to pieces – by dropping it into the hands of a pair of clever crooks.  If I could stop you by any legal means, I would.  But I'm helpless.  All I can say is, I'd rather drop dead than draw such a will."
"Get out of this house!" Dr. Creed shouted.
Gillian went.  And he learned next morning, from a reliable source, that Dr. Creed, immediately on his departure, had telephoned to Ira MacFarland, of Harnedy, Lawler & MacFarland and had had him draw the will precisely according to his wishes.
But the fight was not yet over.  As far as Storm was concerned, however, the fight was practically won.  It remained for him merely to drive home the finishing punches into the jaw and body of a punch-drunk adversary.
He began this pleasant task on the following morning.  He produced the will of the late Hannah Starbuck and offered it as material evidence – as proof that the accused had had ample motive for the murder of the unfortunate woman.
He produced the dispensary clerk of the Hobart Creed Hospital who testified that the empty cocaine bottles under Dr. Starbuck's bed were the ones pilfered from the dispensary over a period of months.  
Storm asked him to identify the bottles, and the dispensary clerk did so.  On each, he pointed out, faintly written in pencil, was a number.  Various of these numbers corresponded to his list of missing cocaine bottles.  He further testified that he had, at the request of a detective, gone to Starbucks room and found the bottles under the surgeon's bed.
Having established this delicate point, Storm now undertook to prove that Dr. Starbuck was not only a drunkard and a dope fiend and a murderer, but that his actions and his acts subsequent to the death of his Aunt Hannah had been the actions and acts of a truly guilty man.
He placed on the stand Cleve Satter, the orderly.  Mr. Salter was not a commanding figure.  He strikingly resembled the dead bandit Dillinger.  He had a coarse, cheap face and furtive eyes and a fox-like grin.  Several of his fingers were missing.
Mr. Satter testified that he had been in Dr. Creed's employ for longer than fifteen years, that he was well acquainted with the accused.
Mark Storm: "Mr. Salter, late on the night of May 27th – that is to say, early on the morning of May 28th did you happen, in the course of your duties, to see the accused?"
"I did.  Yes, sir," Mr. Salter said with relish.
"Tell the jury just what you saw."
"I was walkin' along the main entrance corridor," the orderly obliged, "at about one thirty in the morning when I saw Dr. Starbuck comin' from the direction of the elevators.  He–"
"One moment, Mr. Salter.  Was Dr. Starbuck proceeding in the direction of the outer doors?"
"I was just comin' to that.  Yes, sir.  He was half-walkin', half-runnin', and he had a suitcase in each hand.  He rushed right past me and out the doors with never a word."
The witness hesitated.  He was obviously waiting for prompting.
"Mr. Salter," said the district attorney, "did you see Dr. Starbuck's face clearly when he passed you?"
"I certainly did.  Yes, sir!"
"Just how would you describe the expression you saw on his face?"
"I never saw such a look in my life.  No, sir.  He had this terrible took on his face, as if he was runnin' away from something awful."
"Tell the jury just what he did."
"Yes, sir."  Cleve Salter was so willing, so eager to give this testimony against the surgeon that Gillian, watching him, wondered once again just where the orderly had been, and what he had been doing on the ninth floor at the time Dr. Hoyle had been stabbed.
"He came rushin' past me," the orderly went on, "with those two suitcases, and he went rushin' out the front door – with that terrible look on his face.  That's all I saw."
Your witness, Mr. Hazeltine."
Gillian waved his hand indifferently.  All along, Cleve Salter, with his sneaky eyes and fox smile, had been prominent on Gillian's list of suspects.  But in spite of the efforts of Aaron Savage and other of Gillian's employees, the precise whereabouts of Cleve Salter at the time Hannah Starbuck was murdered was still a mystery.
Storm now proceeded to prove his third point: that having premeditated and planned the murder of Hannah Starbuck for her money, then having executed this ruthless plan, the accused had behaved in a manner that must arouse in any man the greatest suspicion.
The shifty-eyed orderly had driven the first rivet.  Storm's remaining witnesses now proceeded to drive in the rest.
Nicholas Weatherby, Jr., of the undertaking firm of Stinson & Weatherby, was the next witness called.
Mr. Weatherby stated that on the fateful night of May 27th, at about ten thirty, Dr. Starbuck, who was well known to him, telephoned from the Creed Hospital, requesting that the body of his aunt be called for and prepared for immediate burial.
Yes, Mr. Weatherby had thought at the time that this request was rather strange, but he had taken into consideration Dr. Starbuck's reputation, and had been glad to grant his wish for speedy embalming.  He had called for the body, taken it to his mortuary, embalmed it and placed it in a coffin.  This coffin he had taken out to the Elmwood Cemetery.
Dr. Colman, of the coroner's office, now took the stand to testify that Dr. Starbuck had telephoned him at about the same time, requesting that, as a special favor, a death certificate be issued at once to cover the sudden death, from angina pectoris, of Dr. Starbuck's Aunt Hannah.
Dr. Colman likewise admitted that such a proceeding was very irregular, but that he had been swayed by Dr. Starbuck's sterling reputation, and, naturally, had taken his word for it that the woman had died as stated.
Next came Jacob Flint, the sexton of Elmwood Cemetery – a gray-faced, taciturn man, the very color of a newly dug grave, a man with mastiff eyes with great pouches under them, and long, dirty fingernails.  There was somehow the air of death, of graves, about Jacob Flint.
And it was with the introduction of Mr. Flint that a new idea – an inspiration of Storm's – gradually took hold on the minds of the spectators and, with them, the jury.  It was that the accused was little less than a human monster – not alone a drunkard and cocaine addict, by whose secret practices the lives of his patients were endangered; not alone a man who would cold-bloodedly plot and execute the murder of his aunt for her wealth, but a man of ghoulish quality.
Jacob Flint stated that he had become acquainted with the accused some years previous, at the death of the accused's father, when the latter had died and been buried in the Starbuck family lot at Elmwood.
"Around half-past ten on the night of May 27th," the sexton proceeded, "Dr. Starbuck called me up and asked me if I would dig a grave in a hurry."
"Did he state what his hurry was?" Storm asked.
"Not right then.  But he did later.  He said he had important business out West and had to catch the three o'clock airplane.  I told him I thought it was pretty irregular, and he said to never mind the irregularity, as there was a century note in it for me if I would do it."
"A century note?" Storm repeated.
"A hundred dollars."
"How much do you ordinarily get for digging a grave?"
"Ten dollars.  So I thought it over and said I would.  I had it done and was back at the house by the time Dr. Starbuck got there.  It was beginning to rain.  It was one of them wet, rainy, gloomy nights A few minutes before two o'clock, the doctor and his lady arrived."
"Do you recognize the lady in this courtroom, Mr. Flint?"
"She's settin' right there between Gillian Hazeltine and Dr. Starbuck."
"You may proceed, Mr. Flint."
"Right after they got to my house, the death wagon from Stinson and Weatherby's drove up with the coffin.  And right behind the death wagon was the Rev.  Dr. Alexis Parkman.  We all got into the reverend's car and drove to the grave behind the death wagon.  And we all lugged the coffin to the grave and had the services, and I lowered it with my special coffin-lowering machine."
"Did you fill the grave then-after the services?"
"No, Mr. Storm.  That isn't customary.  I always fill the grave after the mourners depart.  But this time we all went down to my house and had a wedding service for Dr. Starbuck and the lady, with me and my wife for witnesses.  Then they drove away."
Jacob Flint told his story with a kind of ghoulish relish, somehow giving the listeners a vivid picture of that wretched night in the rain, and somehow he made Dr. Starbuck seem heartless indeed.
Gillian asked no questions of Mr. Flint.
The next – and the last – witness for the State was the Reverend Alexis Parkman, who, like an avenging Jehovah, swept to the stand to give his story of the hasty marriage.
And when, with Dr. Parkman, Storm rested the case for the State, the case for Daniel Starbuck looked very hopeless, very black indeed.
Court was recessed until the following morning.  And Gillian, slipping out through the judge's chambers to avoid reporters and autograph collectors, was very thoughtful.
He wanted to take a long walk and think things over, so he walked down through the gas house district, and after having a glass of draft beer in the saloon of his good friend Mike O'Houlihan, proceeded down along the wharves with his hands in his pockets, a cigar clenched in his teeth, his mind churning with ideas.
He watched a tug with a string of barges go down the river.  He watched a small passenger boat warp into her slip.
The sun was setting when, out near the old salt docks, in a neighborhood of working men, he heard the shrill voice of a newsboy.  "Wuxtry!  Wuxtry!"
Gillian whistled him down, and bought an extra.  The headline read:

STARBUCK OFFERS BRIBE FOR DOPE

Gillian read the story with deep interest.  The account revealed that Dr. Daniel Starbuck, defendant in the sensational murder case, immediately after the day's session ended, and he was returned to his cell, had attempted to bribe a jailer into fetching him a supply of cocaine.
Somehow, it was intimated, the accused man had been managing to secure cocaine through all the long weeks of his imprisonment.  The district attorney's office was planning to make a sweeping investigation of such conditions in all the city jails.  It was even intimated that this investigation might prove that Dr. Starbuck had been for years the secret head – the master-mind – of a dope ring.  At the moment of going to press, so the story said, Dr. Starbuck was raving and roaring about in his cell like, a caged mad animal.
Gillian found a taxicab a few blocks farther and was taken to the jail.  He rushed into his client's cell, and found the young man seated on the edge of his cot, gazing forlornly at a copy of the same newspaper Gillian had bought on the waterfront.
He looked up dully at Gillian and said, "What in God's name is this all about?"
"It's our friend Storm," Gillian answered.  "He is simply overlooking no bets whatever.  It isn't that Storm has anything personally against you, Dan.  It's merely that you're a useful tool in his hand.  Don't forget that he left Greenfield under a black cloud a year ago – skipped out one jump ahead of a grand jury investigation.  He is now in, every way, trying to make the best kind of impression.  This is nothing but camouflage.  It is Mr. Storm making a smart play to the voters."
The young man shook his head with a dazed air.  "It's all too deep for me.  By the way – not that it's really important – but what's going to happen to me?"
"You're going to be a free man."
"You mean, if I walk out of that court," Dan Starbuck said bitterly, "it will be into the arms of a sheriff with a warrant charging me with the murder of my friend, Jeff Hoyle."
"Perhaps and perhaps not," Gillian said mysteriously.  "I have just had an idea.  It is one of the downright lowest and filthiest tricks I have ever taken out of my notorious bag.  I may be disbarred for it but I'm going to try it.  Now try not to worry, Dan."
"Worry?" Dan repeated.  "I don't know the meaning of the word.  Life, as Dr. Creed so often told me, is nothing but a long, long chuckle.  Stick around and listen to the hophead screech and rave!"
Gillian left him.  He had work to do.  He went to the lot where his car was parked, and drove out toward the Greenfield incinerating plant, on the other side of the river, where the dog pound was.
The more he thought of his idea, the more daring and dangerous it became.  Now and then, Gillian chuckled.  He liked daring and dangerous ideas.  But more than anything, he liked to spring sensations in courtrooms.
And, as he drove along, another idea flashed like a meteor across his busy mind – and it was the explanation of that little rounded oblong dent in the fresh paint above the dead body of Dr. Hoyle – and an explanation of the absence of finger-prints on the silver skull plate at the back of the anesthetist's head!

CHAPTER XII
A FIT OF TEMPER

GILLIAN was so excited over his discovery that he almost ran headlong into a South Side street car.  But he pulled up safely at last before the shabby little brown house – where the keeper of the dog pound lived.
There was a high board fence in back, and from within this enclosure arose the mingled voices of a large number of dogs – a bedlam of whining, yelping and barking.
He saw this fence in the light of the corner street-lamp, for it was quite dirk now.
Parking at the curb, Gillian went to the front door and knocked.  The door was presently opened by a red-headed man with a stubby corncob pipe in his mouth.  From behind him floated out into Gillian's face the aroma of corned beef and cabbage.
"Are you Mr. Harrigan, the keeper of the pound?" Gillian asked him.The man bobbed his head and stared into Gillian's face with the aid of a kerosene lamp burning on a table in the room behind him.
He suddenly yanked the pipe from his teeth.  "Say!" he yelled.  "Ain't you Gillian Hazeltine?"
"I am."
"Ha!  I hear you're losin' the Starbuck case.  They tell me Storm has got it in the bag."
"A case," Gillian said gravely, "is never lost until the jury says so."
Mr. Harrigan grinned and said, "Hm.  That's pretty good.  Come on in.  What can I do for you?"
"How would you like to help out a very deserving girl – an Irish girl?"
"What's she been up to?"
"She's Carolyn Starbuck."
"You better come in, Mr. Hazeltine.  Supper's about ready.  I'm my own cook – and pretty damn good.  Or maybe you don't like corned beef and cabbage?"
"It's my favorite dish, Mr. Harrigan," Gillian said honestly.
Mr. Harrigan took him into the kitchen where, on a table, sat a gallon can of freshly drawn beer – and it was the first "growler" Gillian had seen since before prohibition.  And Mr. Harrigan, being a gentleman, asked him no questions until both had eaten their fill of fine corned beef and cabbage, and had drunk their fill of well-lagerred beer.
Gillian furnished the cigars, then said: "Mr. Harrigan, how are you fixed for sick dogs?"
"Sick dogs?" said Mr. Harrigan, without amazement.  "I have quite a few.  In fact, I have too many.  I am soft-hearted about all dogs, and I have stayed up all night, many's the night, trying to bring a sick pooch back to health.  What kind of a sick dog do you want, Mr. Hazeltine?  I have a case o' distemper, bad case of mange, a chronic case of diabetes, and a case of angina pectoris–" 
"Wait a minute, Mr. Harrigan," Gillian said on a note of incredulity.  "Angina pectoris?"
"Certainly!  Animals have about all the diseases a human has, except one or two we needn't mention.  Dogs have tumors, cancers, and all the rest of the human ailments."
"Tell me about this angina case."
"Well, Sir, he's just a mutt – a mixture of almost everything that has four legs and barks."
"How long is he apt to live?"
"He ain't gonna live.  He can't live.  It's just a matter of my gettin' up enough Irish to go out and chloroform him."
"I will gladly pay you twenty-five dollars for that dog, dead, Mr. Harrigan."
Mr. Harrigan was of that rare breed of humans who are blessed with an utter lack of prying curiosity.  He asked no questions.
All he said was, "You've bought you a dead dog, Mr. Hazeltine."
Shortly before midnight, Gillian reached his office.  He let himself in, entered his private office and got out of a file-safe the complete record of his investigation department, bearing on the activities of Dr. Tichman, Dr. Barnum, Nancy Green and Cleve Satter, the orderly, on the days immediately following the murder of Hannah Starbuck.
For almost two hours he went over these records, and then, suddenly, made the discovery he had hoped to make.  Excitedly, he snatched up his hat, switched off the light, left the building and got in to his car.  He drove to South Main and down South Main to the corner of Irving, where he parked across the street from August Steigelman's jewelry store.
He got out of his car, crossed the deserted street and looked in the shop window.  In the window, which was barren of all objects of value, was a cardboard sign which read:

CLOSED ON ACCOUNT OF
SICKNESS
Call for Repairs Schultz
Cigar Store next door.
A. Steigelman

Gillian pressed his nose against the plate glass and peered into the interior.  It seemed to him that dust lay thickly.  And he wondered how long Mr. Steigelman's shop had been closed.
A slurring voice from the curb startled him.  It said: "See anything in there that interests you, Buddy?"
Gillian, turning hastily, saw that a radio patrol car was at the curb and that two young officers in the front seat were studying him with the greatest interest.  One of them suddenly exclaimed: "It's Gillian Hazeltine!  Hello there, Mr. Hazeltine!"
Gillian walked to the car and said, "Hello, Jerry.  Is this your regular beat?"
"Yes, Sir."
"Can you tell me how long this shop has been shut up?"
"How long?  Gosh, do you remember how long, Mack?"
"Sure!" said his partner.  "It was the same day that Dr. Starbuck you're defending went West with that Irish nurse."
"The twenty-eighth of May?"
"That's it."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, sir.  Dead sure.  Old Mr. Steigelman came down with the flu, and he shut up shop and went home about noon that day.  He was mighty sick.  The flu went into pneumonia and he almost croaked.  I hear he's a little better now."
"Either of you boys know where he lives?"
"Sure," said Mack.  "It's a little white house with blue shutters at the corner of Oak and Myrtle.  But he won't be up now."
Gillian thanked them and drove home.  With three hours' sleep he was on the go again.
He found August Steigelman's house without difficulty, and found the old gentleman, up and having breakfast.  He was pale and a little shaky, but he had been up and about the house this past week, and had been intending to open up his shop almost any day now.
When Gillian explained what he wanted of Mr. Steigelman, the old man said he would be delighted to help.
Gillian said he would not require his services until tomorrow.  With which he drove on down to the courthouse.
He had a brief talk with Carolyn Starbuck in her cell before court opened.  He told her he wanted her to take the stand and establish in the jury's mind what she had, one afternoon weeks ago, established in his – the certainty, despite all the damning evidence to the contrary, of her and her husband's innocence.
"And remember this, Carolyn," he warned her.  "Don't let Storm get your goat.  He'll heckle and sneer and jeer and insult you.  Take it the way a duck takes water.  Can I depend on you?"
"Yes, Mr. Hazeltine, I'll be good.  I'll promise not to lose my temper."
But the beautiful Irish girl was not just then reckoning on those black, hypnotic eyes of Dr. Lee Tichman.
Gillian gave his opening address to a breathlessly expectant courtroom.  He said he would attempt to establish to the jury's entire satisfaction that Dr. Daniel Starbuck was a martyr, that he was the victim of the most cunning and elaborate persecution, and, most important of all, that he had not killed Hannah Starbuck.
His first witness was the codefendant.
Carolyn Starbuck was radiantly beautiful, with that tragic air of hers, in a white dress.
For a full two minutes after she had taken the stand and been sworn, Gillian did nothing but fuss with papers at the counsel table, letting the spectators, the judge, the jury, gaze at her face.
Then he began questioning her.  He asked her why she had given the false name of Mary Brown at the airport on the night of May 25th.  And she said that she had done this because she and Dr. Starbuck had been planning for months to be married and to go off on a honeymoon, and that always complications had arisen which had prevented their carrying out their plans.
"The truth was," the lovely witness went on, "Dr. Creed was keeping Dr. Starbuck's nose to the grindstone every minute that Dr. Starbuck was not sleeping.  We decided, after five months of attempting to get away, that it would have to be done secretly.  So I bought our airline tickets, two days in advance of the day we planned to elope, under false names."
"Why were you so alarmed when you saw Dr. Tichman at the airport that night?"
The beautiful blue eyes of the witness were staring across the courtroom into the hot black ones of the man with the scar.
"Because I knew, if he saw me buying those tickets, he would report it to Dr. Creed and we would be frustrated again."
Dr. Tichman gave her a cold, malicious little smile.  And Gillian, studying him for a moment, saw that the flash between the hot black eyes was pinched into little lines, and that Tichman was straining forward, as, if he were using every ounce of his will power to dominate this girl's thoughts as he had apparently been able to dominate the others.
But Carolyn Starbuck met his hot black stare with, a glare that should have withered him.  And Gillian went on deftly with his examination, trying to make the jury see what he had seen – this so-called aspect of innocence which had made him decide to take the Starbuck defense.
The girl answered all his questions relating to the exciting night of May 27th without hesitation, with every appearance of sincerity and honesty.  It was obvious that she was making a great impression on the jury.
But all this time she was staring across the small space into the compelling eyes of the man with the scar.
"Now," said Gillian, "I want you to tell the jury, Carolyn, your version of that adventure in the graveyard."
And in her clear, sweet voice, the girl began.  "I met my fiancée a block from the hospital with my suitcases.  He had a taxicab waiting for us.  We got into the cab–" 
She stopped.  Her voice had been rising.  It broke now.  Her color had gone from pink to ashen gray, then to a flaming crimson.  Her eyes seemed actually to blaze with sudden hatred.
She was staring at the man with the zigzag scar.  Suddenly she sprang up.  And Gillian, knowing that she was beside herself with rage, was helpless.  He could do nothing.
He saw the sympathetic light in the eyes of the jurors change to one of startled wonder.  Until that moment, he had been swaying them nicely.
She uttered an incoherent cry and started at a run across the room, screaming, "You killed Hannah Starbuck!  You killed Jeff Hoyle!  You-you deliberately framed Dan and me!  I-I could murder you!"
It was, of course, directed at Dr. Lee Tichman.  She might have sprung on him with claws had not a bailiff hastily intervened and restrained her.
There was immediate uproar.  Spectators leaped up.  Even the judge was standing, as were four of the jurors.
It took a full five minutes for the bailiffs to restore order.  Gillian had collapsed in his chair at the counsel table, and at the other end, Mark Storm was laughing and his assistants were in an uproar.
Dazedly, Carolyn Starbuck seated herself beside Gillian.  She put her hands to her face and began to sob.
She had ruined the case for the defense.  That stammered, furious sentence, "I ... I could murder you!" had done the trick.
Gillian had planned to keep her on the stand the entire day.  He had wanted her to tell her story leisurely, he had wanted to take her back and forth over all dangerous ground until the jury was utterly convinced of her sincerity and honesty.  And her Irish temper had ruined his plan.
The daring and dangerous trick he had planned to spring in court tomorrow could not be sprung today – for vitally important reasons it must wait until tomorrow.  And he was at a loss now what to do.
Judge Phelan said: "If you are through with this witness, will you call your next?"
It was useless to put Carolyn Starbuck back on the stand.  She had ruined the day, if she had not ruined the case for the defense.  But if Storm demanded that she take the stand for cross-examination, Gillian would take advantage of her constitutional rights, which forbids the taking of testimony from a wife against her husband if she does not wish to give it.
Gillian knew that judge Phelan would deny him a postponement.  There was nothing to do but kill time.  So Gillian killed it by recalling a number of the State's witnesses.  Although he had nothing to ask them, he asked them numerous questions, until the morning session was over.  He brought Nancy Green and Dr. Barnum back to the stand.  And in the afternoon, he had Cleve Salter, the orderly, take the stand again.  He could not shoot holes in their stories, but he did his best.
Storm was puzzled.  Judge Phelan twice accused him of marking time; but Gillian was still questioning witnesses when judge Phelan declared that a recess would be taken until the following morning at nine thirty.
And on the following morning, Gillian was ready to spring his surprise – to remove from his bag the trick which might result in his disbarment – or which might result in a favorable verdict for the defendants.

CHAPTER XIII
GILLIAN'S LAST TRICK

MARK STORM, making his customary entrance, might have been a Barrymore, so handsome, so poised, so elegant, he was.  And this morning there was, in his left lapel buttonhole, not a white carnation but a fresh gardenia.
Its fragrance was spicy in Gillian's nose as the beautifully tailored district attorney passed him with a courteous good morning.  He turned, then, and bowed to, his friends in the first row of spectators, to Dr. Creed, Dr. Tichman, Dr. Barnum, Nancy Green, and Cleve Salter, of the slithery eyes and foxy smile.
Then he stared, as the entire courtroom was staring, at a large, ornate Chinese screen – in fact, two large, ornate Chinese screens, which enclosed one corner, of the courtroom – the corner opposite to that in which the jury box stood.
He said suavely, to Gillian, "Something of yours?"
And Gillian answered, affably, "That's right, something of mine."
"Some clever surprise, no doubt!" the district attorney said.
"No fair peeping!" Gillian answered.
Judge Phelan came in and took his place on the bench.  He, too, suddenly saw the screened-off corner of his courtroom.  His white eyebrows went up, then came down, and he said harshly, "Whose is that?"
"Mine, your honor," Gillian said meekly.
"What's behind, it?"
"I'd rather not disclose it just now, if you don't mind, your honor."
Judge Phelan bent forward, still with that frown.  "Mr. Hazeltine, I must warn you that I will tolerate no buffoonery, no cheap trickery in my courtroom."
"I assure you, your honor," Gillian replied, "that what is behind that screen will reflect in no way on the dignity of this court."
"Many times in the past," judge Phelan went on, "I have reprimanded you for horseplay and for conduct in the courtroom unbecoming to a member of the bar.  I warn you, I shall deal with you severely if, in any way, you bring ridicule to this court."
"I assure you, your honor, that such a thought is farthest from my mind.  Behind that screen is merely an instrument with which I hope justice will be honestly furthered.  May I proceed with examination of my witnesses?"
"You may proceed."  The judge took another look at the mysterious screen, frowned again, then settled back in his chair with his most judicial air.
But Storm did not play fair.  One of his young men stole over and peered behind the screen.  When he turned about, every eye in the courtroom was on his face, eager to read what story it might betray.
It betrayed nothing but the greatest bafflement.  The young man was pale and he looked worried.  He hastened back to the table and whispered to his chief, whereupon all of the district attorney's staff fell to an agitated whispering.
Gillian said sternly: "Mr. Storm, I asked you to play fair.  But I will say that you can look behind that screen a hundred times and what is there will not give up its secret."
Mark Storm stared at him as if he were mystified.
Judge Phelan said sharply, "Mr. Hazeltine will you call your witnesses?"
"Yes, your honor.  My first witness is Edward Harrigan.  Will Mr. Harrigan kindly take the stand?"
The tall, lanky, red-headed man made his way to the witness chair and raised his hand to take the oath.  Having sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, he sat down, faced the courtroom, and swept it with a benign eye.  He wore overalls and a jumper, both scrupulously clean, and he was as much at ease in this hall of justice as was the fastidiously dressed Mark Storm.
"Your occupation, Mr. Harrigan?" Gillian began.
"I am the keeper of the dog pound," Mr. Harrigan answered in a voice clear and full and unashamed.
"Mr. Harrigan, have you ever seen me before?"
"Aye yes!  I certainly have, Mr. Hazeltine."
"On what occasion?"
"'Twas the night before last that you called at my house and partook of corned beef and cabbage and draft beer with me."
The courtroom was roaring with laughter.  The judge was making grimaces.
"Mr. Hazeltine–" 
"Your honor, I am sorry.  The witness was stating precisely what happened on the night before last.  No levity was intended."
"Proceed."
"Please continue, Mr. Harrigan, omitting the corned beef and cabbage and the beer."
"Yes, sir.  You asked me if I had any sick dogs in the pound."
"And what was your answer?"
"My answer was that I had a bad case o' distemper, a bad case o' diabetes, a bad case o' mange, and a very bad case of angina pectoris."
Storm, who had been holding his hand over his mouth, quickly withdrew it and stood up.  He looked vigilant.
"Your honor," he interrupted, "I should like very much to know where this line of testimony is leading."
"So should I, Mr. Storm," the judge said.  "Mr. Hazeltine, will you be so good as to tell us just what this evidence is apropos of?"
Gillian: "The alleged murder of Hannah Starbuck.  May I proceed?"
Storm: "I object to this testimony on the grounds of irrelevancy."
Gillian: "May I continue, your honor?"
The Court: "I will withhold ruling until I have determined the admissibility of this evidence, Mr. Storm."
"I must take exception, your honor."
"Exception is noted, continue, Mr. Hazeltine,"
"We were saying," Gillian picked up the threads, "that one of the dogs in, the Greenfield dog pound was afflicted with angina pectoris, which, as you gentlemen of the jury will recall, was the heart disease from which, according to the hospital records, Miss Hannah Starbuck died.  I call this to your attention simply because this pound dog was afflicted with the same disease.  Now, Mr. Harrigan, let us continue.  Your last answer covered the subject of sick dogs, one of which suffered from angina pectoris.  Kindly tell the jury what you told me in connection with that dog's chances for life."
"They were thinner than a stepmother's soup," Mr. Harrigan gravely answered, and looked surprised when laughter swept the courtroom again.  "Mr. Hazeltine asked me what I intended to do with this dog, and I said I had no choice, I had to chloroform him, and had been hesitating to do so because I love all dogs, sick or well, and hate to take the life of one of them.
"However, this dog was in such bad case, as I told Mr. Hazeltine, that he should be chloroformed soon for his own sake.  Then Mr. Hazeltine asked me if I would accept twenty-five dollars for this angina pectoris dog dead."
Mr. Harrigan paused and looked at Gillian, then glanced at the crowded press table.  Several reporters were rapidly transcribing this amazing testimony, and Gillian might have been amused to know that an expression that would, within hours be nationally known, was being coined by a pale, bland young man who wielded a large red pencil.  It was he who christened this famous dog, "The Pectoris Pup."
"And, what did you say to that, Mr. Harrigan?" Gillian asked.
"I think I said you had bought a dead dog," Mr. Harrigan answered.  "I went into the pound and at once gave chloroform to this poor, suffering animal.  And when I was sure that he was dead, I carried him out and placed him in the back of your car, Mr. Hazeltine.  Then you said you would require me as a, witness – that I must not let this dog out of my sight until he passed into official hands.  So I sat in the rumble seat with the dead, fellow while you drove down to the undertaking establishment of Stinson and Weatherby."
"Did you, with your own hands deliver this dead dog to Mr. Weatherby, of that undertaking establishment?"
"I did.  Yes, sir."
"And was that dog in your possession every moment of the time from the chloroforming until he passed from your hands to Mr. Weatherby's?"
"Yes, sir."
"What I am getting at, Mr. Harrigan, is this: Did I or did anyone else at any time approach or touch that dog from the time you chloroformed him until the time he left your guardianship and passed into the hands of Mr. Harry Zarrow, the city chemist?"
"No, sir.  To my positive knowledge, no one was near that dog except the undertaker."
"Just a moment," Mark Storm said.  "Are you confused, or am I?  I thought you said Mr. Harrigan delivered this dog to Mr. Weatherby.  Now you mention Harry Zarrow."
"That is correct, Mr. Storm," the keeper of the pound assured him, "It will all be cleared up in due course."
"I trust so," the district attorney said icily.  He was suspicious.  He was growing more and more suspicious.  He knew that Gillian Hazeltine was eventually going to spring one of his famous – or infamous courtroom tricks and he had been betrayed by those tricks in the past.  Yet there was nothing he could do until the trick was sprung.
"Mr. Harrigan," Gillian said, "you will kindly step down from the stand a moment.  Don't go.  I will want further testimony from you shortly."
When the keeper of the pound had stepped down, Gillian called another witness – Mr. Weatherby, Jr., of Stinson and Weatherby.  And when the undertaker was on the stand: "Mr. Weatherby, on the night before last, did I call at your place of business?"
"Yes, sir.  At a little before eleven o'clock."
"Will you kindly describe our conversation?"
"You told me you had a dead dog in the back of your car and that you wanted it embalmed."
"Did you consider that irregular?"
"Yes, sir – in a way."
"But did you take into consideration my reputation as a solid citizen and a pillar of society?"
"I did.  Yes, sir."
"Did you consider it any more irregular than you had Dr. Starbuck's request to have his aunt embalmed at precisely the same hour on the night of May twenty-seventh?"
"It's hard to make a comparison.  In your case, I thought it was a whim – a kind of joke."
"But you considered my reputation, as you had considered Dr. Starbuck's, and you decided to favor me?"
"That's about the size of it."
"Tell the jury of our further conversation and tell them also what happened."
"Well, when I had said I would embalm a dog for you, you called out to your car to Mr. Harrigan here, and asked him to bring the dog inside, which he did.  You then requested me to embalm this dog exactly as I had embalmed Hannah Starbuck – that is, insofar as it would be possible on a comparative basis."
"And did you embalm this dog as I had requested?"
"Yes, sir.  I did."
"Where was I meanwhile?"
"You said you had work to attend to and you went away."
"Did Mr. Harrigan stay?"
"Yes, sir.  He was there until we had finished with the embalming."
"Thank you, Mr. Weatherby.  That will be all.  Mr. Storm, will you defer cross-examination of these witnesses until I have made quite clear what it is I am driving at?"
Storm said irritably: "I object to this entire procedure."
Gillian: "I believe, however, that the jury and you, your honor, are interested in what I am driving at.  May I proceed?"
Storm: "Will you rule on my objection, your honor?"
"Over-ruled, although you may take an exception."
"I do, your honor."
"It is noted.  Defense will proceed."
Gillian: "Mr. Harrigan will kindly take the stand again."
When the keeper of the pound was back in the witness chair, Gillian said, "Mr. Harrigan, can you confirm what Mr. Weatherby said to the effect that you were in the workroom of his mortuary while he was embalming the dog?"
"Yes, sir; I was there all the time."
"When the dog was embalmed, what did you do?"
"Mr. Weatherby and I put the poor tyke into a nice clean pine box and buried him in the backyard."'
"You mean, the backyard of the undertaking establishment?"
"Yes, sir."
"Why did you do that?"
"Because you told us to."
"Did I give any reason?"
"Yes, sir.  You said you wanted the dog buried at exactly the same time and under exactly the same conditions as those under which Miss Hannah Starbuck was buried."  
"And what time did you bury this dog?"
"At five minutes past two in the morning – that same night."
"And then what happened?"
"Nothing happened.  You had a cot, tent and bedding sent up from Willoughby's Sporting Goods Store, and I pitched the tent and opened up the cot and stayed there."
"At the dog's grave?"
"Yes sir."
"Did I ask you to do that?"
"Yes, Mr. Hazeltine.  You said you wanted a trustworthy person to stand guard over the grave, to make sure the dog was not dug up.  You said you wanted to make sure that I could honestly testify to it on this witness stand."
"And did you do as I said?"
"Yes, sir.  I stood guard over that dog's grave from the minute we buried him until six o'clock this morning – when we dug him up."
"Are you sure it was six this morning when you dug him up?"
"Yes, Sir.  Dead sure.  It was exactly the same hour as Miss Starbuck was dug up."
"You meant don't you, that the dog had been in that grave exactly the same length of time as Miss Starbuck was in hers?"
"That's right.  So we dug him up, and Mr. Weatherby and I took him in a taxicab to the laboratories of Mr. Harry Zarrow, the city chemist.  We delivered the box containing the dog to Mr. Zarrow in person."
"That will be all.  Thank you, Mr. Harrigan.  But don't leave this room.  Mr. Storm may wish to ask you questions later."
Mr. Storm was staring coldly, with a puzzled air, at Gillian.
Then Harry Zarrow took the stand.  He testified that, at about six-thirty this morning, Mr. Harrigan and Mr. Weatherby, Jr., delivered to him, in person, a clean pine box purporting to contain a dead dog, embalmed the night before last by Mr. Weatherby."
Gillian: " Tell the jury just what you did, Mr. Zarrow."
The witness: "I opened the box and I took out the dead dog.  Then I cut the dog open and took out his stomach, and I analyzed the contents of his stomach."
Storm was out of his chair again.  He looked, not suspicious now, but furious.  But he said nothing.
In the hush of the courtroom, in a tight, hard whisper, Gillian said: "Mr. Zarrow, what did you do then?"
"I analyzed a sample of the embalming fluid Mr. Weatherby had used on the dog and on Miss Starbuck."
Then Gillian said, almost in a shout: "Tell the jury the results of your two analyses!"
"I found in the dog's stomach precisely the same amount of arsenic I had found in Miss Starbuck's."
There was a gasp from the spectators.  Then electric silence.  In the hush, Gillian barked, "And how do you account for this amazing fact?"
"Well," the city chemist answered, "my analysis showed that Mr. Weatherby's embalming fluid was almost wholly arsenic!"
Gillian's cry, "The defense rests!" was lost in the immediate uproar.  Storm was pounding on the counsel table.  The spectators were babbling.  Even the jurors were talking.
It was, as Gillian had told Dr. Starbuck, one of the foxiest tricks he had ever removed from his bag of foxy tricks.  It had caught the prosecution completely by surprise.  Only a moron could have failed to see the obvious inference – that the embalming fluid had, in both cases, penetrated to the stomach of the dog and the stomach of the woman in equal amounts, and that Hannah Starbuck had not been poisoned at all!
Its main premise shattered, its most important point destroyed, the prosecution now presented the aspect of an army in complete rout.  Storm was in a state of cold fury.  He could hardly speak when he began his summing up to the jury.
Both sides presented their cases, in fact, so briefly that the jury was ready to be charged before it was time for the noon recess.
And still, Gillian's "surprise," behind the Chinese screens in the corner, was yet to be "unveiled."
It had, in brief, been forgotten.  Judge Phelan's charge to the jury was brief.  And the jury was not out of the room ten minutes.
Filing back into the jury box, the jury remained standing.  When the clerk of the court asked the immemorial question, the foreman answered: "We find the defendant and the codefendant – not guilty!"
The verdict was accepted by the spectators with applause, hand-clapping, foot-stamping, cheers.  Then a bailiff stepped up to Dr. Starbuck, who was holding Carolyn Starbuck in his arms and shamelessly kissing her, with a warrant for his arrest on the charge of having murdered, on the night of May 27th last, Dr. Jefferson Hoyle!
But Gillian said, "Just a moment, bailiff.  I think we're getting at the root of this thing.  I've got something to show all of you."

CHAPTER XIV
THE GUILTY ONE

AARON SAVAGE and another of Gillian's assistants were meanwhile herding together Dr. Creed, Dr. Tichman, Dr. Barnum, Nurse Nancy Green and the sneaky-eyed orderly, Cleve Salter.  Herding them together and marshalling them into the corner where the Chinese screens stood.  Mr. Harrigan sauntered along, too.
Gillian asked the Starbucks and the bailiff to join this little party.  The five whom his assistants had assembled looked puzzled.  All five of them were in fact, pale and uneasy.
Gillian said, "I have an interesting little revelation to make to all of you.  Behind that screen we are going to find the solution to the murder of Dr. Hoyle.  I want all of you to use your imaginations for just a moment.
"We must pretend that this is South Main Street.  In fact, this is the intersection of South Main and Irving.  And this screen – these screens – represent the front of a shop.
"I am going to prove to you very simply," Gillian said, "that Dan Starbuck, did not murder Dr. Hoyle.  The real murderer of Dr. Hoyle is one of you.  And I will prove in a moment who the guilty one is.
"First of all we will consider the circumstances under which Dr. Hoyle died.  He was standing very close to a freshly-painted wall when someone stabbed him in the throat with Dr. Starbuck's knife.  But there was no mark on the fresh paint where his head, from the force of the blow, would have been pushed back against the wall.  Therefore his murderer must have held one hand against the back of his head, to prevent any sound of his skull striking the wall, and eased his body to the floor for the same reason."
Gillian glanced at their strained, nervous faces.  "I trust you follow my line of reasoning.  Next, having proved that the murderer held one hand at the back of Hoyle's head, we arrive at the conclusion that the murderer's fingerprints must have been left on the silver plate in the back of the anesthetist's head.  But there were no finger-prints.  And here is an important point: no one but Dr. Hoyle himself knew of the existence of that metal plate.  Therefore the murderer would not have realized that he had left finger-prints on the back of Hoyle's head – and would not have wiped them away.  So that fact that no finger-prints were found leads us to believe that the murderer was wearing gloves at the time Dr. Hoyle was stabbed."  He looked searchingly into their faces.  "We assume, of course, that these gloves were rubber surgical gloves."
The little group moved uneasily.
"This, however," Gillian continued, "does not narrow down our list of suspects as much as it might.  The Hobart Creed Hospital was thronged with people wearing surgical gloves.  But only one had just completed a very bloody operation.
"But we come to another point.  If it was the murderer's hand that protected Hoyle's head from striking the wall, then it was the murderer's hand that came in contact with the fresh paint.  But there is only a small, oblong impression in that paint – no mark of a wrist or the back of a hand.  However–"
Gillian pulled one screen aside, and Aaron Savage quickly removed the other, revealing to the surprised, the shocked, gaze of Gillian's little audience a jeweler's bench at which sat a bent old man with white hair.  He looked as if he were or had been very ill, this bent and waxen-pallored old man. 
"This," Gillian said, "is the shop of Mr. August Steigelman, the jeweler."
August Steigelman smiled very faintly at Gillian Hazeltine.  And while the small audience stared breathlessly at the jeweler and his bench, Gillian explained: "This bench is just as it was at noon on the day following Dr. Hoyle's murder.  Nothing – not a thing – has been touched.  At noon of that day, Mr. Steigelman was stricken with influenza.  He went home, and his shop has been closed since."
Gillian paused and took a small flat object, wrapped in paper, from his pocket.
He continued: "At about eleven o'clock in the morning of that day when Mr. Steigelman was stricken with flu, the murderer of Dr. Hoyle brought into his shop a wristwatch to be superficially cleaned.  I mean, that on this wristwatch, in the fretwork of it, was a certain quantity of white paint.
"This white paint was identical, under chemical analysis, with the paint used on the walls of Dr. Hoyle's office.  It was this same wristwatch which made that small, oblong impression in the paint at the time of Dr. Hoyle's murder.  And if you look closely on this jeweler's workbench, you will see the little scraps of dried paint – the evidence which inevitably links the owner of the watch with the murder of Dr. Hoyle.  But just a moment!"
Gillian whipped the paper wrapping off the flat, object in his hand.  It was a section of the plaster to which two short pieces of lathe still adhered.
"And this," he said, "is a section sawed from Dr. Hoyle's office wall – the section containing the impression of the murderer's watch."
He turned it over.  And there, distinctly in the now dried and hardened paint was the little rectangular impression.
"As you can see, it's too small to be a man's watch!"
He seized Dr. Claudia Barnum's left hand.  And lifted it.  The sleeve of her dress fell back, revealing a small, lozenge-shaped platinum wristwatch.  Before she could twist away, he had fitted the watch into the impression in the hardened paint, and at the same time, he said, "Mr. Steigelman, is this the lady who brought the watch to you to have the paint cleaned off?"
"Yes, sir," said the Jeweler emphatically.
Claudia Barnum was ghastly pale, but she had lost none of her poise.  She stared with clear blue eyes at the criminal lawyer.
"You lured Hoyle into that office," Gillian said, "and on your way, you stopped in Starbuck's office for that amputation knife.  In the dark of Hoyle's office, with your arms around his neck, you thrust that knife into his throat.  You wore rubber gloves and your surgical gown.  You'd just come from a splenectomy – an exceedingly bloody operation – so that blood spurting from the death wound in Dr. Hoyle's throat merely added a little more blood to the accumulation already on your gown.  
"Later you visited me at my offices.  Obstensibly to ask me to advise, though you clearly had no real need for my services.  That aroused my suspicions.  Your true reason for being there was to see if I suspected either you or Dr. Tichman.  
"Then when the story you told on the stand so clearly contradicted the one you told me that day in my office, my suspicions were fully aroused.  It might have been hypnosis.  But as you pointed out, a hypnotist can't make someone do anything against their will.  So–"
"Just a moment," Dr. Barnum said steadily.  "Can I talk with you in private, Mr. Hazeltine?  I hardly need to say that it's very important."
Gillian was too shocked to reply for a moment.  Then he said, "Certainly, Dr. Barnum."  And he took her into judge Phelan's chambers, the judge being elsewhere, and locked the door.
When the door was closed and locked behind them, the red-haired woman said: "Mr. Hazeltine, if I tell you all I possibly can, will you promise to do all you possibly can for me?"
Gillian said, without hesitation, "I will.  I'll promise to do all I can."
She sank into a chair with a weary sigh.  "I killed Dr. Hoyle just as you said.  And I also poisoned Hannah Starbuck.
"I wanted Dr. Tichman to inherit that hospital.  I knew Starbuck was cleverer, an abler man, a better surgeon, but I am in love with Lee Tichman.  I felt you have thought all along that Tichman was the one behind all this, the strong one.  He is not.  I am the strong one.  And I knew that, even in this day of modern women, and the recognition of women in all professions, that Dr. Creed never would leave his hospital, his estate to me – to any woman."
"So you did everything under the sun," Gillian said, "to get Tichman into Dan's job.  You even learned, from Pompom, that Dr. Creed intended to will his property to Starbuck."
The red-headed woman nodded.  "Yes, Mr. Hazeltine.  But I did not know how to go about it."
"So, in March," Gillian took up, "you went to Europe on your vacation.  There, you met Storm – and told him your difficulties.  A month before the murder of Miss Starbuck and Dr. Hoyle, Storm returned to this city and took charge of the situation.  He worked through Tichman.  He told Tichman how to discredit Dan Starbuck.  Later Tichman used his hypnotic abilities to help frame Starbuck further.  He reinforced Nurse Green's hatred of Starbuck so she would stick to her lies, and inflamed Mrs. Starbuck's intense dislike of him so she would lose control on the witness stand.  You deliberately killed Dan Starbuck's aunt, and you then killed Hoyle because, I suspect – am I right – Hoyle knew you had killed her?"
Again she inclined her shining red head.  "Yes.  After Dr. Starbuck had given her the caffeine sodium benzoate, for her heart attack, I slipped in and gave her a small, lethal dose of arsenic, equal to the contents of the big bottle.  Dr. Hoyle opened the door and saw me.  He saw me pour the weak solution in the bottle down the drain of the wash stand and then break the bottle.  When I looked up and saw him, he merely said, 'I'll see you later, Claudia,' and went away.  He was in love with me.  He was a little insane about me.  I did nothing until after the splenectomy operation.  Then I told Hoyle I wanted a word in private with him."
"Picking up your wristwatch and putting it on, but not removing your gloves, as you went out of the amphitheatre," Gillian said.
"Yes.  I wanted him to go to his office.  On the way I slipped into Starbuck's office and got the amputation knife.  We went into Hoyle's office.  It was dark.  Dr. Hoyle took me in his arms and kissed me.  He said he thought I'd better give in now.  And of course he meant that if I did not give in, he would tell what he had seen in Miss Starbuck's room.  We were in that corner.  I had decided to stab him in the throat, to kill him quickly by severing, all at once, the jugular vein, the carotid artery and the pneumogastric nerve.  To do this, I had to hold my hand at the back of his head, which I did.  Then I plunged the knife into his throat and eased him to the floor.  In stabbing him, my wristwatch must have dented the fresh paint."
Her voice was calm, and Gillian marveled at her self-control, this woman talking so intelligently, so calmly about two murders which she had committed in one evening!
He said, gravely, "Doctor, what did you have to do with that hemophiliac case?"
She hesitated and said, "I was responsible for that, too, I saw the report on his desk stating that the man was a bleeder and must not be operated.  I hid it in my dress until after the operation, then I put it on his desk."
"And having succeeded in utterly discrediting Dr. Starbuck," Gillian said, "you then – in the intervening time – have very cleverly persuaded Dr. Creed to name Tichman as his sole beneficiary."
"Yes, Mr. Hazeltine.  I love him.  I wanted him to have that hospital."
"And what was Storm's cut to be?"
"A third.  Lee was to have run the hospital for six months, then it was to be put up for sale.  Lee was to have kept two-thirds of the proceeds and given one-third to Storm."
Gillian went swiftly over the situation from a legal viewpoint, in his mind.  Once again, he saw, it would be impossible to trap Storm.  When this girl went on trial, she would be what she had so cleverly tried to make Dan Starbuck appear to be – a butcher and a monster.  She would be prosecuted by Mark Storm.  Dr. Tichman would undoubtedly be named co-defendant, just as Carolyn Starbuck had been.  And Nancy Green, the woman scorned, who saw ghosts to call attention to herself and lied to send an innocent man to the electric chair, would undoubtedly stand trial for perjury.
Gillian appreciated all of this – saw it in a flash, and saw, too, the impossibility of trapping Storm on the testimony of this red-headed murderess and her black-eyed lover.
Once again, Gillian had the doubtful satisfaction of having triumphed over Storm without having vanquished him.
"I am not afraid of going, to the chair," the red-haired murderess was saying in that amazingly calm, intelligent voice.  "But I want the best defense possible.  I am beautiful.  A jury might let me off with a life sentence if I had a clever lawyer.  In short, Mr. Hazeltine, I want you to take my case."
Gillian gravely, sadly shook his head.  "I will not take a murder case in which I can't see a ray of hope, Dr. Barnum.  And I can see no ray of hope in yours.  You asked for my advice – did you?"
"I want it," she said simply.
"Tell your story at headquarters just as you have told it to me.  Throw yourself on the mercy of the jury when you go to trial.  Be honest.  Be yourself – I means your beautiful, clever self.  I think you're right.  I think no jury would send a woman of your beauty and charm to the electric chair."
Dr. Claudia Barnum stood up, looked at him for a long time with a faint, quizzical smile, and sighed deeply.
"Mr. Hazeltine," she said softly, if I had met a man as clever as you are, when I was plotting this, I would not be listening to a man now, telling me to throw myself on the mercy of a jury."
Her eyes flashed.  For a moment, her jaw became the most outstanding feature of her handsome face.  And for a moment, Gillian sensed the tremendous will and drive of this woman – a will that did not stop at triple murder.
He shivered a little.  "Suppose," he said gently, "we go down to headquarters now."
When Gillian had delivered this amazing red-haired woman to the authorities, he returned to his office.  The phone rang.
Dr. Creed was on the wire.  And his voice, it seemed to Gillian, was very old and broken.  Dr. Creed wanted to say that he was utterly stunned by the outcome of Dan Starbuck's trial.  He had just heard the details of Dr. Barnum's full confession to the police, and he wanted, if possible, to make prompt amends to Dan Starbuck.
"Gillian, I can't be blamed for doubting him, now can I, honestly?"
"The evidence against him was certainly black enough," Gillian admitted.
"I'm an old man.  Perhaps my faculties aren't as sharp as they were a few years ago.  I want Dan back.  I want to draw that will, just as I outlined it that night – the night those horrible things happened."
"It's useless, doctor.  Do you remember what you told me that night about Dan Starbuck?  You said he was that rarest of all things – a man who is one hundred per cent doctor."
"I remember!" the old man cried.  "And he's the only man I've known in sixty-five years of practice I could say that of.  Tell him I said so.  Tell him to comeback!" 
"Too late," Gillian said sadly.  "He has proved that he is just what you said.  He doesn't care about money or power.  When he and Carolyn were in Mexico – in southern Mexico – they saw that good surgeons were not only scarce but nonexistent.  That's where they're going – where surgeons are needed."
There was a sound of sputtering protest at the other end of the line.  "But it would be criminal for him to waste his talents in that godforsaken country!  Tell him I want to talk to him."
"You can't.  They caught the two o'clock plane west."  And when silence answered this, Gillian said, "Doctor, you should have proved to your satisfaction what happens when you announce that you're going to leave a fifteen million dollar estate of that kind to one man.  Get this one-man idea out of your head.  Let me draw you a new will, by which you will leave your hospital to a foundation."
"Oh, damn it," the old man snapped.  "All right.  I know you're right.  You've proved it.  Come up for dinner tonight.  Pompom is having truffles and shrimp Newburg."
"I'm sorry, doctor, but I have a previous engagement."
"Make it tomorrow night."
"Okay."
Gillian did not think it necessary to mention that his previous engagement was with the keeper of the dog pound.  Mr. Harrigan had found the opportunity to tell him that he was going to have spareribs and sauerkraut for supper tonight – and another bucket of beer – and would Mr. Hazeltine care to join him?  Mr. Hazeltine had promptly declared himself in on the spareribs and sauerkraut.
At a little after six he parked his car in front of the Harrigan house.  And at a little after six thirty, he and the keeper of the pound sat down to a great savory platter of spareribs and sauerkraut, with a gallon bucket of beer on the table between them.
Having gorged themselves, the two gourmands sat back and Gillian produced cigars.  Lighting his, Mr. Harrigan said, "Buddy, my curiosity has got the better of me.  Tell me something."
"Fire away, Mr. Harrigan."
"How did you get all of that arsenic into that poor little dead dog's stomach?"
"If you will look," Gillian answered, "you will see that I have drunk approximately two-thirds of this bucket of beer to your one-third, Mr. Harrigan."
"What does that prove, Mr. Hazeltine?"
"That I am a faster beer drinker than you are, Mr. Harrigan."
"I am still in the dark, Mr. Hazeltine."
"You have forgotten," Gillian said, "that on our way down to Stinson and Weatherby's undertaking parlors the other night, we paused at Mike O'Houlihan's saloon for a couple of mugs of beer.  And it has apparently slipped your mind that I was out of that saloon door approximately fifteen seconds before you were!  You can do a lot in fifteen seconds with a hypodermic needle!  I pumped arsenic into that dog's stomach!"

THE END

THE GILLIAN HAZELTINE NOVELS BY GEORGE F. WORTS

The Lies at any Price Murder Case
The  Love Bandit Murder Case
The Ezra Klagg Murder Case
The Screen of Ice Murder Case
The Crime Circus Murder Case
The Haunted Yacht Club Murder Case
The Reptile Named Robard Murder Case
The Lost Punch  Murder Case
The Murder Most Foul Murder Case
The Jungle Murder Case
The High Seas Murder Case
The Diamond Bullet Murder Case*
The Grapevine Murder Case
The Black Ice Murder Case
The Magpie Murder Case
The Michigan Murder Case
The Decoy Murder Case
The Missing Will Murder Case
The Gold Coffin Murder Case*
The Honest Forger Murder Case
The Five Bald Men Murder Case
The Reluctant Witness Murder Case
The Hospital Homicides Murder Case*
The Girl Rebel Murder Case
The Mr. Hazeltine Defendant Murder Case

*Available in electronic form from Deerstalker Classics and the PageTurner imprint of Renaissance E Books.