Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 2, September 24, 1927

Ninon fluttered her hands outward like a wounded bird spreading its wings in the face of danger. Her hands moved in jerks and then grew rigid.

“What has happened?” Dr. Hailey asked.

“Ah, you do not know him as I know him. He has been afraid — of the horse which Mrs. Malone rode here. Now his nerves are gone.” The hands fluttered again. “So.” She came nearer to the doctor. “To-night he will walk in his sleep, and then—” She brought her hands stiffly together, stiffly and eloquently together. “I am afraid,” she concluded.

Dr. Hailey contracted his brows.

“You have not given him — anything?”

“Nothing. And that is why I am afraid. You, who are a doctor, must deal with him to-night, since you will not allow me to give him anything.”

She sat down on one of the big chairs with which the hall was furnished. She glanced about her anxiously.

“Oh, he is mad,” she murmured, “so mad.”

“My dear lady, if you would tell us what has happened.”

Dr. Hailey raised his eyeglass, and adjusted it.

“Nothing has happened — yet. But something is going to happen—”

“If he doesn’t get his dose of cocaine?”

Ninon shrugged her shoulders. “It is not cocaine which I give him,” she declared abruptly.

Dr. Hailey rose.

“I will stay with him to-night,” he announced. He turned to Dick Lovelace. “Perhaps you will join me for a little while in his room before you go to bed.”

He mounted the stairs, leaving Ninon and Dick together. Lord Templewood was asleep when he entered his bedroom. He crossed the room to the fireplace and sat down. A few minutes later, Dick came very quietly into the room. Dr. Hailey was about to signal to him that he might go to bed, since it was unlikely that his help would be required, when, suddenly, Lord Templewood sat up in bed.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, in tones which suggested the discovery of a burglar.

“I came to see if you were all right, sir.”

“You are a liar.” Lord Templewood’s voice rose from one word to another. It began to screech as it had screeched when he was accusing Sacha. “You are a liar and a thief. You wish to kill me so that you can marry Sacha and get my money.”

Dick did not reply. At a sign from Dr. Hailey, he began to retire toward the door, but Lord Templewood was too quick for him. He sprang out of bed and stood in front of the door, a wild figure in his sky-blue sleeping suit.

“Answer me,” he shouted, “you are going to marry Sacha?”

“No, sir.”

“What! You deny that, do you?”

The young man seemed to hesitate. His shoulders rose in a deep breath.

“Sacha,” he said, in low tones, “is engaged to be married to Barrington Bryan.”

Had he struck his antagonist a blow in the face, the effect could not have been more overwhelming than the effect of these words. Lord Templewood’s knees shook beneath him. He seemed to be about to sink to the floor.

“Barrington Bryan!”

He caught at the door-handle. The handle rattled in his grasp. Dick came to him and gave him his arm. He led him back to the bed.

“You are not well, sir.”

But, once back in bed, the old man’s weakness passed as swiftly as it had come. He flushed scarlet, and his speech grew thick.

“Is this true?” he demanded hoarsely.

“Yes, sir.”

There was a moment of silence. Then, suddenly, Dr. Hailey ran to the bedside. Dick saw that Lord Templewood’s features were working convulsively, and that a blue tinge had come into his lips, and was spreading all over his face.

“Get me a bowl of water.”

Dr. Hailey’s tones were peremptory. Dick released Lord Templewood’s arm and ran to the washstand. He splashed the water in pouring it. When he turned back to the bed, he saw the old man striking fiercely at the doctor with his disengaged arm. Dr. Hailey flung off the assault, and then seized his patient in his powerful grasp, and forced him back on the mattress.

“Put the bowl on the chair. Now feel in my waistcoat pocket. You will find a small phial. Open it and drop one of the pellets into the water. Shake the bowl. Now, feel in the other pocket. There’s a case there.”

The doctor’s voice came breathlessly, for Lord Templewood’s strength seemed to have been multiplied fifty-fold. The old man followed every movement with his wild, glaring eyes. But he uttered no sound, perhaps because his lips were swollen and congested, like the lips of a man newly dead by strangulation.

Dick opened the pocket-case and saw a tiny knife. The light from the electric lamp fell on the blade of the knife and set it gleaming like a mirror.

“Put the knife in the water and then go round the bed to the other side and hold him.”

Dr. Hailey retained possession of one of Lord Templewood’s arms. He bared the arm nearly to the shoulder by rolling back the sleeve of the sleeping suit. Then he set his patient’s hand between his knees, and secured it in that position by a method known to his profession.

He took his handkerchief, and bound it round the upper arm, until the skin below this tourniquet was duskier even than Lord Templewood’s face. The veins of the forearm stood out like thick cords.