The Dream Doctor | Page 2

Kennedy motioned to me to "listen in" on the extension on my desk, which he had placed there as a precaution so that I could corroborate any conversation that took place over our wire.
His action was quite enough to indicate to me that, at least, he had no objection to the plan.
"This is Dr. Leslie--the coroner. Can you come to the Municipal Hospital--right away?"
"Right away, Doctor," answered Craig, hanging up the receiver. "Walter, you'll come, too?"
A quarter of an hour later we were in the courtyard of the city's largest hospital. In the balmy sunshine the convalescing patients were sitting on benches or slowly trying their strength, walking over the grass, clad in faded hospital bathrobes.
We entered the office and quickly were conducted by an orderly to a little laboratory in a distant wing.
"What's the matter?" asked Craig, as we hurried along.
"I don't know exactly," replied the man, "except that it seems that Price Maitland, the broker, you know, was picked up on the street and brought here dying. He died before the doctors could relieve him."
Dr. Leslie was waiting impatiently for us. "What do you make of that, Professor Kennedy?"
The coroner spread out on the table before us a folded half-sheet of typewriting and searched Craig's face eagerly to see what impression it made on him.
"We found it stuffed in Maitland's outside coat pocket," he explained.
It was dateless and brief:
Dearest Madeline:
May God in his mercy forgive me for what I am about to do. I have just seen Dr. Ross. He has told me the nature of your illness. I cannot bear to think that I am the cause, so I am going simply to drop out of your life. I cannot live with you, and I cannot live without you. Do not blame me. Always think the best you can of me, even if you could not give me all. Good-bye.
Your distracted husband,
PRICE.
At once the idea flashed over me that Maitland had found himself suffering from some incurable disease and had taken the quickest means of settling his dilemma.
Kennedy looked up suddenly from the note.
"Do you think it was a suicide?" asked the coroner.
"Suicide?" Craig repeated. "Suicides don't usually write on typewriters. A hasty note scrawled on a sheet of paper in trembling pen or pencil, that is what they usually leave. No, some one tried to escape the handwriting experts this way."
"Exactly my idea' agreed Dr. Leslie, with evident satisfaction. "Now listen. Maitland was conscious almost up to the last moment, and yet the hospital doctors tell me they could not get a syllable of an ante-mortem statement from him."
"You mean he refused to talk?" I asked.
"No," he replied; "it was more perplexing than that Even if the police had not made the usual blunder of arresting him for intoxication instead of sending him immediately to the hospital, it would have made no difference. The doctors simply could not have saved him, apparently. For the truth is, Professor Kennedy, we don't even know what was the matter with him."
Dr. Leslie seemed much excited by the case, as well he might be.
"Maitland was found reeling and staggering on Broadway this morning," continued the coroner. "Perhaps the policeman was not really at fault at first for arresting him, but before the wagon came Maitland was speechless and absolutely unable to move a muscle."
Dr. Leslie paused as he recited the strange facts, then resumed: "His eyes reacted, all right. He seemed to want to speak, to write, but couldn't. A frothy saliva dribbled from his mouth, but he could not frame a word. He was paralysed, and his breathing was peculiar. They then hurried him to the hospital as soon as they could. But it was of no use."
Kennedy was regarding the doctor keenly as he proceeded. Dr. Leslie paused again to emphasise what he was about to say.
"Here is another strange thing. It may or may not be of importance, but it is strange, nevertheless. Before Maitland died they sent for his wife. He was still conscious when she reached the hospital, could recognise her, seemed to want to speak, but could neither talk nor move. It was pathetic. She was grief- stricken, of course. But she did not faint. She is not of the fainting kind. It was what she said that impressed everyone. 'I knew it--I knew it,' she cried. She had dropped on her knees by the side of the bed. 'I felt it. Only the other night I had the horrible dream. I saw him in a terrific struggle. I could not see what it was--it seemed to be an invisible thing. I ran to him-- then the scene shifted. I saw a funeral procession, and in the casket I could see through the wood--his face--oh, it was a warning! It has come true. I