The Mystery of St. Agnes Hospital | Page 3

St. Agnes' Hospital, was well known as a
peculiar man.

He was rich enough to take his leisure, but he worked like a slave. He
had an elegant house on St. Nicholas avenue, but he spent all his days
and more than half his nights at the hospital.
A rude cot in a little room adjoining his laboratory in the hospital was
his bed four nights in seven on the average. His only recreation was
found in the care of a little garden in the hospital grounds; and it was
the common talk of the younger physicians that Dr. Jarvis enjoyed
finding fault with the gardener more than he did cultivating the flowers.
He had a wife and a young, unmarried daughter, whom he loved
devotedly, but to whom he gave only a few hours of his time in the
course of a week.
A negro named Caesar Augustus Cleary was the doctor's assistant in
the laboratory.
The other physicians in the hospital said that Cleary had become so
accustomed to Jarvis' ways that, like a Mississippi mule, he had to be
cursed before he could be made to understand anything.
Cleary slept in a little closet similar to the doctor's, and on the opposite
side of the laboratory. He was asleep there, about twelve o'clock on the
night after Nick's visit to Lawrence Deever, when Nick crept softly
through the window.
All these rooms were on the ground floor and entrance was easy.
Nick had spent a part of the evening in the garden. He had watched till
the light went out in the laboratory and another appeared in the doctor's
bed-room. Then he was ready for a search of the premises.
If, in a moment of anger, Dr. Jarvis had struck Patrick Deever and
killed him, it was likely that the laboratory would hold some trace of
the secret.
The best way to hide a human body is to utterly destroy it. This is no
easy task for an ordinary man, but to a scientist, like Dr. Jarvis, it

would be comparatively easy.
However, it would take time. Patrick Deever had disappeared on
Monday night. Forty-eight hours had elapsed, but yet Nick hoped to
find a trace, if the work of destruction had been attempted in the
laboratory.
Nick had entered Cleary's room with the purpose of guarding against
any interruption from the negro. He found Cleary sleeping heavily; but
when Nick left the room and glided into the laboratory, Cleary's sleep
was even deeper than it had been before.
An adept in chemistry, Nick knew how to produce a slumber from
which no ordinary means could arouse the sleeper. His drug was sure
and it left no bad effects.
The laboratory was unlighted, except by the moon, which shone in over
the shutters, which covered the lower parts of the windows, preventing
observation from without.
The first object which attracted Nick's attention was a corpse which lay
upon a stone table in the middle of the room.
Nick had made a hasty search of the laboratory some hours before,
while the doctor had been at dinner. He had then seen this corpse, and
had assured himself that it was not Patrick Deever's; but he had been
unable to do much more before the doctor returned. Therefore, he had
made this late visit.
He first examined some instruments which lay near the dissecting-table.
They revealed nothing. Then for perhaps half an hour, he searched
various parts of the room without result.
Beneath the laboratory was a cellar in which, as Nick knew, were
electric apparatus and a furnace which the doctor used for his
experiments.
Nick was about to descend into this cellar when a noise in the direction

of the doctor's room attracted his attention.
He turned and beheld Dr. Jarvis entering the laboratory.
Realizing the possibility of such an event, Nick had disguised himself
as Cleary, yet he wished to avoid being seen if possible.
He got into the darkest corner available and watched.
Dr. Jarvis had on only his night-shirt, a skull-cap and a peculiar red
dressing-gown, which he wore whenever he worked in the laboratory or
in the garden. This dressing-gown and the queer red skull-cap were so
old that nobody about the hospital could remember when they had been
new. Cleary once said that he believed they were born and grew up
with the doctor.
Without noticing Nick, Dr. Jarvis advanced directly toward the
dissecting-table. He had no light, but the moon's rays glanced brightly
around the slab.
The doctor drew back the sheet which covered the figure, revealing the
head and naked breast.
Then he drew some instruments from a case, and proceeded to sever the
head from the body.
This secret action in the dead of night surprised Nick greatly. Could it
be that