Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 4 (1925-04).djvu/108

A Thug, a Physician, and a Mistake

As the Staten Island ferryboat neared the St. George slip, young Doctor Marsden left his seat in the smoking cabin and went out on the forward deck. His face broke into a smile of recognition as he perceived a trim, soldierly-erect old gentleman standing next the safety gates as if desirous of leaving the boat as soon as she should be berthed. Marsden made his way to the side of the older man.

"Hello, there, Doctor Fleming!" greeted Marsden. "How are things with you?"

"Fine, thank you," returned the older man. "I've just come from the Charity Hospital."

"Do you come across anything worth while there?" asked Marsden, interested in the possibilities of finding an unusual case among the dregs of humanity that ebbed through the hospital doors.

Doctor Fleming smiled at the younger man's evident enthusiasm.

"I came across something good this afternoon," he said. "Biliary case. The man was a sailor. When I got hold of him he looked like a Chinaman. By the time I was through with him I took three—"

The loud and musical clank of the windlass reeling in the hawser of the ferryboat kept the next few words from the ears of a seedy individual, who, leaning against a near-by stanchion, had absorbed the latter part of the conversation. As the gates swung aside, he strained forward to catch further words.

"—regular 'pearls'. Beauties! I have them with me," said the elderly gentleman, touching his breast pocket. "Well, I'm bound for home. I'll say good-bye before we're separated in this crowd."

The eavesdropper grinned mirthlessly as he followed the old surgeon. Bull Evans at his best had never made an attractive figure, and now, down at heel, unshaved, unshorn and ragged, he was positively repulsive.

"Gor' bli' me if 'e don't deserve it," he muttered, shaking his head to emphasize the fact to himself. "A-gougin' of charity patients that wye! Three pearls, eh? An' orf a Chink sailor! A Kanaka, more like. Hi'll keep me heye on 'im, thinks I."

Following Doctor Fleming to a Stapleton car, he boarded it and settled himself in a far corner. He pulled his faded slouch hat deeper over his eyes, and erected a discarded newspaper as a barricade between himself and the eyes of the man he was trailing. A block beyond the doctor's alighting place, he swung off the moving car and again shadowed his man.

Bull Evans found his vigil irksome, out there in the dark, crouched beneath the window of the doctor's study. The lamp on the desk illumined a stethoscope, several books, an inkwell, and the desk-blotter on which they lay. Beyond the compass of the desk top, the rest of the room was in comparative darkness. The motionless figure of the doctor leaned attentively, eyes shaded from the