CHAPTER XXV.
THE MURDER SYNDICATE.
"See here, Sturgis; this won't do. I forbade you to do a stroke of work to-day, or even to leave your bed; and here you are scribbling away just as though nothing had happened. I tell you when a man has had the narrow squeak you have, there has been a tremendous strain upon his heart, and it is positively dangerous——"
"Don't scold, old man; I have never in my life been better than I feel to-day. And besides, this work could not be postponed——"
"Oh, pshaw! That is what nine out of every ten patients say to their physician. They are modestly convinced that the world must needs come to a standstill if they cannot accomplish their tiny mite of work. What do you suppose the world would have done had you and Sprague remained in Murdock's death chamber yesterday? I'll tell you. The Tempest would have printed two eulogistic obituary notices; and then the world would have hobbled on, just as though the greatest detective of the age and the modern Raphael had not been snuffed out of existence."
Doctor Thurston, who had assumed his frown of professional severity, proceeded to feel the reporter's pulse.
"Well, you are in luck; better than you deserve. Almost any other man would have been laid up for a week by the experience you have been through. And here you have the face to recover without the assistance of the medical profession, and in spite of your insolent disregard of my express orders to leave work alone for the present. Now, there is Sprague——"
"Ah, what of Sprague?" asked the reporter, anxiously.
"Sprague has had a close call. But he is safe now. If tender and intelligent nursing count for anything, he will probably be up in a day or two."
"Miss Murdock?——"
"Yes. She has a professional nurse to help her; but she has insisted on taking charge of the case herself. And an excellent nurse she is, too, and a charming girl into the bargain,—and what is more, a noble woman."
"Does she know of her father's death?"
"I broke the news to her as gently as possible. She took it much more calmly than I supposed she would. There evidently was but little sympathy between her and her father."
"On her side, at any rate."
"Yes. Her first act on learning of her father's crimes was to send for a lawyer. She refuses to touch a cent of his money, and has instructed her attorney to make such restitutions as may be possible and to turn over the rest to charitable institutions. This leaves her almost penniless; for the property she held in her own right from her mother's estate amounts to very little. Fortunately, Sprague is rich enough for both. What are you doing there, if I may ask?"
Doctor Thurston pointed to a bundle which lay upon the table.
"That is Murdock's autobiography—a legacy to me. The package was found near his valise in the death chamber. He had addressed it to me at the last minute."
"Did it help you in your account of the Knickerbocker bank case for the Tempest?"
"A little; but naturally, Murdock's account of that crime was not complete. The entire journal, however, is of absorbing interest. It is a pity that it cannot be published."
"Why cannot it be published?"
"It would be dangerous to the welfare of society. Murdock was an extraordinary genius in his line; there is marvelous originality and ingenuity in his work. His crimes, numbered by the hundred, were all of capital importance in their results; all deep-laid and skilfully executed. It is hardly likely that such another consummate artist in crime will exist once a century. To publish the details of his schemes would be to put a formidable weapon in the hands of the vulgar herd of ordinary criminals, who lack the imagination of this brilliant villain.
"I tell you, Thurston," continued Sturgis, with what seemed very like enthusiastic conviction, "this man was the originator of almost every unsolved mystery which has nonplussed the police during the last fifteen years. He had his agents in every important center throughout the country; agents working under potent incentives, and yet working in the dark, for few of them have ever known who held the mysterious power which directed their every move. Murder has been done wholesale: and so quietly and mysteriously has the work been accomplished, that, in all but this last case, the detectives have found no clue whatever which might lead to an explanation of the sudden and unaccountable disappearance of wealthy men, whose bodies, shipped to the Manhattan Chemical Company by Murdock's agents, were quietly and systematically made away with in the chemist's laboratory."
"He was the fiend incarnate!" exclaimed the physician.
"Well," said Sturgis, after a moment of thoughtful silence, "at any rate, he was not wantonly cruel. He was heartless; he was pitiless; but his cruelty was always a means to an end, however selfish and illegitimate that end might be. His cruelty is that, in a measure, of every human being destroying life that he may live and trampling upon his fellow men that he may be comfortable. Between Murdock and the rest of us there was a difference of degree, certainly, but was there a difference of kind?"
"There is one thing which I cannot yet understand," said Thurston, "and that is, why Murdock should have pushed his audacity to the point of defying you to ferret out the mystery of this crime, when he might perhaps have avoided all risk of detection by holding his tongue."
"No man is perfect," answered Sturgis, sententiously, "not even an accomplished villain like Murdock, fortunately for the rest of mankind. Every human being has his weak points. Murdock had two:—his vanity and his love for his daughter. They were the only traits which connected him with the human family. To them he owes his undoing."