CHAPTER IV.
A FIENDISH ACT.
Meyer’s sudden exclamation rather startled the group, and every eye was turned to the window.
If any one had been looking in, he had taken immediate alarm and vanished, for there wasn’t the sign of an eavesdropper to be seen.
Jack, however, rushed to the window and threw it up.
He looked up and down the street.
No one was in sight at that hour.
It was possible though for an active person to have sneaked around in front of the closed drugstore and made his escape by way of the cross street.
“I guess you imagined you saw somebody, Meyer,” said Jack, as he closed the window.
“I don’d dink,” asserted the German boy, stoutly. “Off I didn’t see der faces off dot Otis Clymer, I’m a liar.”
“Otis Clymer!” exclaimed Charlie Fox, blankly.
“Dot’s vot I said, I bed you.”
“What could he want around here at this hour of the night?”
“Nottings goot, off you took mine vord for id,” said Meyer, wagging his head sagely. “Dot rooster vos a bad egg.”
“That’s no lie, Meyer,” nodded Charlie, as if that fact had been patent to him for some time.
Just then a buggy drove up and turned into the yard of the Fox home.
Dr. Fox had returned, and, noting the unusual feature of a light in the surgery, he lost no time in making an investigation.
He opened the back door and walked into the room.
“What is the meaning of this gathering?” he asked a bit severely of his son. “Why aren’t you in bed, Charlie?”
Then he noticed Jack Howard, and nodded to him.
“Meyer, go to the stable and put the rig up,” he said to the German boy, who was the only one he had expected to find up waiting his return.
It was up to Charley to explain matters, and he hastened to do so.
Dr. Fox was amazed to find that the subject whom he had expected to hold an inquest on had come back to life in so astonishing a way.
He looked the man over with not a little curiosity, felt of his pulse, and then intimated that he guessed he didn’t stand in need of any treatment.
“I don’t wish to unnecessarily alarm you, sir,” he said to Gideon Prawle, “but it is probable you will die in one of those fits some day.”
“Then I hope that day may not be soon,” replied the man from the West.
“You may not have another one in years, and then again you may have one in a month. It is impossible to say,” was all the consolation Dr. Fox could offer him.
“If you wouldn’t mind, I’ll turn in here on the floor for the night,” said the Western man. “I’m used to roughing it. If you had a blanket, it’s all I ask.”
“I’d offer you a bed, if I had a spare one,” said the doctor; “but since you’re contented to stay here I’ll send you a blanket.”
This arrangement being quite satisfactory to Prawle, a blanket was presently brought to him by Meyer Dinkelspeil, and fifteen minutes later all was dark and silent in the surgery.
For a full hour there was no movement in the vicinity of the drugstore or the Fox cottage, yet all this time a form was hidden in the shadow of a big bush in the garden.
The intruder was Otis Clymer.
The night air had somewhat cleared his brain of the effects of the liquor he had imbibed early in the evening, and now his thoughts were busy with what he had seen and overheard in the surgery.
“If I could get hold of that paper—the option that fellow has on the ground where he discovered that valuable copper deposit—as well as the map and directions for locating the place, I should be a made man for life. I must manage it somehow. The man is doubtless asleep in the surgery long before this, and I have a duplicate key to the door which will readily admit me. Perhaps the fellow is a light sleeper and might hear me come in. That would be awkward for me, for he looks like a strong customer. Well, nothing venture, nothing win. It’s the chance of a lifetime. Then I shall want more money than I’ve got to get out there, not speaking of the $200 due on the ground. I must get a partner in with me, and who better than Dave Plunkett, who runs the joint where I’m stopping? He’ll back me in a good thing for half of the pickings. So, those boys propose going to the mine, do they? Ho, ho, ho! Not if I get my finger in the pie first. It must be one o’clock by this time. I’ll wait a while longer, and then I’ll make the attempt.”
Otis Clymer waited till half-past one o’clock, and then he left his damp berth under the big bush and approached the surgery door.
The moonshine projected his shadow across the turf, but for all the noise he made he might have passed for a ghost.
He cautiously inserted the key he had stolen into the lock and softly turned it.
Then he passed into the building like a shadow, and the door closed behind him.
The sound of deep breathing in one corner of the surgery located the sleeping man from the West, although Clymer could not distinguish his form very well in the darkness.
But the discharged drug clerk had planned what he would do, and, now that he was inside, he started to put his scheme in practice.
“I may as well kill two birds with one stone while I’m about it,” he muttered, moving softly toward the door leading into the shop.
The place was so familiar to him that he had no difficulty in finding his way about in the gloom.
He lit a small night lamp on the prescription counter; then he took down the bottle containing chloroform, and, not finding a rag suitable for his purpose, pulled out his handkerchief and soaked it with the stuff.
Then, taking the lamp with him, he re-entered the surgery.
Gideon Prawle lay curled up like a tired man close to the window overlooking the street.
Otis Clymer looked down at him with some curiosity.
The man had made a pillow of his coat, in one of the pockets of which were the papers the ex-drug clerk coveted.
His gray woolen shirt, open at the throat, exposed his broad shaggy breast where it came into view beneath his heavy, unkempt brown beard.
He certainly looked like a tough customer.
Clymer had resolved to drug the man into insensibility in order to avert the possibility of a personal encounter with him.
He knelt down by his side, and gently laid the saturated handkerchief over his face.
“That’ll quiet him effectually,” said the clerk, grimly.
Then he straightened up and waited.
After sufficient time had elapsed for the drug to operate, Clymer removed the handkerchief and looked at his victim.
Once more Gideon Prawle was the picture of death.
“He’s safe. Now for the papers.”
With no fear that he would be interrupted in his nefarious project Clymer went deliberately about his work.
He pulled the coat from under Prawle’s head and began to rummage the inside pockets for the faded red pocketbook he had seen the man produce before the boys.
Of course he found it.
“One wouldn’t think such a disreputable looking affair as this contained the germ of a big fortune,” he whispered to himself, while his little gray eyes twinkled greedily as he nervously fumbled with the rubber strap which held it together.
The option given by Jim Sanders was soon in his fingers, and he perused it eagerly.
After that he examined the directions which located the position of the mine.
There were also some newspaper clippings touching the recent market price of copper, as well as other odds and ends, which didn’t interest Clymer at that moment.
Returning all the documents to the pocketbook he restrapped it and put it into his pocket.
“That ought to satisfy Plunkett that I’ve a good thing in sight. I’ll offer him a third interest as an inducement for him to put up the money necessary to win out. If the mine is as valuable as this fellow, who seems to be an expert in such matters, asserts it to be, Plunkett and I will surely make a fortune.”
Clymer looked around the room with a wicked expression in his eyes.
“What’s one life more or less?” he muttered. “Nothing. They’ll think he got up in the night and accidentally set fire to the place. Thus, I’ll have my revenge on Fox for discharging me from the shop, and no one will be any the wiser. Ha! matters couldn’t have worked out more my way if I had arranged everything beforehand. With this man out of the way, the papers gone, the boys will have to give up their fascinating scheme of going out to the Northwest, and the way will be clear and easy for Plunkett and myself. I knew I was not born to have to drudge for a beggarly living. No; it takes money to see life, and money is now almost within my grasp.”
Clymer then took the night lamp and re-entering the back of the drugstore lifted a trap leading to the cellar.
Descending the stairs he went directly to a particular corner, where he knew a certain inflammable acid was kept in a large globular bottle of green glass, enclosed in a wooden framework for protection.
He took a quart measure, which lay on top of another carboy, and filled it with the fluid.
Then he returned to the surgery and began to sprinkle the stuff about on the floor and upon the surfaces of the walls.
This atrocious piece of work completed, he went to the door and looked out.
All was as silent as before.
Not a sound save the gentle sighing of the early morning breeze through the branches and leaves of the trees that lined the street.
The moon, shining over the roof of the Fox cottage, threw his figure into bold relief as he stood there in the doorway.
It lighted up the malignant grin which spread over his features as he glanced over at the doctor’s house.
“It’s a nice awakening you’ll have in a few minutes, doc,” he chuckled sardonically. “It isn’t much you have gained by giving me the sack. No man does me dirt but I get back at him for it.”
Then he shut the door again, leaving it slightly ajar, so that nothing might hinder the rapidity of his escape as soon as he had put the finishing touch to his contemplated crime.
This he hastened to do.
He made a torch of an old newspaper, ignited one end at the night lamp, and then touched the acid-sprinkled floor here and there, and wherever the fire of the torch touched the wood weird blue flames sprang into being and spread themselves out.
Then, with a malevolent laugh, Clymer threw the half-burned torch into the middle of the floor, dashed open the surgery door and sprang out into—the arms of Jack Howard.