“Dr. Harris,” accused Kennedy, avoiding the mad rush at himself, and speaking in a tone that thrilled us, “you are the man who sucked the blood of Cushing into your own veins and left him to die. But the state will never be able to exact from you the penalty of your crime. Nature will do that too soon for justice. Gentlemen, this is the murderer of Bradley Cushing, a maniac, a modern scientific vampire.”
I regarded the broken, doomed man with mingled pity and loathing, rather than with the usual feelings one has toward a criminal.
“Come,” said Craig. “The local authorities can take care of this case now.”
He paused just long enough for a word of comfort to the poor, broken-hearted girl. Both Winslows answered with a mute look of gratitude and despair. In fact, in the confusion we were only too glad to escape any more such mournful congratulations.
“Well,” Craig remarked, as we walked quickly down the street, “if we have to wait here for a train, I prefer to wait in the railroad station. I have done my part. Now my only interest is to get away before they either offer me a banquet or lynch me.”
Actually, I think he would have preferred the novelty of dealing with a lynching party, if he had had to choose between the two.
We caught a train soon, however, and fortunately it had a diner attached. Kennedy whiled away the time between courses by reading the graft exposures in the city.
As we rolled into the station late in the afternoon, he tossed aside the paper with an air of relief.
“Now for a quiet evening in the laboratory,” he exclaimed, almost gleefully.
By what stretch of imagination he could call that recreation, I could not see. But as for quietness, I needed it, too. I had fallen wofully behind in my record of the startling events through which he was conducting me. Consequently, until late that night I pecked away at my typewriter trying to get order out of the chaos of my hastily scribbled notes. Under ordinary circumstances, I remembered, the morrow would have been my day of rest on the Star. I had gone far enough with Kennedy to realise that on this assignment there was no such thing as rest.