“The prescriptions, the prescriptions!” cried Tessie, in a panic.
Forgetting his wound, the inspector leaped at the hunchback, felling him to the floor with a heavy blow from the butt of his revolver. He sank to the floor, motionless. Doctor Jarvis had darted to the stove from which he retrieved the sheaf of papers, little the worse from the flames except where the hot coals had singed the edges. The doctor’s fingers suffered most from contact with the embers.
“Tessie,” said the inspector, nursing his wounded shoulder, “run through those papers. See if you can find anything that looks like the prescription Bill Hovey gave you.”
Eagerly enough, now, she lifted one sheet after another from the file. Not far from the top she came on one which she examined carefully.
“This is it,” she said, holding it out for Dr. Jarvis to read. His professional instincts, however, overcame his curiosity.
“Inspector,” he cried, somewhat shamefacedly, remorseful for neglect toward a wounded friend, “let us have a look at that shoulder first.”
“It hurts like the devil,” said Inspector Craven, “but that bird is stirring, so safety first. Take a pair of handcuffs out of my pocket and snap them on his wrists. He would blow us all up and himself, too, if he got the chance.”
Dr. Jarvis secured the misshapen dwarf, clumsily enough, then looked at his wound. The dwarf’s arm was bleeding. Without too great delay, for he was much more worried over the inspector than over the misshapen druggist, he bound the wound tightly to prevent further bleeding. In all this commotion, although he stirred, the man did not regain consciousness. He had been dealt a stiff blow.
The inspector was not seriously wounded. The bullet fired by the hunchback, from a vicious little automatic .25 had gone straight through the shoulder muscles, severing the smaller blood vessels. It was a matter of a few minutes to dress the wound, but Craven was impatient to learn the truth. Had they found the prescription? If they had, his wound mattered little. If not, he was a fool. He had made a melodrama of a coroner’s investigation. If without cause, he was a zany. With cause, he preserved his self-respect at least.