The Crimson Blind

by Fred M. White

"Then perhaps you'll be so good as to enlighten me," Bell said, drily.

"Certainly. That was part of my scheme. In that synopsis of the story obtained by the girls by some more or less mechanical means, the reputed death of a patient forms the crux of the tale. The idea occurred to me after reading a charge against a medical student some time ago in the Standard. The man wanted to get himself out of the way; he wanted to be considered as dead, in fact. By the artful use of albumen in certain doses he produced symptoms of disease which will be quite familiar to you. He made himself so ill that his doctor naturally concluded that he was dying. As a matter of fact, he was dying. Had he gone on in the same way another day he would have been dead. Instead of this he drops the dosing and, going to his doctor in disguise, says that he is dead. He gets a certificate of his own demise, and there you are. I am not telling you fiction, but hard fact recorded in a high-class paper. The doctor gave the certificate without viewing the body. Well, it struck me that we had here the making of a good story, and I vaguely outlined it for a certain editor. In my synopsis I suggested that it was a woman who proposed to pretend to die thus so as to lull the suspicions of a villain to sleep, and thus possess herself of certain vital documents. My synopsis falls into certain hands. The owner of those hands asks me how the thing was done. I tell her. In other words, the so-called murder that you imagined you had discovered to-night was the result of design. Walker will give his certificate, Reginald Henson will regard Miss Christiana as dead and buried, and she will be free to act for the honour of the family."

"But they might have employed somebody else."

"Who would have had to be told the history of the family dishonour. So far I fancy I have made the ground quite clear. But the mystery of the cigar-case and the notes and the poor fellow in the hospital is still as much a mystery as ever. We are like two allied forces working together, but at the same time under the disadvantage of working in the dark. You can see, of course, that the awful danger I stand in is as terrible for those poor girls."

"Of course I do. Still, we have a key to your trouble. It is a dreadfully rusty one and will want a deal of oiling before it's used, but there it is."

"Where, my dear fellow, where?" David asked.

"Why, in the Sussex County Hospital, of course. The man may die, in which case everything must be sacrificed in order to save your good name. On the other hand, he may get better, and then he will tell us all about it."

"He might. On the other hand, he might plead ignorance. It is possible for him to suggest that the whole affair was merely a coincidence, so far as he was concerned."

"Yes, but he would have to explain how he burgled your house, and what business he had to get himself half murdered in your conservatory. Let us get out here and walk the rest of the way to your house. Our cabby knows quite enough about us without having definite views as to your address."

The cabman was dismissed with a handsome douceur, and the twain turned off the front at the corner of Eastern Terrace. Late as it was, there were a few people lounging under the hospital wall, where there was a suggestion of activity about the building unusual at that time of the night. A rough-looking fellow, who seemed to have followed Bell and Steel from the front, dropped into a seat by the hospital gates and laid his head back as if utterly worn out. Just inside the gates a man was smoking a cigarette.