CHAPTER VIII.
“NAME YOUR PRICE.”
James Stone looked as if the ground had suddenly caved from under his feet. His big body stiffened, his hands clutched his hat, and his startled eyes were riveted on Follansbee’s countenance. He moistened his dry lips again and attempted to speak, but it ended only in a swallow, as evidenced by the movement in his throat.
The great specialist seemed to enjoy the sensation he had made.
“You know, Mr. Stone,” he went on, “that we doctors have a way, sometimes, of locating a patient’s trouble by feeling him over until we find a tender spot. When he winces, we know we’ve struck it, and we draw our own conclusions. It’s obvious that I’ve found your tender spot; therefore, there isn’t any use in your beating about the bush. I know that you desire to eliminate Crawford. I might use a stronger expression, but I’ll spare your feelings to that extent. Out with it, now, man! You have a lot of poison bottled up in your system. Let it come out. If there’s anything wrong with you mentally, as your friend in Brazil seems to have thought, I’ll find it out and make due allowances. On the other hand, if you’re sane, you need be no more afraid of confiding in me. I’m not a policeman, you know—or a judge. Remember, too, that I have said I could help you.”
It was not so much his words, but the manner in which he uttered them that gave James Stone a certain confidence.
Follansbee was as far removed as possible from the type of the kindly, tolerant, helpful physician. On the contrary, everything said, every glance he cast—the whole man, in fact—would have been highly distasteful to the average person. It was that very thing, however, that tended to draw Stone out and to make him reveal the murderous impulses which controlled him.
It seemed incredible, but he had a feeling that he had nothing to fear from the famous Doctor Follansbee; in fact, that the latter was a possible ally. And in support of that startling belief, certain words of young Floyd’s came to him.
Floyd had said that Follansbee was very eccentric, had ways of doing things that were all his own, and was in the habit of seeming to sympathize with those who came to him, no matter what they might say or do.
The young physician had evidently been a firm believer in the man who had once been his professor, but Stone found himself wondering if Follansbee was what he had seemed to Floyd. He doubted it, and decided he had found a kindred spirit. Follansbee’s mask seemed to be slipping off.
Emboldened by this, the miner dropped his great hands on his knees and leaned forward, flinging a quick glance about him as he did so.