He leaned back in his chair.
“I’m sorry, though, that that mad fool attacked him,” he went on musingly, “for, despite what Stone says, I feel sure that Crawford must be on his guard now.”
That was the point in the case which baffled Follansbee for the moment. He could not understand why Crawford, after no less than three attempts had been made on his life, should still be willing to occupy a room which connected directly with that of his would-be murderer. At last, with a shrug of his shoulders, he dismissed the subject.
“After all, it doesn’t matter very much,” he mumbled to himself. “The attempts which Stone has made are only known to four or five persons at most. They are the two most concerned, young Floyd, and the stranger who, according to Stone’s admission, separated him and Crawford on the boat. His knowledge and that of Floyd would be dangerous if Crawford were to be put out of the way in any ordinary fashion, but neither would be suspicious if he succumbed to a tropical disease. It would never occur to them to question his death under such circumstances, and even if it did, they wouldn’t give Stone credit for so much ingenuity. As for me, I’m above suspicion, except in the eyes of a very few persons—notably Nick Carter’s. I shouldn’t like him to get wind of this, but there’s little or no likelihood of his doing so.”
James Stone had not known of the detective’s identity, because the latter’s name had not appeared on the passenger list of the Cortez, and, strictly speaking, it had been a breach of confidence on the part of the chief steward when the latter had revealed Carter’s name to Crawford. Had Follansbee known more of the mysterious stranger whose intervention had been so unfortunate from Stone’s standpoint, even his cold, hard calm would have been broken up, and he would have cut off his right hand rather than have anything to do with the affair. So far as his knowledge went, however, it seemed sufficiently safe to venture on what he had in view.
“Anyhow, I run no risk,” he concluded. “Both Stone and Crawford seem to have no friends in the city, and if there should be a coroner’s inquest the death would be put down as resulting from natural causes.”
He ran his fingers over the test tubes with a touch that was almost caressing, and on his sallow, leathery face there rested a malevolent smile.
“My first step in the career of crime,” he resumed, “was not very successful, I’ll have to admit. It involved considerable risk, and I was infernally lucky to have crawled out of it as well as I did. I was a fool then, though, and I won’t take any such risks in future. I’ll be the ‘man behind’ this time. Stone will execute the work, and when it’s duly accomplished, the reward will be mine, and I think I can worry along for some time on that amount.”
Floyd, in his misguided effort to be thorough, had sent a number of details which might well have been omitted. They had enabled Follansbee to make a great show of knowledge, and by his evasions in respect to the source of it had greatly contributed to Stone’s bewilderment. They had also made it possible for the unscrupulous head of St. Swithin’s to fill in the check for the amount that was only fifty thousand dollars short of the entire sum which Stone was supposed to have realized from the sale of the Condor Mine. He would have liked to claim even more, but he did not dare, for fear of overdrawing the miner’s account and thereby creating a difficulty when the time came for the bank to honor the check. Therefore he had shrewdly fixed his “fee” at that sum, in order to allow for any reasonable withdrawals on Stone’s part.
In that and other ways Floyd’s letter had been of the greatest assistance, and had served a purpose the nature of which its writer had never dreamed. It would have seemed incredible to the young physician, whose profession was sacred to him, and in whose eyes Stephen Follansbee was everything that was desirable—except in external appearances.