“I never—saw it before,” he said, painfully, “medicine and—burglary wedded! Do you—make the—combination pay—dear Doctor?”
Than that situation afforded, there was never a more rigorous test of Doctor James’s greatness. Trapped by the diabolic humor of his victim into a position both ridiculous and unsafe, he maintained his dignity as well as his presence of mind. Taking out his watch, he waited for the man to die.
“You were—just a shade—too—anxious—about that money. But it never was—in any danger—from you, dear Doctor. It’s safe. Perfectly safe. It’s all—in the hands—of the bookmakers. Twenty—thousand—Amy’s money. I played it at the races—lost every—cent of it. I’ve been a pretty bad boy, Burglar—excuse me—Doctor, but I’ve been a square sport. I don’t think—I ever met—such an—eighteen-carat rascal as you are, Doctor—excuse me—Burglar, in all my rounds. Is it contrary—to the ethics—of your—gang, Burglar, to give a victim—excuse me—patient, a drink of water?”
Doctor James brought him a drink. He could scarcely swallow it. The reaction from the powerful drug was coming in regular, intensifying waves. But his moribund fancy must have one more grating fling.
“Gambler—drunkard—spendthrift—I’ve been those, but—a doctor-burglar!”
The physician indulged himself to but one reply to the other’s caustic taunts. Bending low to catch Chandler’s fast crystallizing gaze, he pointed to the sleeping lady’s door with a gesture so stern and significant that the prostrate man half-lifted his head, with his remaining strength, to see. He saw nothing; but he caught the cold words of the doctor—the last sounds he was to hear:
“I never yet—struck a woman.”
It were vain to attempt to con such men. There is no curriculum that can reckon with them in its ken. They are offshoots from the types whereof men say, “He will do this,” or “He will do that.” We only know that they exist; and that we can observe them, and tell one another of their bare performances, as children watch and speak of the marionettes.
Yet it were a droll study in egoism to consider these two—one an assassin and a robber, standing above his victim; the other baser in his offences, if a lesser law-breaker, lying, abhorred, in the house of the wife he had persecuted, spoiled, and smitten, one a tiger, the other a dog-wolf—to consider each of them sickening at the foulness of the other; and each flourishing out of the mire of his manifest guilt his own immaculate standard—of conduct, if not of honor.
The one retort of Doctor James must have struck home to the other’s remaining shreds of shame and manhood, for it proved the coup de grâce. A deep blush suffused his face—an ignominious rosa mortis; the respiration ceased, and, with scarcely a tremor, Chandler expired.