I waived retainer and took the case on contingent fee, which, after the little grass widow had left, I told my wife, in gentle irony, I would divide with her; but that she must not squander it on yachts and four-in-hands, because these big paying cases are pretty rare—fortunately.
That good woman received my ironic suggestion with her usual placidity, and said: “Very well, my dear; I shall certainly hold you to your promise of division, and I have a premonition that we shall win the suit. Mark my words! I don’t want a yacht, but I shall buy that lovely Goldsborough place and spend my declining years looking at the river-view from that glorious, wide piazza.”
I had not the slightest hope of success, for even if the witness could be found, I had no doubt that he was a scamp and in the brother’s pay.
A letter to a friend and fellow-attorney in the city where the mother had died brought this reply: The man I wanted to find had been a general practitioner there for some years; he had had a very large practice and the liking and respect of the community; but both had fallen away from him from two very odd causes; one, that he had suddenly become exceedingly untrustworthy and unreliable, in fact, a phenomenal and outrageous liar; and the other, that he had unaccountably taken to the habitual wearing on every possible or impossible occasion, professional or social, of white kid gloves or long white gauntlets, bringing these ghostly hands to the bedside of patients, or hovering with them over the operating-table. It began to be noised abroad that Dr. Bently, which was his name, was unsound in his mind, was suffering from some dreadful, contagious disease which had broken out in his hands, and that the truth was not in him. My informant added that shortly after the death of Mrs. Johnstone, my small client’s mother, the doctor had taken himself, his gauntlets and his marvelous mendacity to New York, but that his present whereabouts were unknown to the writer.
The detective agency in New York, of which I next inquired, sent me word that there was no such name as Bernard Brice Bently in the directory or in any way on record as a physician or surgeon in that city. All this took time, and, meanwhile, I had advertised vainly in prominent papers all over the country and had had an agent interview many of the doctor’s old acquaintances. The man had disappeared, and within a very narrow limit of time the will would be admitted to probate.
Just at this time another legal matter required my presence in New York, and, when I reached there, the engrossing nature of my business drove most other matters out of my head. After several days of close and confining work, I finished taking the depositions I needed, and purposed to return home that evening. It occurred to me that a pleasant way of spending my remaining hours in town would be to take a stroll through Central Park, which I had not seen in years—not, in fact, since I had been a student in Columbia Law School.
I walked from the Fifty-ninth Street entrance as far as the Museum, which is about opposite Eighty-second Street, and had sat down to rest near the obelisk. It was a magnificent late spring day, and I was lazily enjoying the beauty of the place and watching the passing show, when a man on the next bench attracted my attention by springing to his feet and gazing eagerly and fiercely beyond me and up the drive. If ever ferocious desire and intent to kill were written on a human face it was on his.
Instinctively I glanced in the direction he was looking and saw a steam runabout, with one man in it, approaching smoothly and not very rapidly. I turned back instantly and sprang at the would-be assassin, whose pistol was out and pointed, but I was too late. There was a flash and a report, and I could see the hammer of the self-cocker rising for a second shot, when I struck him a left-hander. I do not often have occasion to hit a man, but when I do he usually falls. As he went down the weapon spoke again, but I knew that that bullet went wide. The fellow was game, though, and determined, for his back had scarcely touched the ground before he rolled on his side and fired twice at the man in the locomobile. The fifth chamber of the revolver he let me have, as I flung myself down on him, and the subsequent proceedings were blank, the ball having grazed my temple and stunned me.
When I came to I was lying on a leather couch in a very handsomely appointed doctor’s office. My head was bound up, and I was a bit sick and dizzy. I suppose I had half swooned again, when I was roused by a soft touch on my wrist, and looking down I saw the most beautiful and the whitest man’s hand I have ever seen. But, white as it was, the fine, filbert-shaped nails were whiter still. They were absolutely milky, and the half-moons had the ghostly whiteness and lustre of pearls. I was both startled and fascinated. Surely no living flesh was ever that color, and no human being with blood in him ever had such nails. Was it the hand of a corpse? No, it was warm, and, as I looked, the fingers bent and sought my pulse. A deep, musical voice broke the silence: