Parker Wetherell, M. D., down on the veranda, having taken from his waistcoat-pocket Leslie's check, was glancing on it with reverence; but soon the reverie into which he had plunged was rudely interrupted: a pistol shot rang out, followed almost instantly by a woman's scream. Wetherell leaped to his feet.
"He tricked me," he whispered, turning pale, "the painless method was for himself, not for Tigerskin."
With an answering shout he ran pell-mell up the stairs. In the bathroom he found three people: Hawkins, Wilkinson's new valet, Leslie and Wilkinson, the latter swaying to and fro in the grasp of the other two. In his hand he held a smoking revolver; and as the doctor seized him, he smiled a ghastly smile and exclaimed:
"I missed it, Doc! Missed!... My little painless program didn't pull through!"
That night all Morris County, all New York, had the news, specials having been gotten out by the various papers to that effect.
"It's up to you, Hawkins," said the District Attorney over the wire to Wilkinson's new valet; "we've got to have this man alive, and not dead. You've got to be Johnny-on-the-spot every minute of the time."
And that was precisely what was the trouble, so far as Wilkinson was concerned. Hawkins was too much Johnny-on-the-spot to suit his purposes. Down in his home on the Drive Jeffries had resigned from his position, and the new man who took his place was one of Murgatroyd's shrewdest men, which meant that Peter V. Wilkinson, under a ten-year sentence, out on a million-dollar bail, was surrounded by a net-work of Murgatroyd's making. Murgatroyd was seeing to it successfully that Wilkinson couldn't run away. Wilkinson had said that one of three things confronted him: prison, flight or suicide. The second seemed to have been eliminated from the program of possibilities; the first he had sworn never to endure; and as for suicide, Murgatroyd had said it was up to Hawkins.... But there were other guards also who interposed: Leslie watched her father as a mother watches an errant child. Wetherell, too, sniffing more big checks, suggested other safeguards, and called with undue regularity. Every servant in the household and even the pudgy Mrs. Wilkinson herself—Flomerfelt had warned her that his death now would upset all their plans—kept on the look-out. Morristown druggists were warned to be sure to whom they sold poisons. Express and mail packages were scrutinised with care. No end of precaution was being exercised to thwart his plans.
"Seems to be an awful lot of fuss about it," remarked Mrs. Peter V., as she scanned the daily press. "If I tried suicide, I wonder...."
"Probably not," grinned Wilkinson, feebly, "unless you succeeded in the attempt."