Part 13

Philosophers and poets have found a theme for dissertation in the fact that the dog leaves his own kindred to dwell with man and fights them in behalf of his master. It has ever seemed to me that this were but half of the tale, for full many a man loves his dog better than the rest of mankind, and so the devotion of the race of dogs finds return and recompense. Outside his own family, there was no living thing in the city of Chicago which had so dwelt in the affections of Dr. McDill as the dog Jacques. Of the truth of this, he had had but dim realization until now and he was like to burst with sorrow and with hatred of the vile beings who had marked him and his for slaughter. Lifting the stiff form of his humble comrade, for the first time did he observe a poniard thrust in the poor beast's throat. The blade impaled a piece of paper and upon it was written the word "Knock."

"Knock!" cried the doctor: "but henceforth it shall be I that knock. Hasten the time when we may meet, malignant knaves. Never again shall I avoid you. Henceforth, I go about my business as before, for it is thus that I may expect the sooner to encounter you."

An urgent matter would require the doctor's presence in the municipality of Evanston that night. He could not expect to return before twelve o'clock in the morning and of this informing the cook, who in the temporary reduction of the family carried on the household without the aid of a second girl, he departed northward. It was past the hour of one when he let himself in the front door of his residence. A pleasant savor of various viands saluted his nostrils and in the drawing-room he observed that the chairs and tables had all been thrust against the wall as if to clear the floor for dancing. In the dining-room, the evidence of recent festivity was complete, for the table was covered with the remnants of a sumptuous repast. No words were needed to tell him that Olga Blomgren, the cook, had taken advantage of the foreknowledge of his absence to entertain a wide circle of friends; but here indeed was a mystery. Why had she not set everything in order and removed all traces of the entertainment? He moved toward the kitchen in wonder and--his heart stood still. The beams of the lamp held above his head were shot back by the gleam of blue and white satin, his wife's favorite ball dress on the kitchen floor. But it was not his wife's fair hair and snowy shoulders that, rising out of the glistening blue and white, were striped with a glistening red, but the snowy shoulders and fair hair of poor Olga Blomgren. Thus had she paid for her hour of magnificence. Thus had death cut her down because the maid's form was of the same statuesque beauty as her mistress's. Tenderly the doctor stooped to lift up the dead girl, stricken in her mistress's stead. There was a poniard in her throat, and it impaled a piece of paper upon which was written "Knock."

"Knock, knock--" the next knock would be upon his own heart.

Whatever design the doctor had held of not appealing to the police for protection against his invisible foes, his affairs had now reached a point where the intervention of the officers of the law could no longer be avoided. Poor Jacques could be consigned to earth without the intervention of priest or police, but the murder of Olga was a matter for official investigation. With that crafty and subtle way the astute sleuths of the Chicago constabulary have of informing the public through the intermediary of the press of all measures projected against evil-doers, of moves to be made, of arrests to be attempted, all citizens were in possession of the fact that owing to the startling plot just brought to light, all gatherings and coteries of men, especially at late hours, were to be watched, investigated, and made to give accounts of themselves. Dr. McDill fumed at the turn affairs had taken. That the confederacy of thieves would abandon their attempts upon his life, was not to be dreamed of. But they would forego the pleasure of witnessing his death in the presence of all assembled together. They would now delegate the attack to a single individual, and in event of his death, he could hope to carry with him but one of his enemies.

Again was Dr. McDill called to the hospital for a night operation. Leaving his driver without, he cautioned him.

"August, I don't want you to be fooled the way you were before. If any man comes out of the hospital and says I send word for you to drive home without waiting for me, pay no attention to him. Take no orders from anybody but me."

"All right. They can't fool me vonce again already."

But when a cab drove up and let out a tall gentleman in a silk hat, who went into the hospital, and after a little the cab driver, a friendly and talkative person of Irish extraction, offered August a flask full of a beverage also of Irish extraction, August took a drink.

"He told me not to take no orders yet already from nobody but him. But he didn't say nothin' about takin' a drink vonce."

"Take a drink twice, then, Hans," said the person of Irish extraction, "already, yet, and by and by, too."

It was all of four hours later that Dr. McDill stepped out of the hospital door. He paused under the light of the globe over the porch and examining a large bag of water-proof silk, he thrust therein a sponge upon which he poured the contents of a small phial, after which, seeing that a noose of string that closed the mouth of the bag was not entangled, he strode briskly toward his buggy. The side curtains were on and consequently the interior was in a dark shadow. Pausing a moment on the step, as if to arrange his overcoat, he made a quick, dexterous movement toward the person in the carriage and, throwing the bag over his head, pulled the noose. A terrific blow struck the doctor in the breast, but the arm that struck it fell powerless before it could be repeated and the striker lurched forward on the dashboard in the utter limpness of complete insensibility.

"It is not August," said the doctor, straightening up the hooded figure and taking the reins. "How well was my precaution taken! I believe that was the last knock that any member of that band of diabolical assassins will ever strike."

In the private laboratory of his own home, the doctor sat facing his captive, whom, after binding hand and foot, he had restored to his senses. The outlaw was the first to break the silence.

"You've got me and you think you'll do me," said the outlaw, with a succession of oaths and vile epithets it would be needless as well as improper for me to repeat. "But if you harm me, my friends will more than pay you up for it, just as they have everybody that crossed them."

"Your friends are of a mind to kill me, whatever befall. Sparing or killing you, will in nowise affect their purpose. Whatever may come to-morrow, to-night you must obey my commands."

"I won't do a thing you tell me to. I don't have to, see? My friends will look for you just as soon as I don't turn up, and it will go hard with you."

"Just as soon as you do not turn up with the news you have killed me. We'll see whether you will do what I tell you to."

"You dassen't kill me. You're afraid to kill me. My friends would fix you and the law would get you, if they did not."

"Your profession relies upon the forbearance and softheartedness of the public. You know that those you rob hesitate to shoot. No such hesitation hampers you. It is part of your stock in trade to keep the public terrorized. You kill all who disobey your orders, for if people began to resist you successfully you must needs go out of business. Did all put aside their repugnance to shed blood and kill your kind as they would wolves, we would have no more of you."

"You dassen't kill me, you dassen't kill me," cried the robber. It was the snarl of the wild beast, hopelessly held in the toils.

"It is true that I hesitate to kill. I am not proud of this hesitation, for the trend of the best medical and sociological thought is now toward the execution of all degenerates and criminals, that they may not contaminate the race with descendants. However, my office is to save life and I cannot do otherwise. But I am a surgeon, and every day I do things in the effort to save and prolong life that to a layman are repulsive and awful, more revolting to him than the sight of bloodless death itself. From the taking of human life I draw back. But no repugnance, no horror, unsteadies my hand elsewhere. The end of the crimes of your devilish confederacy has come. The law has not restrained you, could not. Your own unparalleled wickedness has delivered you into my hands. Many a man have you brought low, many a family have you desolated. Widows and orphans cry out against you, and not in vain. I shall so knock your gang that never again shall one of you harm even the weakest. You shall all live, but it shall be your prayer, if you black hearts can utter prayer, that you be dead."

The outlaw's tongue moved thickly in a mouth that dried suddenly at these solemn words of the doctor. "You can't do it, you can't do it, you can't do it, you duffer----" and his voice rumbled on in a long string of imprecations.

The doctor seized him and carrying him to the cellar, lay him against the coal bin. Then the captive heard him in a room above engaged upon some sort of carpentry, and whether it was the captive's imagination, or design of the doctor, or whether unconsciously the doctor's mind had become possessed, the sounds of the hammer as it drove nails and struck pieces of wood into place echoed in the cellar; "knock, knock--knock; knock, knock--knock." Soon the stairs groaned under the weight of the doctor carrying some great contrivance, and the outlaw found himself lying stretched out upon some sort of operating chair, his ankles held in a pair of stocks below, his outstretched arms held by the wrists in a pair of stocks above. All was black in the cellar, all but where a single blood red bar of light from the open door of the furnace fell upon the doctor turning at the winch of the bed of torture upon which lay the robber.

Hardly ten turns did he make, for at the first little twinges of pain, premonishing the agonies to come, the caitiff chattered in terror promises to do all the doctor should order, and so was released. Cringing and fawning, the outlaw heard what he was required to do. He was to write a letter. In this, he was to tell of the method of his capture. He was to say he was confined in a second-story room, feet and hands shackled, and that he was also chained to a staple in the floor. (That this all might be true, the doctor took him to a second-story room and so fettered him.) He found himself able to use his hands to write, and, happily, discovered writing material and stamps upon a table. He would write a letter and throw it on the porch below, where perhaps the postman would find it and send it to its destination. He asked help. His friends must come that night. The doctor would be on guard, and who could say he would not call in others? The doors and windows were all well secured, all but a cellar window on the east side. (Of this, the doctor informed him, that he, the doctor, might not be guilty of instigating the writing of anything that was false in any particular.) They must enter by this window. The door leading above stairs from the cellar could be easily forced and the noise thus occasioned could not be heard outside of the house. They must come at two in the morning. Come before another dawn, as the doctor was going to hold him one day before turning him over to the police, hoping the gang would do something to involve themselves in some way they would not if the police were after them with a hue and cry.

The outlaw wrote the letter as ordered, addressed it to Barry O'Toole, and threw it out of the window. It fell beyond the porch, on the ground. But this the doctor remedied by hiring a small boy for ten cents to pick it up and put it in a mail box. After which, the doctor betook himself to the nearest extensive hardware establishment.

At two o'clock the next morning, the beams of a dark lantern shone athwart the darkness of the cellar of Dr. McDill's residence.

"It's all right, boys. I can smell escaping gas, but it's all right. There's nobody in there. Now for the doctor. We'll kill him and all who are in there with him, and burn the house," said a voice behind the lantern, and one after another, eleven burly men dropped into the cellar through the narrow east window high in the wall. As the feet of the last man struck the ground, there was a sound as of a rope jerked by some one in the orifice by which they had just entered, and they heard two succeeding crashes within the cellar, followed by the slam of an iron shutter over the window. There was a sound of a spasmodic rush upon the cellar stairs and a beating upon the door, and then a succession of softer sounds, as of men rolling down stairs, and then silence.