The Man with the Wooden Spectacles by Harry Stephen Keeler

Author:Harry Stephen Keeler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, murder, crime, detective, sleuth
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2017-11-14T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XVII

Expert Testimony Re Demise Wah Lee!

Dr. Purvis Graham, retired nasal surgeon, stepped within the richly carpeted anteroom of the State’s Attorney’s office, Curious about the reason he had been requested to come there, he shifted his silver-headed walking stick from one hand to the other, and glanced at the platinum wristwatch held to his wrist by its very masculine leather wrist-strap. Its hands were at a few minutes past 5. A tall, thin female Cerberus approached him from within an adjoining room, closing the door behind her.

“I am Dr. Purvis Graham,” the surgeon said, smoothing down the silver-tinged hair on one side of his head.

“Mr. Louis Vann, in a brief telephone conversation with me, said that he would like me to—”

“Oh yes, Doctor. Yes. Yes. Mr. Vann said that the moment you came you were to be admitted.”

She threw open the door of the room from which she had just emerged, and beckoned the surgeon in. He stepped within, and the lone occupant of the room, working at a great highly polished desk, under a vast flood of bright and generous daylight—thanks to the continuation this year, over America, of “Daylight Savings Time,”—turned—then rose.

“Dr. Graham—I believe?”

“Yes. And you are Mr. Vann, of course?”

“Yes, Doctor. Be seated, if you will.”

The single door closing the two men together was now shut, and the doctor dropped down in the capacious armchair, next the State’s Attorney’s big desk. The latter, pivoting about, was the first to speak.

“Dr. Graham, I think it very fine of you to be willing to come down here in person. For I was willing, you know, to have my assistant bring out to your place what I wanted an opinion on. But you insisted—”

Graham raised his hand. “Not at all, Mr. Vann. I am a very lonely man since I retired from nose surgery. And I was coming downtown anyway—first to take a look into the nose—and at the retinae—of a patient of a physician friend of mine, the patient in question living close in on Michigan Avenue—after which I expected but to repair to my club to indulge in a solitarily eaten dinner and spend a weary evening reading magazines—all this when your call came. It was a pleasure to stop off here and break the monotony of things.”

“Thank you, Dr. Graham.” The State’s Attorney was silent for a few seconds. “Now let’s see, Doctor. First, you are the author, are you not, of a textbook used in many medical colleges? On nasal surgery?”

“Yes, I am. Graham’s Surgery of the Nasal Accessory Sinuses, it is known as. And while once a regular professor at Chicago U—and I am now an honorary instructor. That is,”—he gave a gentle laugh—“I still give lectures—and the students listen to them!”

The State’s Attorney smiled. But a most satisfied smile.

“And,” he asked, “you practiced—for how many years!”

“How many years? Oh heavens—many! Let’s see? 39!—40?—no, 41. 41 years, Mr. Vann.”

“Ah, that’s fine! You are my man!”

Dr. Graham was politely puzzled but said nothing.

The State’s Attorney spoke again.

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