The Wonderful Scheme of Mr. Christopher Thorne by Harry Stephen Keeler

Author:Harry Stephen Keeler [Keeler, Harry Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery;series;classic;chicago;murder
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2018-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIX

The Bark of Yai Quong

Erskine ate supper that night with the widow in her kitchen. Several times, during the long afternoon, he had tip-toed in to see his foster-father, but the older man was sleeping peacefully. Dr. McQuaid came once, toward mid-afternoon, muffled in a greatcoat, nodded thoughtfully, stroking his chin reflectively, and left some medicine and instructions, too, about calling him—if anything untoward should happen at any time. And the doctor went.

And at nine o’clock, Yai Quong wakened and was in distress of some sort. The medicine relieved it but temporarily only. And at ten that night, Erskine and the widow had to summon the doctor, just as the latter returned from a call far out in the country, and he came again, his neck shrouded in a great plaid woolen muffler. The sick man appeared to be suffering a sinking spell.

“I—I allowed him to talk too much,” Erskine told the doctor troubledly, in the seclusion of the kitchen.

“No, my boy,” McQuaid assured him kindly. “No amount of expenditures of physical energy has any effect on the outcome of a case like his. I assure you of that.”

Nevertheless, in cheerless mien, he administered hypodermic restoratives. But the sick man’s breathing grew still more labored. Erskine felt suddenly cold—cold all over. Cold as ice. He beckoned McQuaid back to the kitchen.

“You don’t think, do you—” he broke off.

“My boy,” the medical man said, “I didn’t want to tell you this when you came this morning; I—I wanted you to get it by degrees—but the curve I have plotted daily, on his rate of corpuscular breakup, indicated this morning specifically that—”

“When?” asked Erskine, his voice sounding utterly unknown to him—his veins running now with ice spicules.

“About midnight, my boy—” McQuaid broke off, shaking his head.

Erskine breathed sharply.

Curves! Lying loops of ink—connecting points on a paper. All medicine was a lie. Was known to be wrong—ten times out of twenty. Was known—

He found himself back in the bedroom—not knowing how he got there. He leaned down over the bed. Tried, with a rigid, disarming smile on his lips, to mask the turmoil in his soul.

“Feeling a—a little distressed, Daddy Quong?”

The sick man smiled up at him.

“Just—just—son—those birth pangs—as the second cycle opens.” He smiled again.

Erskine stood erect suddenly. And turned away. Tears in his eyes. The second cycle! Why—why must it be? Why—

The doctor was looking more regretful by eleven o’clock. And in addition to another hypodermic, he administered to the ill man the vapors from several ampules which he broke open. But the precious thread of vitality appeared to be snapping now. By 11:30 Yai Quong, obviously oblivious to all around him, was muttering strange Chinese phrases, forgotten no doubt, in his own conscious mind, over many decades. Just before midnight he muttered the single word “Bella.” And then his face grew curiously rigid—masklike.

The doctor made as if to use his stethoscope—but shook his head instead. And drew the sheet over the face, nodding silently.

And Erskine, stepping dazedly forth from

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