The Million Dollar Mystery: Novelized from the Scenario of F. LonerganMacGrath, Harold
Philosophy
The Million Dollar Mystery: Novelized from the Scenario of F. Lonergan
MacGrath, Harold
Detective and mystery stories
"Would you like to go with her, Florence?" asked Jones, with a shy
glance at the strange doctor. The shy glance was wasted. The doctor
evinced no sign that it mattered one way or the other to him.
"It is nothing very serious now," he volunteered. "But it may turn out
serious if it is not taken care of at once."
"What is the trouble?" inquired Jones, who was growing fond of Susan.
"Weak heart. Sunshine and good sea air will strengthen her up again.
No, no!" as Jones drew forth his wallet. "I'll send in my bill the
first of the month. Sunshine and sea air; that's all that's necessary.
And now, good day."
All very businesslike; not the least cause in the world for any one to
suspect that a new trap was being set by the snarers. The maid
returned to the sewing-room, while Florence coddled her companion and
made much of her.
Jones was suspicious, but dig in his mind as he would he could find no
earthly reason for this suspicion save that this attribute was now
instinctive, that it was always near the top. If Susan was ill she
must be given good care; there was no getting around this fact. Later,
he telephoned several prominent physicians. The strange doctor was
recommended as a good ordinary practitioner and in good standing; and
so Jones dismissed his suspicions as having no hook to hang them on.
His hair would have tingled at the roots, however, had he known that
this same physician was one of the two who had signed the document
which had accredited Florence with insanity and had all but succeeded
in making a supposition a fact. Nor was Jones aware of the fact that
the telephone wire had been tapped recently. So when he finally
concluded to permit Florence to accompany Susan to Atlantic City he
telephoned to the detective agency to send up a trusty man, who was
shadowed from the moment he entered the Hargreave home till he started
for the railway station. He became lost in the shuffle and was not
heard from till weeks later, in Havana. The Black Hundred found a good
profit in the shanghaing business.
Susan began to pick up, as they say, the day after the arrival at
Atlantic City, due, doubtless, to the cessation of the poison she had
been taking unawares. The two young women began to enjoy life for the
first time since they had left Miss Farlow's. They were up with the
sun every day and went to bed tired but happy. No one bothered them.
If some stray reporter encountered their signatures on the hotel
register, he saw nothing to excite his reportorial senses. All this,
of course, was due to Norton's policy of keeping the affair out of the
papers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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