Fire-Tongue. Sax Rohmer
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that he put his third question to the gloomy Scot. “Was Sir Charles a friend of Mr. Nicol Brinn?” he asked.
“Nicol Brinn?” echoed the physician. He looked perplexed. “You mean the American millionaire? I believe they were acquainted. Abingdon knew most of the extraordinary people in London; and if half one hears is true Nicol Brinn is as mad as a hatter. But they were not in any sense friends as far as I know.” He was watching Harley curiously. “Why do you ask that question?”
“I will tell you in a moment,” said Harley, rapidly, “but I have one more question to put to you first. Does the term Fire-Tongue convey anything to your mind?”
Doctor McMurdoch’s eyebrows shot upward most amazingly. “I won’t insult you by supposing that you have chosen such a time for joking,” he said, dourly. “But if your third question surprised me, I must say that your fourth sounds simply daft.”
“It must,” agreed Harley, and his manner was almost fierce; “but when I tell you why I ask these two questions—and I only do so on the understand ing that my words are to be treated in the strictest confidence—you may regard the matter in a new light. ‘Nicol Brinn’ and ‘Fire-Tongue’ were the last words which Sir Charles Abingdon uttered.”
“What!” cried Doctor McMurdoch, displaying a sudden surprising energy. “What?”
“I solemnly assure you,” declared Harley, “that such is the case. Benson, the butler, also overheard them.”
Doctor McMurdoch relapsed once more into gloom, gazing at the whiskey in the glass which he held in his hand and slowly shaking his head. “Poor old Charley Abingdon,” he murmured. “It’s plain to me, Mr. Harley, that his mind was wandering. May not we find here an explanation, too, of this idea of his that some danger overhung Phil? You didn’t chance to notice, I suppose, whether he had a temperature?”
“I did not,” replied Harley, smiling slightly. But the smile quickly left his face, which became again grim and stern.
A short silence ensued, during which Doctor McMurdoch sat staring moodily down at the carpet and Harley slowly paced up and down the room; then:
“In view of the fact,” he said, suddenly, “that Sir Charles clearly apprehended an attempt upon his life, are you satisfied professionally that death was due to natural causes?”
“Perfectly satisfied,” replied the physician, looking up with a start: “perfectly satisfied. It was unexpected, of course, but such cases are by no means unusual. He was formerly a keen athlete, remember. ’Tis often so. Surely you don’t suspect foul play? I understood you to mean that his apprehensions were on behalf of Phil.”
Paul Harley stood still, staring meditatively in the other’s direction. “There is not a scrap of evidence to support such a theory,” he admitted, “but if you knew of the existence of any poisonous agent which would produce effects simulating these familiar symptoms, I should be tempted to take certain steps.”
“If you are talking about poisons,” said the physician, a rather startled look appearing upon his face, “there are several I might mention; but the idea seems preposterous to me. Why should any one want to harm Charley Abingdon? When could poison have been administered and by whom?”
“When, indeed?” murmured Harley. “Yet I am not satisfied.”
“You’re not hinting at—suicide?”
“Emphatically no.”
“What had he eaten?”
“Nothing but soup, except that he drank a portion of a glass of water. I am wondering if he took anything at Mr. Wilson’s house.” He stared hard at Doctor McMurdoch. “It may surprise you to learn that I have already taken steps to have the remains of the soup from Sir Charles’s plate examined, as well as the water in the glass. I now propose to call upon Mr. Wilson in order that I may complete this line of enquiry.”
“I sympathize with your suspicions, Mr. Harley,” said the physician dourly, “but you are wasting your time.” A touch of the old acidity crept back into his manner. “My certificate will be ‘syncope due to unusual excitement’; and I shall stand by it.”
“You are quite entitled to your own opinion,” Harley conceded, “which if I were in your place would be my own. But what do you make of the fact that Sir Charles received a bogus telephone message some ten minutes before my arrival, as a result of which he visited Mr. Wilson’s house?”
“But he’s attending Wilson,” protested the physician.
“Nevertheless, no one there had telephoned. It was a ruse. I don’t assume for a moment that this ruse was purposeless.”
Doctor McMurdoch was now staring hard at the speaker.
“You may also know,” Harley continued, “that there was an attempted burglary here less than a week ago.”
“I know that,” admitted the other, “but it counts for little. There have been several burglaries in the neighbourhood of late.”
Harley perceived that Doctor McMurdoch was one of those characters, not uncommon north of the Tweed, who, if slow in forming an opinion, once having done so cling to it as tightly as any barnacle.
“You may be right and I may be wrong,” Harley admitted, “but while your professional business with Sir Charles unfortunately is ended, mine is only beginning. May I count upon you to advise me of Miss Abingdon’s return? I particularly wish to see her, and I should prefer to meet her in the capacity of a friend rather than in that of a professional investigator.”
“At the earliest moment that I can decently arrange a meeting,” replied Doctor McMurdoch, “I will communicate with you, Mr. Harley. I am just cudgelling my brains at the moment to think how the news is to be broken to her. Poor little Phil! He was all she had.”
“I wish I could help you,” declared Harley with sincerity, “but in the circumstances any suggestion of mine would be mere impertinence.” He held out his hand to the doctor.
“Good-night,” said the latter, gripping it heartily. “If there is any mystery surrounding poor Abingdon’s death, I believe you are the man to clear it up. But, frankly, it was his heart. I believe he had a touch of the sun once in India. Who knows? His idea that some danger threatened him or threatened Phil may have been merely—” He tapped his brow significantly.
“But in the whole of your knowledge of Sir Charles,” cried Harley, exhibiting a certain irritation, “have you ever known him to suffer from delusions of that kind or any other?”
“Never,” replied the physician, firmly; “but once a man has had the sun one cannot tell.”
“Ah!” said Harley. “Good-night, Doctor McMurdoch.”
When presently he left the house, carrying a brown leather bag which he had borrowed from the butler, he knew that rightly or wrongly his own opinion remained unchanged in spite of the stubborn opposition of the Scottish physician. The bogus message remained to be explained, and the assault in the square, as did the purpose of the burglar to whom gold and silver plate made no appeal. More important even than these points were the dead man’s extraordinary words: “Fire-Tongue”—“Nicol Brinn.” Finally and conclusively, he had detected the note of danger outside and inside the house; and now as he began to cross the square it touched him again intimately.
He looked up at the darkened sky. A black cloud was moving slowly overhead, high above the roof of the late Sir Charles Abingdon; and as he watched its stealthy approach it seemed to Paul Harley to be the symbol of that dread in which latterly Sir Charles’s life had lain, beneath which he had died, and which now was stretching out, mysterious and menacing, over himself.
CHAPTER IV. INTRODUCING MR. NICOL BRINN