Dutch Shoe Mystery Read Online Free PDF

it was ghastly, bluish-white. The sheet was tucked around the neck. The eyes were closed. A third figure entered the operating-room from the Anteroom—another nurse. She stood quietly in a corner, waiting.
    The patient was lifted from the wheel-table and deposited on the operating-table. The wheel-table was instantly removed to the Anteroom by the third nurse. She closed the door carefully, disappearing from sight. A gowned and gagged figure took his place close by the operating-table, fussing with a small taboret on which were various instruments and cones.
    The anæsthetist,” muttered Minchen; “they’ve got to keep one handy in case Abby comes out of the coma during the operation.”
    The two assisting surgeons approached the operating-table from opposite sides. The sheet was whipped off the patient, discarded; a peculiarly-cut garment was immediately substituted. Dr. Janney, now gloved, gowned and capped, was standing patiently at one side while a substitute nurse adjusted a gag about his mouth and nose.
    Minchen leaned forward in the chair, a curiously intent look in his eyes. His gaze was riveted on the body of the patient. He muttered to Ellery in a queerly tense tone.
    “Something wrong, Ellery; something wrong!”
    Ellery answered without turning his head. “Is it the stiffness?” he whispered. “I noticed that. A diabetic. …”
    The two assisting surgeons were bending over the operating-table. One lifted an arm, let it fall. It was rigid and unbending. The other touched an eyelid, peered at the eyeball. They looked at each other.
    “Dr. Janney!” said one of them insistently, straightening up.
    The surgeon wheeled, stared. “What’s the matter?” He brushed aside a nurse; limped forward rapidly. In a flash he had covered the distance, bent over the inert body. He tore the garment from the table, felt at the old woman’s neck. Ellery saw his back stiffen as if he had been struck.
    Without raising his head Dr. Janney uttered two words: “Adrenalin. Pulmotor.” As if by magic the two surgical assistants, the two nurses, the two substituting nurses leaped into activity. The words were hardly dead before a large slender cylinder was carried over and several figures grew busy about the table. A nurse handed Dr. Janney a small glistening object; he forced open the mouth of the patient, held the object before it. He then intently examined its surface—it was a metal mirror. He threw it aside with a muffled curse, reached with one prehensile arm for a hypodermic ready in the hand of a nurse. He bared the torso of the old woman, plunged the needle into her body directly over the heart Already the pulmotor was in operation, forcing oxygen into her lungs. …
    In the gallery the nurses and internes, Dr. Dunning, his daughter, Philip Morehouse, Dr. Minchen, Ellery sat on the edge of their seats, motionless. There was no sound in the Amphitheater except the sucking of the pulmotor.
    In fifteen minutes, exactly at 11:05—Ellery mechanically consulted his watch—Dr. Janney straightened from his crouched position above the patient, turned around and crooked his forefinger furiously toward Dr. Minchen. Without a word the Medical Director left his seat, ran up the steps toward the door at the rear and disappeared. A moment later he had burst through the theater-door on the West Corridor and run up to the operating-table. Janney stepped back, pointed mutely at the neck of the old woman.
    Minchen’s face whitened. … Like Janney, he too stepped back and turned; and this time the crooked finger beckoned Ellery, who sat like stone where Minchen had left him.
    Ellery rose. His eyebrows went up. His lips formed one soundless word, which Minchen caught. Dr. Minchen nodded. The word was:
    “Murder?”
    * See map on page x .

Chapter Five
STRANGULATION
    E LLERY NO LONGER FELT the qualms of temperament which had assailed him while viewing the preparations for an assault on mortal flesh. Life was now extinct, he felt