Erle Gardner - The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito

“Well, I’ll run along and take a look at my patient,” Velma said cheerfully, “before I change my clothes — just make certain that he’s all right. I’ll have to run up and get a flashlight.”

“Nice girl,” Salty remarked when she had left. “Well, Lucille and I will be on our way — be seeing you folks again.”

Della Street watched them out of the door, said musingly, “He certainly is terribly in love with her.”

“You’d think she was the only woman on earth to watch him,” Mason agreed. “His eyes keep feasting on her.”

“She is, as far as he’s concerned,” Della said. “It must be nice to be loved like that.”

Mason smiled. “They say all the world loves a lover. I’d say that all the feminine part of it does. Show a woman a romance and her eyes begin to sparkle.”

Della laughed. “I wonder what Mrs. Sims would do to that proverb to twist it around and still make sense. I wasn’t aware my eyes were shining. As a matter of fact, I’m feeling low, terribly low. While you are driving me home I am going to—” She broke off to clear her throat.

“Probably you’ve had too much exertion,” Mason said. “That long horseback ride and...”

“No, it isn’t that type of fatigue. I–Is your throat all right?”

“Yes, why?”

“There’s a peculiar burning sensation in mine — a metallic taste.”

Mason, suddenly solicitous, said, “Whoa! Wait a minute. You are not letting your mind play tricks on you, are you?”

“I don’t think so.”

Mason looked at her face, stepped forward and placed his hand over hers.

“Della, you are sick!”

She tried to smile. “Something I’ve eaten has most certainly disagreed with me. I am — I am a little nauseated. I wonder where they keep the bathrooms in this house.”

Mason strode across to the plate-glass window, pulled back the drapes, looked out into the shadowy darkness of the big yard. The little spot made by a flashlight bobbing along marked the place where Velma Starler was walking. She had not as yet quite reached the stone wall of varicolored rock.

Mason flung up a side window. “Oh, Miss Starler,” he called.

The beam of the flashlight stopped abruptly.

“As soon as it’s convenient can you take a look at Miss Street?” Mason asked.

“What’s the matter?” she called.

“She’s been taken suddenly ill.”

For a moment the flashlight hesitated, then became a spot of brilliance as the nurse whirled in her tracks and started running towards the house.

A few moments later, breathless and plainly alarmed, she was in the dining-room. “Where is she? What’s the matter?”

“She went in search of a bathroom. She has nausea and was complaining of a metallic taste—”

Velma Starler dashed from the room without waiting for Mason to finish.

It was a good ten minutes before she returned. Her face was grave. “I’ve telephoned for Dr. Kenward. He’ll be over right away.”

“What is it?” Mason asked.

She said gravely, “I’m afraid it’s serious, Mr. Mason. It has all of the symptoms of arsenic poisoning. She — But, Mr. Mason, you’re looking... Are you all right?”

“Do the symptoms of arsenic poison,” Mason asked with calm dignity, “include a burning sensation, nausea, griping pains in the abdomen, and a metallic taste in the throat?”

“Yes. Are you—”

Mason said, “When Dr. Kenward comes, tell him he has two patients,” and collapsed into a chair.

Dr. Kenward, by an almost imperceptible motion of his head, indicated he wished Velma to join him for a conference, and then moved toward the dining-room.

Velma Starler joined him after a few seconds, finding him seated in a chair at the dining-room table, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, gazing somewhat dejectedly at the carpet.

No longer was Dr. Kenward the cool, efficient master of the sickroom, the quickly decisive, perfectly poised medical man whose calm professional competence could not be shattered by emergencies, the hysteria of patients, or those diabolical coincidences of fate when everything seems to go wrong at once.

The man who sat on the edge of the dining-room chair, his elbows propped on his knees, his body sagging with weariness, was merely a very tired, very much overworked, and somewhat distraught mortal who had reached the limit of his endurance. He looked up as Velma entered the room, and she was shocked as some trick of lighting threw into undue prominence the dark circles of weariness under his eyes.

Recognizing that this was not a case where the nurse should remain standing in the presence of the doctor, but a matter of two tired human beings bound together by a common interest, Velma drew up a chair and seated herself at his side.

For the space of nearly a minute he was silent. Velma, waiting for him to speak, later on realized that he had no desire to talk for the moment, but was drawing a certain amount of strength from her presence.

She offered him her package of cigarettes.

Silently, he took one. And she was the one to stroke the match and hold the flame cupped in her hands to light both cigarettes.

The silence was not in any way strained, nor was it embarrassing. It was as though a cloak of wordless understanding had thrown itself about them, shutting off, for the moment, cares and worries of the outside world.

It was Dr. Kenward who at length broke the silence. “Thanks to the fact that you had the antidote on hand, I don’t think it will be serious.”

“Arsenic?” she asked.

“Undoubtedly. Perhaps not a very large dose, but nevertheless arsenic.”

Several seconds later he sighed wearily, then said, “I’m afraid what you told me about Banning Clarke didn’t completely register — all the little details. Would you mind very much repeating what you told me?”

“Not at all,” she said.

He sucked in a deep drag from the cigarette, then placed his head back against the chair, exhaled slowly, and closed his eyes.

Velma said, “I was on my way to see Banning Clarke when Mr. Mason called. I telephoned you and then washed out the stomachs and administered the ferric solution. Then I dashed out to see how Mr. Clarke was getting along.

“You know how the pathway runs along the side of that rock wall, then swerves around the big clump of cactus and winds in and out through the sand around the cactus patches. — I was running just as fast as I dared — so fast that for a moment I couldn’t realize the significance of what I saw... or rather, what I failed to see.”

She paused and peered at him sharply as though wondering whether the closed eyes and relaxed muscles indicated he’d drifted off into the slumber of physical exhaustion.

“Proceed,” he said without so much as flickering his eyes.

“You know how they slept — Salty Bowers on the north side of the little sand cove, and Banning Clarke down to the south near the wall. Well, I had actually run past the fireplace before I suddenly realized what was the matter. Neither sleeping bag was there.”

“And there was no sign of Clarke?” he asked.

“None whatever. Both sleeping bags were gone, the cooking utensils were gone, the jalopy that they used to drive around with is missing, and there’s no sign of Banning Clarke or Salty Bowers.”

“Any indications in the sand, any tracks?” Dr. Kenward asked.

“I didn’t look for that.”

“Are the burros gone?”

“No. They’re there.”

Dr. Kenward pushed the end of his cigarette down hard in the ash tray. “Let’s go look the place over. You have a flashlight?”

“Yes.”

“Look in on the patients,” he said. “Tell them you may be out for five or ten minutes. Where’s that housekeeper, by the way?”