The Carleton Case. Ellery H. Clark
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Ellery H. Clark
The Carleton Case
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066173258
Table of Contents
DOCTOR HELMAR VISITS THE BIRCHES
CHAPTER I
DOCTOR HELMAR VISITS THE BIRCHES
“Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright.”
Psalm xxxvii.
In Doctor Morrison’s breakfast-room the curtains were drawn back, and the windows stood wide open, letting in a flood of warm June sunshine, and filling the whole room with the fragrance of the soft June air. Even into the streets of the city, restricted and shut in, something of the freshness and beauty of the summer morning had managed to make their way, and to Franz Helmar, seated alone at the breakfast table, listening to the chatter of the sparrows and the cooing of the pigeons on the roofs outside, there came suddenly a sense of irritation at the monotony of dingy sidewalk and dusty street, of house after house of brick varied only by house after house of stone.
Irresistibly, there crept over him the whimsical fancy that he would like to see the whole vast city at one stroke fade and vanish completely before his eyes, and in its place behold once more hill and valley, river and plain; all the wide and boundless freedom of the country; the splendid, sunlit glory of out-of-doors.
Suddenly, across the current of his musing, there sounded once again the sharp, insistent ringing of the telephone, scattering all his day-dreams into flight, and for the moment he paused, his coffee-cup suspended in mid air, the better to listen to the doctor’s voice in the hall outside.
“Yes, this is Doctor Morrison,” he heard in the doctor’s sharp, alert, yet not unpleasant tones, his “professional” voice, and then, pitched in a lower key, far more intimate and cordial, he heard at broken intervals, “Ah, yes, good morning—I’m sorry to hear that—No, I’m afraid I can’t myself; not this morning, anyway—No, but I can send my colleague, Doctor Helmar—Oh, perfectly, no doubt of that; this is the day of young men, you know—All right—Eight-fifteen, South—All right; good-by,” and then the click of the receiver, and the doctor himself reëntered the room.
Doctor Morrison was a slender, wiry, middle-aged little man, with a quick, nervous manner, and a face pleasantly keen and inquisitive, clean-shaven, save for a little sandy mustache, and with hair—what was left of it—of the same color.