Page:Arthur B Reeve - The Dream Doctor.djvu/355

 a shudder. And then, through it all, you go with the high speed power of a racing motor."

"That last case appealed to me, like many others," he ruminated, "just because it was so unusual, so gruesome, as you call it."

He reached into the pocket of his coat, hung over the back of a chair.

"Now, here's another most unusual case, apparently. It begins, really, at the other end, so to speak, with the conviction, begins at the very place where we detectives send a man as the last act of our little dramas."

"What?" I gasped, "another case before even this one is fairly cleaned up? Craig you are impossible. You get worse instead of better."

"Read it," he said, simply. Kennedy handed me a letter in the angular hand affected by many women. It was dated at Sing Sing, or rather Ossining. Craig seemed to appreciate the surprise which my face must have betrayed at the curious combination of circumstances.

"Nearly always there is the wife or mother of a condemned man who lives in the shadow of the prison," he remarked quietly, adding, "where she can look down at the grim walls, hoping and fearing." I said nothing, for the letter spoke for itself.

I have read of your success as a scientific detective and hope that you will pardon me for writing to you, but it is a matter of life or death for one who is dearer to me than all the world.

Perhaps you recall reading of the trial and conviction of my husband, Sanford Godwin, at East Point. The case did not attract much attention in New York papers, although he was defended by an able lawyer from the city.