The Fate Of Doctor Fell

The Fate Of Doctor Fell

By Forrest Wayne Schultz

At precisely 2:50 PM I exited the secret tunnel and entered the east end of the parlor and hid behind the thick curtain. At precisely 2:56 PM, as he did every day, the butler entered this end of the parlor and poured Dr. Fell’s daily cup of tea where it sat on the table to cool while awaiting the arrival of Dr. Fell at precisely 3:00 PM. My task was to wait until exactly 2:58 PM and then drop a poison pill into the tea and exit the building thru the secret tunnel. But at 2:57 PM at the west end of the parlor a strange man dragged Dr. Fell through the doorway, and a woman in a red dress injected something into his neck which rendered him unconscious. The man hastily dragged Fell out to the hall; and the woman put the needle back into her purse and prepared to leave.

As I was reeling with shock, a man in a wheelchair rolled himself into this end of the parlor, took a gun out of his pocket and began aiming it at the woman. I pushed the curtain aside, ran into the room and knocked the man unconscious by clubbing him on the head with a small length of pipe, and then grabbed his gun before it fell to the floor. I quickly put the gun and the club into my pocket and rapidly exited the building through the secret tunnel because I sensed that there was another assassin coming after the woman in red. As I left the tunnel and entered the hallway that led to the parking garage I learned that this was indeed the case: a few feet in front of me I saw the back of this assassin with gun in hand waiting for the woman whose high-heeled shoes could be heard clicking as she rapidly approached the intersection with this hallway. AND, this assassin appeared to have the same kind of unusual gun as the man in the wheelchair. I carefully crept up behind him and knocked him out with the same pipe-club, and, as before, I caught his gun as he dropped it, and put it and my club into my pocket as the man collapsed into unconsciousness in front of me.

After the noise made by his fall onto the floor, the clicking noise of the woman's shoes ceased, then started up again as she ran away from the intersection. Then I sensed that the second assassin had died, and I also sensed a third assassin. Whew -- this was getting tiresome! How many will there be??!! After I quickly became ashamed of myself for my self-centeredness I turned to the task at hand: locating the third assassin.

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I saw him hidden behind a pillar in the parking garage. As I was pondering what to do I began to hear again the clicking sound of the footsteps of the woman in red which grew ever louder as she approached the parking garage. I quickly took out my club and threw it at the third assassin hitting him on the side of the head, which instantly killed him. I rushed over, picked up his gun and my club, and dashed over to my car and got into it immediately before the woman entered the parking area. I did not sense any more assassins but I felt another kind of premonition -- the feeling that something important was about to happen and that I needed to follow the car of the woman in red when she left the garage. As I was waiting for her to leave I pondered the interesting fact that all three of the guns were of the same very unusual type and that in each case I slew the assassin with my club: the first one I hit on the TOP of the head, the second one on the BACK of the head, and the third one on the SIDE of the head. But I had no time to ponder the significance of this because the woman in red was now leaving and I needed to focus on following her.

I stayed about a block behind her car so she would not know she was being followed. She drove for a few blocks to a restaurant where she parked her car and went inside to order a meal. I parked near the very edge of the parking lot where I could easily see her in the restaurant and her car. To dissipate my nervous energy I entered the woods adjacent to the lot and planned to walk in it keeping close to the lot. I only had walked for a few minutes when I heard a scuffling noise in the woods on a very steep hill behind me. I was astonished at what I saw. The man who had dragged Fell out of the parlor got out his cell phone to make a call and was accosted by an assassin holding the same kind of unusual gun in his hand as the other three assassins had. Before the assassin could pull the trigger, his gun hand was kicked by his intended victim, knocking both the cell phone and the gun to the ground, and causing both men to rapidly tumble down the hill and into a stream. I picked up the cell phone, dialed 911, and then threw it on top of the bales on a farmer's hay wagon which was traveling slowly on the street as it passed the woods.

I picked up the fourth strange gun, put it in my pocket and headed back to my car. I took all four guns and placed them into a special locked tool box I had in the trunk. By the way, it is winter and I have been wearing gloves so I did not need to worry about being leaving any fingerprints on the guns or the cell or anywhere else. I would figure out later on what to do with the guns. For now I needed to calm down and figure out what, if anything, I should tell the woman in red or even if I should approach her. Does she know what in the world is behind all this!! I sure don't!!!

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I got back into my car and turned up the volume on the radio which I had tuned into the police band. The frustrated 911 operator had just repeated her refrain for the umpteenth time asking the caller for the nature of his emergency. Hah! The electronic whiz in the office is now informing her that he has located the cell phone: "on a slowly moving vehicle traveling southbound on Route ____ approaching the ____ Bridge over the ____ River". Then another 911 call came in, this person stating that he is fishing on the north bank of the river and he sees two dead men slowly floating in the river who have just now become entangled in the branches of a tree. She thanked the man for the info and asked if he would please remain on the scene until the police arrived. He agreed to do so. Four police vehicles were sent to the scene: three cars and a van. One of the cars crossed the bridge and stopped the tractor; the other two cars and the van went to the river bank to speak with the 911 caller and to retrieve the floaters.

One of the officers at the hay wagon spoke to the farmer while the other one climbed onto the wagon, located the cell phone, and took photos of the fingerprints on it which he e-sent to the e-whiz at the office, who several minutes later said they matched the fingerprints of one of the floaters which had just seconds earlier been e-sent to him by the cops retrieving the bodies. This great computer feat is the latest of the triumphs of this "Gee Whiz E-Whiz"!! The police van took the bodies to the morgue and the three cars left the scene to go out on another call.

Whew! I had not recovered from this excitement when a woman arrayed in a beautiful blue dress got out of a taxi and walked into the restaurant to speak with the woman in red, who had just finished her meal. A few minutes later they left the restaurant. The woman in blue seemed to be in charge -- my guess is that she is the one who arranged for her to end the life of Dr. Fell. The two women got into the car of the woman in red and they rode off rather hurriedly together I know not where. And that is the last I saw of any of the dramatis personae.

That night the local evening TV news program reported the drowning of two unidentified men in the river.

Two nights later the program reported that Dr. Fell had passed away in his sleep.

Many years later I was reminded of these events when I heard at a poetry recitation these famous lines:

" I do not like thee, Doctor Fell

Why this is I cannot tell

But this I know, and know full well

I do not like thee, Dr. Fell. "

Well, I guess the woman in blue and the woman in red not only did not like Dr. Fell but decided to do something about it!

I pondered the mystery of it for a while but soon gave up -- I simply had insufficient data to solve it -- all I could do was speculate. I decided not to do any investigation to try to learn more. My reason for this is based on cats and dogs: curiosity killed the cat; let sleeping dogs lie. If that is too superficial for you, please consider this: we are characters in God's story and He hides a lot of matters from us, just as the author of a novel does not reveal the back story to the reader.

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January 2, 2013