The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck

by Alexander Laing

  There was no sleep for me on that sleeper. I lay awake, reconstructing the whole sickening business. I remembered that there were two theories concerning the formation of species: one based on the presumption that living organisms adapt themselves to shifting needs by small changes through many generations; the other, that a sudden large mutation may survive and, reproducing its kind, develop a new and hardier group. Obviously, Dr. Wyck had been attempting to bring about extensive mutations producing new types by some kind of external influence. Perhaps he had pursued it for years within the normal limits of scientific inquiry, only to meet success and insanity in the same season.

  If I could establish the truth of this letter by unearthing Wyck’s hidden laboratory, no jury in Maine would convict Wyck’s slayer of murder. But my heart was still full of rage and bitter grief at my own culpable stupidity, that could have averted the death of Muriel.

  When I stumbled out of the station in Boston, early on Sunday morning, I got a taxi to take me to the Hotel Cambridge. I slept until about three in the afternoon and then awoke from a horrible dream in which I was being speared by a merman with no skin and huge white eyes with black holes in them, in which worms twisted.

  For awhile I almost wished that Ted had succeeded in throttling me. Then gradually the despair passed in the realization that nothing had occurred to alter my life passions—the old one, to practice medicine; the new one, to forget my blunders and my fears in Daisy’s arms.

  Late in the afternoon I bought a New York morning paper, half expecting to find headlines about Muriel across the front page. But a diligent search showed no item whatever. As it was Sunday, there would be no evening papers.

  Next morning I saw the word MURDER screaming from every tabloid. It proved to be something local, but my fingers were shaking as I paid for a New York paper and hastily scanned the front page, fearing there might be a picture of Muriel. If there were, someone in Altonville surely would recognize her features, as several of the doctors subscribed to the metropolitan dailies.

  On page five I found the story. It filled hardly three column inches, and referred to Muriel under the alias she had been using. The police, it said, linked the murder to another committed in Brooklyn. I felt reassured, and decided to take the noon train. In the station I was able to buy more New York papers. All carried similar brief accounts, with the exception of a tabloid that did publish a picture under the headline, DEATH ENDS LOVE TIFF. But the face was scarcely recognizable. Moreover, I was quite sure that this particular sheet had no readers Altonville. One paper admitted that robbery might have been the motive, as nothing to identify the girl’s former associations had been left.

  My ride back to Altonville was uneventful, but when I appeared in Daisy’s doorway at a little after seven she gave a quick cry and threw her arms around my neck.

  “Oh, Davy, I’ve been hating myself for letting you go,” she said, with what sounded like a sob. And with that for provocation, I proceeded to go all to pieces, crying like a two-year-old. She conducted me to the porch swing, and before long had me in shape again. Then she demanded my story.

  “How did things go here?” I asked, first.

  “Nothing new, but I think Alling will need some soothing words. He didn’t believe that you had a sick uncle.”

  “What did you really tell him?”

  “That.”

  “You goof. Give me a kiss.”

  I went in and rang Alling at once. He hinted that I well might be at the office early, next morning. By the time I returned, Daisy was exploding with curiosity—and what I had to show and tell her proved far more startling than her wildest expectations.

  “You have been through plenty,” she said, “but forget this idea that your hesitation caused another death. If you’d got there earlier, you’d probably have both been killed when he arrived. I think the god of small boys and drunkards is watching over you, Davy.”

  Later, with a clear moon sailing up behind the silhouettes of the Altonville pines, we went for a stroll. The night was tangy and vigorous with autumn. It seemed to heal my buffeted spirits in magical way.

  “Listen, kid,” I said, pausing and holding her tightly. “Do you know why I dared come back at all?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Because I love you so much that it makes my head ache, thinking about it, when I’m away.”

  “I’ve heard similar sentiments more poetically put,” she said. “But I don’t remember liking the sound of them so well, before, David darling.”

  Tuesday morning I awoke refreshed and was busy in the office when Dr. Alling arrived at eight o’clock. “Good morning,” he said, in a curt tone. It was not like Prexy to be officious and petulant. Any employee sometimes has to take an unexpected day off. If he didn’t like it, he could say so, instead of sulking.

  We both worked in silence for some three hours. Then I looked up to see Dr. Alling studying me with a grave expression. “Saunders,” he said, “we’re both behaving very childishly, but you have been more childish than you know. Don’t you realize that you are under suspicion for murder? Can’t you see the implications of leaving town in such a hasty, sudden manner? It wasn’t yet noon and when Sheriff Palmer phoned me to find out where you were and why. In order to keep him from telephoning your description to the Boston police, I had to take the responsibility of saying I had sent you on a private errand of my own. Wouldn’t you say”—his voice became more kindly—“that that entitles me to an explanation?”

  My resentment turned to shame as I realized the full extent of his confidence, expressed in willingness to shield me with a falsehood that might yet react upon him in an extremely dangerous way. Impelled by remorse and gratitude, I found myself launching into a description of the cause of my departure. And, once started, I found no chance to stop. It needed only a few logical questions to get my complete story—even including my old fears of his motives when he had come so close to asking an explanation of my appearance at Mike’s bedside, only to leave me wondering why he did not do so.

  “Why was it?” I asked him.

  “Well, Saunders, your belated frankness calls for the same attitude from me—but I can’t tell you for a fact what I don’t yet know. All I can say is that I had excellent reasons for feeling certain that you and I were together at the precise moment when the murder was committed. As for curiosity about where you actually were, from after the faculty meeting till your appearance at the Connells’, I can only say that I preferred not to know. I assumed—correctly, it now appears—that you lacked a credible alibi. Therefore, if I were to be cross-questioned myself, I much preferred to be able to say truthfully that I did not know where you were at the time. I almost wish I still could say that, because you seem to have got into an extremely dangerous predicament. You yourself can refuse to answer questions that might incriminate you. But I, you see, have no such privilege so far as questions about you are concerned. Knowing what I now do about your part in the case, I should say that a more convincing charge can be drawn up against you than against Michaud and Mrs. Connell. That’s another thing. I’ve been cudgeling myself ever since for having sent that poor woman out for a walk at such a time. I did it deliberately, from the best of motives, because I had reason to suspect that her husband might have another of those attacks within a few minutes, which proved to be the case.”

  “Then you don’t think she had anything to do with it?”

  “I’m certain that she didn’t, Saunders. The grand jurors got the bill this morning. I shall be extremely surprised if they endorse it. It contains too little of specific fact. Oh! and of course I shall want to see those letters, Nurse Finch’s.”

  I had been wondering why he had not seemed more eager to see Muriel’s confession. “Yes,” I said, taking them from my pocket, with the newspaper clippings.

  “Saunders,” he said sharply, “I sometimes do question your sanity. I was going to ask you to let me come and see them. Don’t you realize what would happen if you we
re arrest with those things on your person? Your chance of being connected with the death of the girl is just about nil—except for the fact that you go walking about town with the complete evidence in your pocket! We’ll burn these at once,” he said, putting the clippings into a little electric oven. “I they are ever needed, you can get copies from the newspaper’s own files. I’d like to read over this confession for myself.”

  When he had finished, he added, “It corroborates perfectly my own theories, on a point or two that had become increasingly doubtful. For instance, I was almost driven to believe that the hillside laboratory was a hallucination of Wyck’s. He spoke to me of it on the last day of his life. The birth of the monsters seemed to prove its existence. But I’ve had a Pinkerton man scouring that whole region without finding a trace of it. Are you satisfied that it isn’t somewhere in the vicinity of the old cellar where you say the boy Ted was camping?”

  “I’m going to have another look,” I assured him.

  “Do,” he urged. “As an indictment, if you discover it I’ll give you the hundred dollars that it would cost to have the private detective here again. But please wait for a month or so. I’m afraid the sheriff will be shadowing you during the next few weeks. The last thing I want to have happen is for him to get wind of Wyck’s connection with the monsters.”

  “There isn’t any question, is there, but that he was to blame?”

  “None whatever. Before he was killed he left the complete records of his experiments where only I could discover them, together with an accurate prediction of the birth of these monsters”—he pointed to the glass cylinders in which the feti were floating—“giving the names of the mothers and the probably sequence of births. Not the least of my worries has been the responsibility of possessing this information. But who am I, to destroy a part of human knowledge? What might the world be willing to give, at some future date, for these facts that I can let live or die as I choose!”

  He paused, reflected, and said, “That was how Wyck himself started, you know, with the highest motives of a geneticist. He wanted to throw us all out of our jobs by having the human infant born immune to all known ills, and preconditioned against all known aberrations. Only, he went mad while he was about it, from the very kinds of ailments he most wanted to forestall—the atrophies and malignancies of senile decay.”

  “I’ve been wondering about that autopsy report,” I said. “Was it the cancer of the skull that drove him crazy?”

  “That, and the effects of an unwise surgical experiment on his own body.”

  He took from a file which always was kept locked a mimeographed document of some sixty pages, in German. It proved to be confidential case histories of the results of gland-grafting, as performed by the notorious Dr. Vladimir.

  “The proper names are all German anagrams, Saunders. Here’s Wyck, you see. I spent an amusing Sunday, once, deciphering the names of some of our prominent bankers and statesmen who have paid Dr. Vladimir amounts in five figures for an Indian summer of their youth. Wyck got his youth back for nothing, by the dangerous expedient of submitting for a test under new conditions, implanting the gland between the peritoneal cavity and the body wall. But read the report for yourself.”

  The gist of it was that the gland had been successfully engrafted in July, 1931, and had fulfilled its purpose only too well, inducing satyriasis over a period of about six months. The document mentioned in closing that the case was under the observation of Dr. Manfred Alling. Below, in Alling’s own hand, were written monthly postscripts in German on the first of February, March, and April. Number one recorded certain disorders of the nervous system, probably arising from the graft. The second recorded a sudden function cessation. The third announced that the gland seemed to have become completely atrophied. So that accounted for the anomalous mess of tissue under the incision which Daisy had though was an appendix scar.

  “Did Dr. Kent know what it was?” I asked.

  “No. But he must have guessed. Well, it’s time we were getting out to lunch. Now that I’ve rebuked you sufficiently, Saunders, I want to commend you for a piece of intelligently planned research. The fact that you have been most unwise in matters of detail does not alter the larger fact. Some time before tomorrow please write me out a minute description of Ted Gideon, as you call him. We can’t let a homicidal epileptic go roaming around loose. I shall merely send it to a physician in Nantucket, saying that the boy was seen here last spring, at the time of Wyck’s murder and is wanted for questioning. They must know he’s an epileptic, and will be duty bound to forward descriptions of him to the police of principal cities.”

  I let Muriel’s letter and confession with Dr. Alling and went striding homeward feeling a great relief. But I kicked myself when I recalled Daisy’s prediction that it would be impossible to tell Alling anything without telling him all.

  Just as I was turning in at the dog card, a great yell sounded up the street:

  “Mr. David. Yoo hoo! They’ve turned me loose.”

  I hurried to congratulate Biddy, and invited her to dine with me on a revolving stool. The bill of indictment had been turned down by the grand jury, who had found it “Not a true bill.”

  Charlie had been called down to Phillipston for questioning before the grand jury. The questions had concerned his refusal to give an alibi. In the privacy of this gathering he apparently had satisfied their curiosity.

  Twenty-Four

  On Sunday morning, I entered the school building with the idea of finishing the preparation of the last slides of tissue from the symmeli. Dr. Alling’s private laboratory connects with his office by an inner door. My key will open the regular entrances of both rooms, but not the door between. I was quietly at work staining the thin sections of protoplasm when Alling’s characteristic quick step sounded in the hall and stopped before the door of the office. A heavier tread sounded on the stairs.

  “Oh, Prendergast,” I heard Alling say. “Yes, sit down. You remember the unfortunate coincidence that your petition of last spring was presented on the very night of Dr. Wyck’s disappearance. Well, as you know, the state has been unable to secure an indictment against the diener and Mrs. Connell, and the county prosecutor has been investigating the case further, with the idea of drawing up new bills of indictment on better evidence; whether against the same suspects, or others, I don’t yet know. What I do want to know is, have you been questioned?”

  I shall not absurdly pretend that any Rollo-book notions of honor kept me from straining my ears and taking down in shorthand all that I could hear.

  “Why no, sir,” Prendergast said, with a tone of pained surprise.

  “Oh?” said Dr. Alling, as if a little surprised himself. “Well then, I want to warn you that you will be questioned, and probably fingerprinted, very soon. I don’t think legalities of method will stop Sheriff Palmer from finding out anything that might later be verified in the usual ways. I myself have already been asked how much time you spent with me that evening. Purely to make sure that what I said was not in error, I should like you to trace for me your own whereabouts between the faculty meeting and the noon of the following day. Do you mind?”

  “Not in the least, sir,” Dick replied. “My uncle and I went home with you. We stayed probably an hour, and then drove to the Inn. My uncle ordered highballs for us, but they wouldn’t serve any. You know what an ardent Wet he is, politically. So we left the place and drove down to Phillipston. He had the same experience at the Craig, there. Well, that made him furious, and we fetched up in Shoulder Lake, at the Mason Lodge. There’s no trouble wetting your whistle there, you know, sir. It was then about midnight, I guess, but we stayed up awhile talking about my—er—dilemma. Then we went to bed, got up about nine the next morning, had breakfast at the Lodge, and drove back to Altonville.”

  “Yes, that seems to dovetail in exactly with what I said, Prendergast. And you, of course, have a right to refuse to be fingerprinted without due process of law.”

  “I real
ize that, sir.”

  “Oh? Well, that will be all, Prendergast.”

  I heard Dick leave; then came the noise of Dr. Alling using the Hunt & Peck system on the typewriter. After ten or fifteen minutes he also left. Suddenly the phone rang.

  “Learn anything?” said Daisy’s voice.

  “Why, how did you know I was—”

  “Because you weren’t in any of the other places where you should have been when I tried to get you.”

  “What did you want me for?”

  “To tell you what you know already, that Alling had phoned Prendergast to come to his office.”

  “But how did you know they’d left?”

  “Oh, just a little device of mine. Listen, you’d better get out of there, because I have a hunch that Alling is going to ask me to find you in about a minute. Better scram back to your house.”

  I was hardly inside the door when the phone rang. It was Alling, sure enough, asking me if I cared to drive Shoulder Lake with him for dinner. We stopped at the Altonville Inn, where the manager substantiated the first stage of Prendergast’s story. We proceeded to Phillipston. The manager of the Craig produced his night clerk whose answers fully agreed with Prendergast’s statements. At last we drew up at the Mason Lodge and had no difficulty in inspecting the ledger. Tolland and Prendergast were the last names entered under the date of the 3rd of April.

  “Any way of telling just when they did arrive?” Dr. Alling asked the owner.

  “I can tell you whether it was before or after midnight, by seeing if it’s the night clerk’s handwriting on the tally slip.” After rummaging in a file a bit he held up a sheet and said, “Before midnight.”

  The tally slip, marked “Pd. Cash,” listed a double room and bath at $5.00, $3.40 for room service, and $2.00 for two breakfasts.

  “Any way of telling whether either of them went out again during the night?” Alling asked.

  The manager chuckled and said, “If he did, he went out like a light, or else on all fours.”