Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  “I would not be so sure of that, my boy,” Doctor Zinder said. “I say definitely that it can be one, but—” He paused and studied Harker thoughtfully, a faint humorless smile curving his lips.

  “But what?” Harker cried. He stood up, towering over the slight figure of the doctor, his fists clenched. “Tell me, damn you,” he said excitedly. “I won’t be played with like a baby.”

  “Calmly, my friend,” Doctor Zinder said. “Listen to me carefully now. If you were to—ah—lose a leg you would thereby become eligible to benefit under the terms of your father’s will. Is that not so?”

  Harker sank back on the bed, his eyes widening with horror.

  “Yes,” he said thickly, “then I would—” His voice faltered and he stared at the doctor’s wrinkled face with sudden revulsion. “Is that your plan?” he cried. Panic rose in his breast as the doctor continued to regard him in silence. “Yes, that is your idea! You want to hack me up like a butchered hog, don’t you?”

  “You are leaping to conclusions,” the Doctor murmured. “Part of what you say is true, I admit, but hear me out. In the years since I left Germany I have experimented exclusively with amputation and artificial grafting. The results I have obtained would rock the medical world were they known. I have perfected a technique of grafting human limbs onto live bodies. Skin grafting is common but I undertook to graft the muscles, bone and nerves together in the same manner. Do you see now what I am getting at?”

  HARKER pressed his hands to his temples. His brain seemed to be racing furiously, but he was unable to think coherently.

  “No, no,” he gasped, “I don’t know what you mean and I don’t want to know.”

  “I will be explicit. If you lost a leg in an accident you would become the beneficiary of your father’s will, for you would be incapacitated and unable to support yourself. Also you would be deferred from military service. That much you can follow, yes? Good. Now listen carefully. I can give you a new leg. A flesh and blood leg as good or better than the one you will lose. This operation will only take a few months. At the end of that time you will have a perfect leg. No one will know of this. It will be presumed that you have gotten yourself an artificial leg. You will have the complete estate of your father and freedom to do as you please; for the army doctors will have deferred you from service. Do you understand now what I mean?”

  “Y—yes,” Harker faltered. “I see.” He looked guiltily about the room, as if fearful of being overheard. “But how do I know you can get me a new leg? If you fail I’ll go through life a cripple, helpless—”

  “Even if I did fail,” the doctor said, “it would not be too bad. You would have money, life would be pleasant for you.”

  “No!” Harker cried hoarsely. He looked down at his legs and shuddered. “I must be sure.”

  “Do not be alarmed,” Doctor Zinder said. “I said ‘if’ I failed. I will not fail. You do not have to take my word for that. I will let you examine completely the record of my experiments over the past twenty-five years and you will see things that I have done. Have no fear. You will be convinced. Within three months after you lose your leg I will have grafted another one in place for you. And it will be a perfect leg.”

  “Why are you doing this for me?” Harker said. “What do you want out of this deal for yourself?”

  “When you inherit your father’s estate you will be a wealthy man. I need money. We will work something out that will be satisfactory to both of us, I think. That is a trifle.” Harker stood up and paced up and down the floor. Tiny beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. He ran a hand through his thinning, sandy hair. His mind ran in circles like a caged rat. Doubts assailed him and his skin grew feverish. Amputation! The word had a horrible sound. A cold, gleaming knife poised to slice—No! He bit his lower lip until the salty taste of the blood was in his mouth.

  But his greed was great. The thought of his father’s money, tantalizingly close to his grasp, was maddening. All the things he had lusted for in his poverty would be his again, if he took this step. Could he trust this man?

  “You want money?” he said jerkily to the doctor.

  “That is correct.”

  Harker’s breath became ragged as his suspicion grew.

  “Why don’t you sell this technique of yours?” he snarled. “That should bring you millions. Damn you, what’s your game?”

  “WHO would buy it?” Doctor Zinder said gently. “The government? Hardly. They might take it, use it, but such things are never sold. They become public property when their discovery is announced. It is not so much altruism but the force of public opinion that makes doctors release the rights of their discoveries for the public welfare. Also there is a slight matter of pride. The fools have ridiculed my ideas and theories for two decades. Am I to crawl to them again, begging respectfully that they take my grafting technique as a gift? In that case I would not even receive the credit for the discovery.”

  “All right, all right,” Harker snapped, He paced the floor, thudding his right fist into his left hand. He stopped suddenly in front of the doctor.

  “Where will you get the leg?” he demanded.

  Doctor Zinder smiled and his face was unpleasantly shadowed.

  “That is a mere detail,” he murmured. “You may leave that in my hands. Have you made up your mind?”

  Harker’s breath came in shuddering gasps and his fingers were tightened into straining fists.

  “Yes,” he said, “I’ve made up my mind.”

  CHAPTER II

  FIVE weeks later Silas Harker was wheeled into the luxuriously furnished private office of Counselor Morton Fortescue, senior partner of the law firm of Fortescue and Higgins.

  Harker was in a wheel chair. One shod foot was visible against the foot-rest of the chair. The other was conspicuously missing.

  Counselor Fortescue was seated behind a wide mahogany desk. At his side were an elderly, white-haired couple, with bewildered, apprehensive expressions on their tired faces. There was a secretary at the opposite side of the desk with a notebook pad in her hand.

  Counselor Fortescue was a heavy-set man with pendulous jowls and snapping brown eyes. He looked up and nodded to Silas Harker.

  “It’s been some time, Silas, since I’ve seen you,” he said. “Sorry to meet you again under such—er—unhappy circumstances.”

  Harker smiled wanly but didn’t answer. His face was pale and drawn and there were lines about his mouth that had not been there a month before. But his eyes were sharp with a new cunning and sense of power.

  “You—er—may come up closer to the desk,” Counselor Fortescue said. “It will be easier for us all if we can hear each other clearly.”

  Harker looked over his shoulder. Doctor Zinder was standing impassively behind the wheel chair.

  “Doctor, I do not believe you have met Mr. Fortescue, my father’s attorney.”

  Doctor Zinder bowed and smiled stiffly.

  “It is a pleasure, Counselor.”

  “How do you do?” Fortescue said, as Doctor Zinder moved Harker’s chair slowly to the side of the desk. He cleared his throat and glanced down at the papers on his desk. Then he raised his eyes to Silas. “As you know Silas you father’s will was not made in your favor. The bulk of the estate, he left to Mr. and Mrs. Mason, who, as you know, were his only servants for the last twenty five years of his life. You, I am sure, remember the Masons favorably.” He smiled reassuringly at the white-haired couple at his side.

  Harker looked up at the two old people, who stood, hands clasped together, watching the scene with troubled eyes.

  “I remember the Masons,” he said. He nodded to them and turned his gaze again to the lawyer. “Please go on.”

  “However,” Counselor Fortescue said, “there was a provision in your father’s will stipulating that you would become the beneficiary if you should in any way be disabled or incapacitated.” His gaze wavered from Harker’s and dropped to the one shoe visible against the foot rail of the wheel
chair. He coughed and mopped his brow with a handkerchief. “Since your unfortunate accident you have become, under the terms of the will, your father’s sole beneficiary. However there are a few things remaining to be cleared up.”

  “WHAT things?” Harker asked quickly,

  “First, I must have a complete report of how the accident occurred, to add to the account we already have. It is a formality, but unfortunately a necessary one. Dr. Zinder, I believe, was the surgeon who performed the operation?”

  “Yes,” said Harker.

  “That is excellent,” the lawyer said. He leaned back in his chair. “Suppose you tell us, Doctor, the circumstances surrounding the operation. My secretary will take complete notes and we will have this business over with.”

  “You have made several references to accident,” Doctor Zinder said quietly. “It was not an accident, but a gangrenous infection that necessitated the operation. Mr. Harker has rooms in the establishment where I reside. A simple scratch on his leg resulted in the infection. When he asked me to examine him it was too late for anything but emergency measures. I performed the operation in my room. I am a licensed surgeon and I have the necessary equipment in my rooms. That is all there is to the matter. It is extremely unfortunate for Mr. Harker that he did not have his cut taken care of immediately, but there is nothing that can be done about that now.”

  “I see,” Fortescue said. He tapped a pencil against the sheets of paper on his desk and frowned. “In that case there is no need to take up any more of your time. I will have the necessary papers drawn up. A few signatures will be necessary and then your father’s estate will be in your hands.”

  “Thank you,” Harker said.

  “There is just one more thing,” Fortescue said. He smiled at the elderly couple beside him. “Mr. and Mrs. Mason served your father long and faithfully and it was obviously his wish that they be taken care of. This change in the will has left them in extremely difficult straits. Now, just as a suggestion, I think it might be a nice gesture if you were to give them something in the way of a pension to take care of their simple wants. A thousand or two a year would do it nicely and—er—you can see it won’t be for many years.” Harker looked thoughtfully at the Masons and then at Morton Fortescue.

  “Would they have done it for me?” he inquired mildly.

  “Why, my boy,” Fortescue said in surprise, “I thought you knew. They had made arrangements to provide you with a yearly income for life out of the estate. They felt distressed that you had been left out completely, and they felt your father wouldn’t mind too much. I had all the papers drawn, but of course your unfortunate accident has changed everything.”

  “So they were going to do that for me,” Harker said softly.

  “Certainly,” Fortescue said heartily. “They’re wonderful people. It’s little wonder that your father thought so much of them. Now I’d suggest as a pension—”

  “Mr. Fortescue,” Harker said icily, “in the future I can dispense with your advice and suggestions. The Masons were stupid fools if they thought one damn about me. Because they were going to make an addle-headed, sentimental gesture, does it follow that I have to be equally foolish? Certainly not.”

  Morton Fortescue dropped his eyes to the desk and a flush stained his heavy face.

  “I see,” he said. “I will send over the papers for your signature by messenger. Good day.”

  Harker smiled thinly.

  “Goodbye, Counselor,” he said lightly.

  He was still smiling in comfortable satisfaction as Doctor Zinder turned his chair and wheeled him out of the office.

  CHAPTER III

  “WHERE’S my leg?”

  Silas Harker shouted the question at Doctor Zinder He was seated in his wheel chair in a sumptuously furnished hotel suite and the doctor was regarding him blandly from the comfortable depths of an over-stuffed chair.

  Harker’s hands were hooked like claws about the arms of his chair and his face was flushed with rage.

  “You heard me!” he bellowed. “Don’t sit there and grin at me, damn you! Where is the leg you promised me? It’s been five months now since my operation. You’ve got all the money you need, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, now that you mention it, I have plenty of money,” the doctor said calmly. He blew a lazy wreath of smoke toward the ceiling. “These things cannot be rushed, my boy. Securing just the exact type of leg I need for the operation is taking a little longer than I thought. You see it must be the leg of a man close to your own age and size. I have a prospect lined up for tonight and maybe luck will be with me this time.”

  “You still haven’t told me how you’re going to get the leg,” Harker said. “Are you going to buy it? Who’d be foolish enough to sell a leg?”

  “You were,” Doctor Zinder chuckled. “Shut up!” shouted Harker. “I did it only because I trusted you. I don’t want any more of your damn attempts at comedy, Zinder.”

  He pulled the blanket closer about his lap and wheeled his chair sulkily away from the doctor. His gaze moved disconsolately over the rich furnishings of the room. They suddenly seemed a heavy, outrageous price to pay for his miserable helplessness.

  Doctor Zinder stood and walked to the door.

  “Au revoir, my impetuous friend.” He glanced at his watch. “I meet our new prospect in less than an hour. Perhaps when I return I shall have good news to report.”

  When the doctor had gone Harker wheeled his chair to the wide double windows that commanded a view of the tossing gray lake and his eyes grew cold as he watched the white sails far out on the water and the swooping gulls playing tag with foamy-crested breakers that dashed against the shore.

  Everything he gazed on seemed joyous and carefree and unfettered. His eyes dropped to his lap and a choking anger swept over him.

  If Zinder had been lying to him . . . The thought was too much. Zinder couldn’t have fabricated all the records and photographs of experiments over the last two decades.

  IT was then, as he sat before the window watching the gray lake, that he decided Zinder must die. He wondered why the thought had never occurred to him before. Whether Zinder had lied to him or not, whether he accomplished the grafting of the new leg or not, was immaterial. The man knew too much and for that reason he would always be dangerous.

  The thought of Zinder’s death gave him a measure of comfort. Harker was slightly surprised at the extent of his own callousness in this respect. He turned over in his mind a half dozen methods he could use to eliminate the doctor and he was pleased to discover that the process was a pleasant and stimulating pastime.

  Once the decision to kill Zinder was made, he felt strangely relieved. He realized then that in all probability he had been subconsciously planning the man’s murder for months. It was all so logical and simple that it startled him. Zinder was the only man who could ever cause him trouble. No one in the world suspected that the amputation of his leg had been deliberate, and no one could possibly dream that he was planning to have a flesh and blood leg grafted onto his stump. Zinder, however, knew those things, and he was probably intending to blackmail him for the rest of his life when the operation was completed.

  Harker chuckled out loud and the first smile in months touched his lips. What an unpleasant surprise was in store for the little German doctor!

  For the rest of the afternoon he concentrated on ways and means. A gun would be simple and definite but the noise would create attention. The opportunities for poison were somewhat limited. That left the alternative of cold steel.

  A knife would be perfect, Harker decided. He could easily conceal it in the folds of his blanket and when Zinder turned his back—that would be that.

  There would then be the problem of disposing of the body, but he could figure out something without too much difficulty.

  When Zinder returned to the hotel apartment it was dark. He closed the door hurriedly behind him and strode across the room to Harker. His face was flushed and his hands trembled as he lit
a cigarette.

  “Well, what luck?” Harker asked anxiously.

  “I have the leg,” Zinder said. His eyes were flicking nervously about the room as he spoke.

  Harker felt a thrill of excitement. He leaned forward in his chair, eyes blazing.

  “You’ve got it?” he cried.

  “Yes,” said Zinder.

  “Wonderful! How soon can we start the operation?”

  “Immediately. I’ve already sent for the car to take you to the laboratory. There is not a second’s time to lose. I must perform the operation before rigor mortis sets into the leg.”

  “Rigor mortis!” Harker cried. “Then the leg has just been freshly amputated. Zinder, where is this leg? Where did you get it?”

  “I’ve sent the leg on to the laboratory,” Zinder said. “Now stop bothering me with questions. You’ve got to get ready.”

  “ZINDER!” Harker cried desperately, “where did you get that leg? Whose was it? Where is that person now? I must know. You can’t possibly understand how I feel.”

  “You’re behaving like a child,” Zinder snapped. “What difference does it make where I got the leg? It will be yours within twenty-four hours, you fool.”

  “That’s why I must know,” Harker said.

  “I will tell you this much,” Zinder said. “The former owner of the leg has no use for it now.”

  Harker relaxed slowly in his chair.

  “I feel better,” he said. “You got the leg then from the morgue, didn’t you?”

  Doctor Zinder paused in the act of lighting a cigarette and studied Harker deliberately.

  “You are being rather naive, my friend,” he murmured. “I had to take drastic measures to secure this particular leg. To be blunt, I had to murder the man.”

  “Murder?” gasped Harker. “But

  “Don’t act so shocked,” Doctor Zinder said coldly. “You don’t imagine I wanted to kill the fool, do you? It was the only thing I could do. I met him at a lonely spot far from the city. Everything was perfect except that his fondness for his leg was greater than the inducement of your cash. So I had to put him out of the way. Now stop babbling. The thing has been done. And if we’re going to perform a successful operation we must hurry.”