The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck

by Alexander Laing

  We had dinner and motored back to Altonville. I still had received no actual explanation, but, as we neared the school building, Prexy said, “Would you mind taking one letter, so that I can drop by the post office and get it into the night mail?”

  I here reproduce the letter from the carbon in the files:

  Altonville, Me.

  Sept. 25, 1932

  Hon. Harvy Tolland

  381 East Park Boulevard

  Portland, Maine

  Dear Senator Tolland:

  I take pleasure in informing you that your nephew Richard Prendergast has passed the first two preliminary examinations. His marks, by no means distinguished, were satisfactory evidence of summer study and of a changed attitude. The other examinations will come during the Thanksgiving recess.

  As you doubtless already know, the grand jurors have found the indictment against Charles Michaud and Bridget Connell, in the Wyck case, “not a true bill.” The county prosecutor is in consequence redoubling his effort to secure an indictment. It is not unlikely that everyone connected with the school, including your nephew, will be asked for an alibi. I questioned him in private this morning, and feel sure that his story, if substantiated, will immediately absolve him from any further annoyance.

  It will therefore be helpful to me to have a sworn statement of the time which he spent in your company from the adjournment of the faculty meeting, April 3, 1932, until noon of the day following. Your own signature to such a document will unquestionably serve to relieve your nephew from any further embarrassment.

  Very sincerely yours,

  Manfred Alling.

  When I had filed the carbon, Dr. Alling offered to drive me to my next destination, but I elected to stay and finish checking the cost of new supplies for the coming term. The main chance for error in my check-up had to do with apparatus for private use, purchased through the school to secure a better price. Such items were marked “Personal” on the requisition sheets.

  Dr. Alling, who had private means, paid for all his own laboratory supplies, so in his case it was merely necessary to total the bill. There was nothing of any special interest, this time, except a newly developed type of kymograph,[1] which made its record upon a ribbon and thus was not limited by the size of the drum as on the older kind. As I was checking up its receipt, I got the pleasant notion of taking a record of my own pulse, ringing up Daisy while the machine was in operation to observe the effect of her voice on my heart. Then I tore off the ribbon to give her as a souvenir—a scientific warrant of my affection.

  The requisitions were filed in a loose-leaf ledger. As I bent the back to slip Alling’s requisitions in with his former ones, the first leaf in the book caught my eye with its first item:

  Cleaning Machine, Cat. No. 14086 Harley, Fanshaw

  $9.00 less 25%

  The sheet was five years old. Out of my subconscious arose the words of the sheriff’s report on the bundle containing Dr. Wyck’s clothing. “The suit and coat in the said bundle smelled strong of cleaning fluid.” I took down the big catalogue of the Harley, Fanshaw Scientific Supply Company, and looked up item 14086, confidently expecting it to be some device for cleaning laboratory glassware. It came as a shock to find the words

  “Harley Home Dry-Cleaner”

  and an illustration of an oblong five-gallon can, mounted askew on an axle, so that whatever was inside it would be tumbled around in all directions when the crank was turned. Cleaning fluid, not mailable, was listed at 85 cents a gallon. Fearfully I thumbed through Alling’s later requisition slips, and found that on each one he had ordered at least two gallons of cleaning fluid.

  Alling was precisely the kind of person who would dry-clean and press his own clothes, not because of expense, but because of the remarks that he would imagine as passing back and forth among the cleaners about the absurd shape of his twisted coat, and of the trousers with one hip twice as big as the other. Moreover he had many of the fussy, fastidious habits of confirmed bachelors. I had noticed that he invariably made his own coffee, timed his own eggs, puttered with the pendulums of his clocks, and paused in the vestibule, when entering the house, to run a buffer over his shoes.

  There were probably thousands of such machines sold. There might be more right here in Altonville. Nevertheless, I knew in my heart that they were uncommon, and that the possession of one was a strong presumption against Alling’s innocence, considering the fact that the bundle containing Wyck’s dry-cleaned clothes had been mailed in Boston at a time when Alling himself was in the city. I spent an hour going through the whole book of requisitions, to see if any other member of the faculty might have ordered such a machine. But none had.

  For the present, I did not dare tell Daisy about this discovery. Of late, her own suspicions of Alling had been dying down.

  I should mention the fact that bills of indictment had been drawn up separately against Charlie and Biddy, and that for a second time the grand jury had halted the state’s case by refusing to endorse either one. Rumor had it that Charlie had given a perfectly good alibi when questioned by the jury in camera. But their oath made it illegal for them to divulge any such testimony.

  An instrument for recording wavelike motions, or modulations; especially for recording variations in blood pressure.—Ed.

  Twenty-Five

  After a night of worry about the dry-cleaning machine, I approached my morning’s task in a distrustful mood. But it took hardly ten words from Prexy—words spoken in the ordinary course of our business together—to convince me that it was absurd to suspect him. His passion to improve the curative facilities of mankind was so sincere, that I merely fell back upon the old formula, “The king can do no wrong.”

  That was how matters rested between us, through most of the school year. Meanwhile, the state got nowhere with its indictments, and the sheriff was off on fantastic tangents of his own devising.

  At the time of the second inquest I again asked Dr. Alling whether he wanted me to continue to withhold information which I knew to be pertinent, and he again advised me to construe “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” within the limits of the law of evidence—that is, he cautioned me that “the whole truth” meant no more than the full specific answer to any individual question.

  Another hint of his legal knowledge came out in a special convocation of students and faculty, which replaced, in the fall of 1932, the usual rather meaningless opening exercises. Prexy spoke about the murder of Dr. Wyck, and its effect on the school’s fortunes. Five prospective students, he said, had canceled their applications. Six old ones had transferred to other institutions.

  “We have suffered a double misfortune in the loss of a brilliant scientist and in the mystery that beclouds his death. As you know, this school depends for a large part of its sustenance upon appropriations of the state legislature. I must ask each of you to consider it his personal responsibility to guard the school’s good name. I ask a proper cooperation with the officers of the law who are investigating the death of Dr. Wyck. By the same token, I expect these officers to confine their investigation within strictly legal limits.

  “It has come to my attention that efforts are being made by one official to take fingerprints of students, without due process of law. The maintenance of personal liberties is more important than the solution of any one crime. I therefore wish to offer the school’s official protection to anyone who feels that he is being imposed upon. I shall be glad to explain to any of you your legal rights. The laws of our state permit the taking of fingerprints only of persons accused of a felony or a more serious crime.[1] The prints must be destroyed if a conviction is not promptly obtained.

  “One point more: at the request of the authorities, the vault and preparation room have to date been kept locked. A final inspection will be given these rooms tomorrow, and the bodies will be available for dissection on Thursday, October 6th.

  “Gentlemen, I wish you the full reward of the endeavor which you bring to your
studies.”

  Hearing this candid speech, and the clapping that followed, I was glad that I had come to a decision about his inability to do wrong. His warning about fingerprints was justified, for the sheriff was going around with a list of all students, asking if they would like to be fingerprinted, and many had no objections. The state, Dr. Alling told me, was deliberately delaying its case now, until the next session of the court, as it was felt that the present grand jury panel would probably stand by its guns and refuse to find a true bill on circumstantial evidence of any kind—and as yet, so far as we knew, there was no other.

  We set our exploring expedition for Sunday, the 30th of October, and were not sorry when we discovered the qualities of the day itself.

  It was what we used to call football weather: air with just enough of an edge on it and a high, hard layer of cloud. I found Daisy all ready at noon with luncheon put in a small pack basket. As she slung it from one shoulder, scorning my indignant desire to do the man’s part of the job, I got a new picture of her. Usually she wore dresses distinctly on the peek-a-boo side, but on this occasion she wore heavy walking boots, twill breeches, and a short leather jacket. Her coppery-brown hair, moreover, had been told to shift for itself, and was most pleasantly tousled even before we set forth. Her— But if I think too much about Daisy the story will be held up indefinitely. The subject grows so much more important every hour, and the early part of this narrative had to be so restrained about it.

  On the hillside road withering grass had choked even the ruts.

  We ate on the edge of the cellar hole, occasionally standing up, still chewing, to survey the surrounding territory and to discuss possibilities. The bottom of the hole was now deep in dry grass, withered asters, and goldenrod. No trace remained to show where the tent had stood.

  I remembered that Muriel’s letter had mentioned a tank with running water; so a brook must be somewhere near-by. We went toward opposite ends of the field to find it. Daisy called, and I ran over to join her. I went upstream, she down. Again she was first to call. “Here’s our pipe, Dave.”

  “Good girl!” I applauded, and poked around nearer the cellar until I came upon the pipe-line there. It was not had to follow, having been laid flat on the ground and covered with leaf mold. When it definitely disappeared underground it was about three or four yards above the uphill side of the foundations. We followed along what we supposed was the line of its continuation, stamping to discover any hollowness below. But the pipe simply dived into the ground and disappeared.

  The adjacent wall of the cellar was made of huge granite slabs, from the days when settlers built for the ages. I put my shoulder against each in turn with a faint hope of finding one that “pivoted” in the proper romantic fashion, but Wyck evidently had been a realist. Against the center of the wall stood the enormous base of the chimney—at least eight feet wide and six deep. I even speculated with the idea that the laboratory might be inside it. There was a Dutch oven, but it was only about two feet deep, with solid stone all around. The top of the chimney had fallen long ago.

  “How about those stones? Hey!” Daisy shouted. “Look!”

  On the right, at the base of the chimney, was a shallow pile of stones fallen from the top. Daisy was kneeling, pointing between two of them to a piece of lithographed tin which proved to be an almost unrusted sardine box. Hastily I heaved the stones up, tossing them aside. Beneath them, instead of ground, we came upon more stones, more tin cans. As I yanked a big slab loose, part of the chimney itself seemed to crumble, and a neat square hole gaped in the side—about a foot of it above ground and a foot below. The bottom of it probably showed the original level of the cellar. I crawled into it cautiously on hands and knees and looked up. There was just a glimmer of light. My flashlight then showed that it was a regular fireplace with a flue of its own, in the top of which a large flat stone had been placed, or had fallen.

  When I came out, Daisy shouted with laughter. I was covered, it seems, with soot and charcoal. Evidently Ted Watson had used that fireplace for cooking. But why should he have filled it full of stones?

  “I’ll bet the charcoal was just a blind,” Daisy said. “Here, let me look.” She bent down and banged at the back of the fireplace with a stick. It clanked metallically.

  “Gangway!” I said, and went plunging back into the hole, prying around until I found the edge of the iron plate which, with no great difficulty, came out entire. Daisy meanwhile had been pulling more stones from in front of the chimney, making the place easier to get at. When I had hauled out the plate I turned the flashlight into the hole. It showed a dirt tunnel, shored with logs that had not been there very long.

  This provision is true of Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and of all other states whose laws I have inspected in this connection.—Ed.

  Twenty-Six

  Once inside the tunnel, I could almost stand erect. There was a sharp right turn, and the tunnel led about six feet farther, ending surprisingly at a door frame made of granite slabs. There was a recently-made door of unpainted pine boards, hanging slightly ajar from ancient wrought-iron hinges. We pushed it open, and flashed the light into a low room, about eight by twelve feet in extent, made of the same kind of granite slabs that had been used in the foundations of the house. At one end there was another door, round-topped.

  “What the devil would a place like this have been here for?” I whispered. “It’s old as the hills.”

  “It’s a vegetable cellar, or else a creamery, Dave. Look! Look at that tank.”

  To corroborate Muriel’s letter, there was a galvanized cattle trough. Water flowed into it from one pipe, and an overflow pipe carried the surplus away.

  The floor, of loose slabs, was comparatively new. The end farthest from where we stood was littered with smashed glassware and apparatus, kicked under a bench. I had noticed a peculiar purring noise when I came in. Inspection showed it to be a water-motor in the intake pope, coupled to a small dynamo, from which broken wires dangled. Near-by was a storage battery. I looked around quickly for lighting fixtures, but saw only a little acetylene lamp on the debris.

  “He must have done something about ventilation,” I observed; and Daisy said, “Try that other door.”

  It opened upon an irregular dirt wall pierced by a dozen 2-inch pipes through which light glimmered faintly. We went outside and paced until we knew we were standing approximately over the buried door. The ground sloped toward the brook, massed with raspberry bushes. I crawled among them and found some of the vent pipes stick up through the ground. Originally there bust have been a cut, downward and into the bank, to reach the old door. Wyck had filled it in level with the rest of the bank, put in his vent pipes, and transplanted bushes flush with the hundreds that grew wild on either side. It was a neat job.

  “That’s the way dreams of empire end up, Dave,” Daisy said moodily. “Whoever built this place, with a chimney like that, and an underground creamery of whatever it was—well, they must have thought they were founding a dynasty to till the land forever. And instead, it gets used by an old maniac, in the end. My, it’s getting dark early.”

  “Only half past three,” I said. “Must be just the clouds. It won’t make any difference to us down there. Come on.”

  We re-entered the dungeon and began to explore the pile of debris under the workbench. I dragged out a sizable induction coil, and then a Tesla coil, and whistled my surprise.

  “Where are they, Dave?” Daisy inquired.

  “I built the same kind of things when I was a kid to put on magic exhibitions. That induction coil alone would kill you, hooked to that battery. But if you hooked on the Tesla coil too, it would run the voltage up so high and the amperage down so low that you could just do harmless tricks with it. In a dark place like this if you held that brass knob your hair would stand straight on end with a ripple of blue flame playing around on top of it. Look, if I stood on this rubber mat here, and held the knob, and stretched out my hand to you, there’d be a big
brush of thin blue sparks from my hand to your body. Can’t you imagine Wyck playing he was Beelzebub? You see, Mike wasn’t delirious when he talked about that.”

  A minute later Daisy said, “Whew! Look here, you’re right,” and pulled out a mask with sharp brass horns on a metal band to which was attached a binding post. My next find was the business end of an old-fashioned X-ray tube, with a pitted cathode. Daisy asked, “I wonder what he wanted it for? To see how his experiments were coming out, before the monsters were born?”

  “I don’t think so,” I answered. “This tube wouldn’t have been powerful enough to define internal tissues through the whole abdomen. Last year Dr. Alling had some correspondence with a doctor who had been systematically changing the forms of moths by subjecting cocoons to X-rays. Wyck used this tube in the making of his monsters, that’s what.[1] It’s also been done in the case of jellyfish by changing their salt content of their water.

  “If that’s so, look here,” Daisy said, triumphantly, hauling from the pile a box full of round cartons of reagents—all metallic salts. “No wonder poor Dr. Alling was scared to death of an investigation. Good Lord, it’s the best reason in the world why Alling himself would have murdered Wyck, if he thought he could keep this business secret with one neat knife-cut!”

  I had to nod in agreement, but then she added, “However, my suspicions are swinging back to saintly little Marjorie Wyck, these days. She had more personal reasons to be scared than Alling.”

  “What about Prendergast?” I inquired. “Those blue books have never turned up, you know.”

  I had never brought myself to the point of telling Daisy about the dry-cleaning machine. I decided to wait for a chance to explore Alling’s home.

  “Hey, what’s here?” Daisy said, and lifted out two graduated jars with fused nipples at the top and bottom of the graduations. There were also some red elastic tubing and several hollow needles used in vein puncture.