The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck

by Alexander Laing

  ‘D you want me to believe that men don’t use all their pockets? Their clothes certainly do bulge out of shape in enough places to make you think they do.”

  “Well, how many pockets have I got in this suit?” I challenged.

  She studied it. “Good gracious, there must be twelve.

  “You’re three short,” I answered. “There are fifteen, which is the usual number; and with two extra outside ones in an overcoat or topcoat, you never have any use for the eighteenth.”

  “Eighteen pockets? Whew! No wonder men bulge. All right, you win. No doubt the books were there all the time. Perhaps Marjorie isn’t trying to shield her friend Prendergast. Just the same, I still have my suspicions of dear little Marjorie.”

  “Her friend Prendergast? Are they friends?”

  “Not that I know of,” Daisy admitted, “but it seemed a swell solution of awhile. But I’m going to be Marjorie’s bosom friend for awhile longer, just the same. That young lady interests me a lot.”

  At about this time the sheriff himself got wind, belatedly, of the real reason for Jarvis’s suicide. At once he resumed his fingerprinting activities. During the Christmas vacation he had extended his attention to the faculty, and, before mid-March, could boast that he had checked the prints of every student but Prendergast and every member of the faculty except Coroner Kent. On March 16, 1933, Sheriff Palmer had, but his own admission, only five logical suspects left to pursue: Kent, Prendergast, and three of last year’s graduates who had moved into other states.

  One day I asked him, in a bantering fashion, whether he had fingerprinted all the wives and children of the faculty. Winking shrewdly, he opened the notebook that contained his lists of suspects, and showed me the names of a number of nurses and faculty wives, all crossed off. There also, with lies drawn through them, stood the names of Daisy and Marjorie Wyck.

  One reassuring feature of the lessening tension of his period was a resumption of work on the /Short Sketch for a History of Concomitant Variations in Morphogenesis and Psychogenesis./ Dr. Allling, somewhat to my surprise, had not seemed at all interested in getting the records of Dr. Wyck’s experiments from the old creamery. When first I offered to guide him there, he declined—which probably was wise. And when I said that I would bring him the book which recorded the experiments, he said that he would prefer to leave it there until spring. The experience of the unfortunate Mrs. Bennett would probably keep her from returning there, and it was not likely that anyone else would attempt to get into it in the wintertime. She, incidentally, had proved completely uncommunicative during our two attempts to get information from her.

  One morning in March, however, I got a hint that my boss soon might want all of Wyck’s records, when, characteristically, he greeted me with the statement, “I’ve at last got the right lead for that teratology[1] chapter—or, rather, section it will be now. Please take this before we go on with what we were doing yesterday:

  “The subject of prenatal influence, like that of demonic possession, has for many years been relegated to the limbo of unmitigated superstitions; but, unlike the case of demonic possession, prenatal influence has not been blessed with a new set of names laved clean of the old awful implications; for here again we find the medical scientist refusing to consider the possibility of a fact that has been attested in many instances, from the earliest times to the present, on evidence categorically no worse than that readily accepted to substantiate less embarrassing phenomena. I refer to prenatal influence as a fact, which I have not made bold to do in the case of demonic possession.

  “The subject of the present chapter was early taken up by the Royal Society. It was worthy of scientific investigation for nearly 150 years. Then something happened which has never to my knowledge occurred in any other field of free inquiry. A generation of physicians and surgeons, the same generation that taught medicine to the poet Keats, deliberately conspired to ridicule a moot scientific point out of consideration.

  “They themselves knew that the evidence for prenatal influence was strong; they knew that it was universally believed in by all classes of society; and, it being a mental causation of a physical effect, they knew that widespread belief in it caused a presumption of maximum occurrence. Therefore they concertedly instituted a campaign of ridicule so markedly successful that the next generation of the medical profession was deprived of the right to think fairly on a question theretofore honestly listed as possible, and, because of recent researches, now classifiable among the proved facts of science.”

  * * *

  Prexy was going well when he dictated that. He smacked his lips over it, and enjoyed it. But we did not proceed with the chapter at that time.

  The science of inquire into the causes of physical abnormalities in growth.—Ed.

  Thirty

  On the last day of March, I had the experience which told me that I must make a coherent written account of events of the past year. Otherwise, with two homicidal maniacs at large, Daisy and I might not survive to tell it. I was at home studying, when I heard the knob of the front door turn. Thinking it was Biddy, I took no notice, until I heard a mumbling voice saying, “They killed him, the old divil. But I’ll get it out of his daughter. Blood’s blood. It’d be the same. Biddy! Biddy! Ye got to help me. Ye got to hold her still, so I won’t spill it.”

  I remained rigid, trying to think. After a few seconds Mike went out. I came hastily down the stairs to see where he had gone, before phoning the authorities. The door came open again and he sprang in, cornering me in the back of the hall.

  “There,” he crooned. “I wouldn’t hurt a fly, if I felt right. I ain’t been right, Davy. I love ye. But I’ll kill ye just the same, unless ye help me. Come now.”

  He grabbed my wrist in his iron fingers and pulled me toward the back door. I tried to cajole him into freeing me, but it did no good. He was used now to the fact that his hand was missing.

  “Hey, you’re hurting me,” I said, when were outside. “Ow!” I let out a yell to attract attention. Instead of help I got for my pains a numbing blow of his stump across my mouth.

  “Another sound out o’ ye and I drag ye by the neck. Quiet now,” he admonished. “I love ye Davy, but I’ll pinch ye by the neck so ye can’t yell.”

  The shrewd madman waited his chances and crossed the road with me when no one was in sight. He dragged me directly on into the pine grove that extended to the read of Wyck’s property. Fear for myself and of what he might to do Marjorie turned into a different, more intense kind of torment when I saw through the side windows of the living room that Daisy was with her so-called friend.

  Mike led me to the back porch, opened the kitchen door, and was about to enter. I quickly cried, “Run, Daisy, Mike’s here!” I grabbed his wrist with both my hands, but it was like trying to bend a baseball bat. My shriek was cut off when his fingers closed inexorably on my gullet. The last thing I saw was Daisy, suddenly silhouetted in a doorway. Then my lungs and brain both seemed to be bursting.

  When I came to, Daisy was knelling over me. My throat was so sore I could not speak, but I managed to whisper, “Where’d he go?”

  “Out the front way. You’d better lie still a little longer.”

  “Have you phoned for help?” I asked hoarsely.

  “No. He took the phone with him. Tore it off the wall, but we’ve locked the doors.”

  Daisy’s coolness shamed me into a quick recovery. “Where’s Marjorie?” I whispered.

  “She ran upstairs. Come on. Let’s go see.”

  I picked up a rolling pin from the kitchen cabinet. We went softly into the front hall toward the bottom of the stairs, and were about to ascend when there was a crash of glass. The stained glass window at the turn of the stairs bulged and shivered. Mike was on the porch roof. I tried to herd Daisy back toward the kitchen, but she said, “Wait. See where he goes.”

  Gripping my rolling pin, I waited. The whole frame of the window came out all at once. Mike stepped in, paused, and then slowly
ascended the remaining stairs. If I had been alone, I think I would have been ab abysmal coward. But, with Daisy beside me, there was nothing to do but whisper, “I’ve got to try to stop him.”

  At that moment Marjorie Wyck slipped into view. Mike crouched as if about to spring at her. Then she did something hard to explain. With spread fingers she tossed her hair into a bush on top of her head, which she seemed to shake at him as an animal might its bristling mane. Her faced showed neither the horror nor the fear that one would have expected—only fury. I was struck with amazement at its likeness to the remembered face of Ted Gideon, her half-brother, when he was killing Muriel Finch.

  “What do you want here, Mike Connell?” she said in a low, hard voice.

  “I want me blood,” he growled. “Give me back jest as much as yer father took from me, so I can git well.”

  “Go away, you fool,” she ordered.

  He stepped forward, she stepped back. Daisy and I stood tranced, watching.

  “I’ll take it then,” he growled, moving forward.

  Her expression changed. “Mike,” she said, in a solemn voice, “you know my father’s dead. But,” she cried loudly, “his devils aren’t. They’re mine to command now.”

  A hypnotic look came into her eyes, and she began to trace diagrams in the air. “Go back, Mike Connell,” she said sternly, “or I shall call Beelzebub to take you to my father.”

  Mike shrieked and pitched forward on the floor at the top of the stairs, groveling.

  “Oh, for the love of God, not that one. Keep him off. I’ll go, I’ll go.”

  He turned and came leaping down the stairs, brushing me aside and making for the front door. It was locked, of course. With a great tug he twisted the knob off, then turned and threw it through a window, plunged through it himself, and was gone.

  We turned to see Marjorie walking down the stairs, tucking her hair in order. Her features were composed as if nothing had happened.

  “I’m sorry I had to do that,” she said, “but I knew it was the only possible way to handle him.”

  Thirty-One

  I must go on quickly now from where I stopped writing last night, but I hardly care whether I write any more or not. Something has happened today that makes it not seem to matter very much what happens in the future. But I guess it is better to write than to sit around with thoughts such as mine have been in the last few hours.

  The story has already been brought up to within less than a month of the day when I now am writing, and practically nothing has happened since, except that I have been busy, writing ten or fifteen pages every night. Mike gave himself up, after the event I last wrote about. The realization that he could so easily have killed me is what made me decide to write down this record; and the knowledge, which came out soon afterward, that Ted Gideon was back in the vicinity, confirmed my decision. It is not likely that Mike will escape again. But Daisy saw Ted Gideon two days later, driving to the Wyck house, and though she notified Dr. Alling at once, he was not apprehended.

  Daisy! Dr. Alling! Well, I must get it told as quickly as possible, and get this into the mails. Yesterday I found my chance to inspect Dr. Alling’s house on the sly. And if I am being paid for my sin of curiosity, well and good. I have at least learned what a callow fool I am. At least I know now what I am in for.

  Day before yesterday Daisy went out of town, for a weekend visit (so she said) with a cousin down at Shoulder Lake. This morning, Dr. Alling drove off for Portland at about 8:30 A.M., saying he would not be back for at least twenty-four hours. So, late in the afternoon, I took my chance, walked up to the front door nonchalantly, as if expected, and found it locked. But a kitchen window proved to be unlatched. I pried it up, and got in. There was nothing surprising in any of the rooms that were open, but the garret and bathroom were locked.

  I thought the latter fact somehow more suspicious than the former. As the bathroom window must open upon the roof of a kitchen porch, and as trees arched thickly near the house, I took the chance of climbing out an adjacent bedroom window. The one opening into the bathroom was locked fast, and the shade was drawn. But, by squinting through the crack between shade and casement, I could see most of the room. Over the bathtub was a curious apparatus, a rope and pulley arrangement with a little harness like a dog’s at the end of the rope. I was at a loss to account for its use.

  Next, perceiving that the limb of an oak in the back yard reached very near the back garret window, I swung up to it, and crawled to a point from which I could see inside. By the rays of the low sun, striking through the window opposite, I could make out, between two trunks, the little dry-cleaning machine I had seen depicted in the scientific supply catalogue.

  Even then I was loath to believe that my supposed benefactor was proved by this coincidence to be guilty of a crime. I swung down to the porch roof again, reentered the house, and spent the remaining daylight fruitlessly poking around for further clues. It seemed safer to wait for darkness before climbing out the kitchen window again.

  A car suddenly paused in front of the house, and then proceeded into the garage. I knew that my change of escape by the kitchen window was now cut off. Just as I was about to risk opening one of the study windows, I heard a footfall on the porch steps, and got a glimpse of feminine apparel. There was nothing to do but retreat upstairs, and make my getaway by means of the tree. I worked the bedroom window up and waited, to make sure that Alling was inside. When he came in the back way, and walked directly toward the front door, I waited to let him admit the other person before I myself slipped out.

  “Sorry,” I heard him say, “but I do like to put the car away when I’ve come in for the night. Nice drive, wasn’t it? I think spring’s here at last.”

  “Gorgeous drive.” It was Daisy’s voice answering. “It was awfully nice of you to go so far out of your way to pick me up.”

  Alling said, “It was a pleasure. Now, can’t we cap a beautiful afternoon by consuming a beautiful Welsh rabbit? They’re my specialty, you know.”

  “Oh, I’d love it,” Daisy answered, “but I’d better be getting out before anyone sees me. David can be so suspicious.”

  “You don’t think he has any inkling of—” His voice trailed away as they walked into the study. For a minute or two the incomprehensible mumble of their voices was an agony to me. Then I glimpsed them, walking back toward the front door. Alling was waving a check in his hand, to dry the wet ink.

  “There you are. Well, it’s a relief to know that you feel absolutely sure at last.”

  “I’m so sure,” she answered, “that I know I can confront him with a single question, and make him collapse and confess. That’s his temperament, you know. He’ll carry a bluff to the last minute and then go to pieces. It’s taken a long while to make certain-sure, but now we know.”

  “Thanks to you, my dear. It must have been tedious at times. You’ve earned your money ten times over, and you’ve been ten times smarter then that Pinkerton man I hired. Well, this little bonus will show you my gratitude. It’s been a wearisome job, holding off the law. I wonder if we’ve held it off so long that it will have to be up to us now to precipitate the dénouement.”

  “We can do that too,” she said.

  “Well, it’s certainly been clever of you not to let him suspect anything. It takes a woman. I feel almost sorry for the chap.”

  She chuckled, in a way that cut my heart in two. Thinking back, I remembered that it was she who had deliberately suggested that we pool our knowledge. And it was a fine ending after Alling’s righteous words, “Tell the exact truth, Saunders, but no more.” He must have known well how soon I would incriminate myself, by telling the exact truth, with my hopelessly bad alibi. I wondered why they had let it drag on so long, and what it was that finally had seemed to them to cinch the case.

  When Daisy had left, I slipped quickly out onto the roof, and closed the window. It was dusky now, but I thought it would be wise to remain standing with my back against the outside wall,
to find out what Alling was going to do, before risking discovery in a noisy quick descent. The bathroom light went on, and I heard a noise of water in the tub. An irresistible curiosity to see the naked twisted body of this sanctimonious double-dealer caused me to creep along the slightly sloping shingles, and peer again past the shade. A minute later I witnessed a curious spectacle, ending in one of the greatest shocks of my life. Manfred Alling, nude, stepped into my line of vision, holding a nude infant in one arm. He fastened the little belt around it, seized the rope of the pulley arrangement, and stepped into the tub, supporting the child by a tension on the rope.

  It was only then that I saw what the amazing business was all about, and learned why this man had elected to live so secretively, and alone. Manfred Alling’s interest in abnormalities grew out of the fact that ht was himself a monster—in the exact scientific sense of the term. Out of his left thing was growing another shriveled, half-formed body, with sightless eyes and an imbecilic expression, with mouth sagging open and apt, I suppose, to get full of soapy water during the bathing process if it were not supported by the rope. The thing seemed lifeless, and I felt sure that it did no respire for itself. Otherwise he could hardly have worn it under his clothing, in the kind of corset arrangement which I presently saw him put on.

  * * *

  I am going to mail this now. I dare not wait any longer. It is two o’clock in the morning. I have had a stamped envelope ready all along. Let it go, and let it be read or not, as fate will have it. I don’t care what happens to it, or to me either, now.[1]

  The foregoing portion of the story was received in New York as a unit, on the 6th day of May, 1933, postmarked Chicago, May 4th, at 5:00 P.M.—Ed.

  Part 2

  The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck