The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck (14 page)

“Leave me alone,” I ordered. “I’m a medic. Have you got a clean handkerchief?”

One was produced, and I used it, rolled, to separate his foaming his jaws, as the only immediate danger in such an attack is that the victim may bit his tongue off. The twitching diminished, and I expected him to go into the series of snores that should end the seizure. Instead, he rolled over suddenly, laughed, an opened his eyes with hugely dilated pupils that reminded me of Mike’s at the moment of his first violent madness. Ted Gideon’s attack had lasted less than five minutes. He began to talk in an exultant fashion, disconnectedly: the state called
epilepsia larvata,
 which at times succeeds a minor attack. I knelt beside him, listening attentively. His ravings not only confirmed some of our former conjectures explicitly, but also seemed to add new information which we could hardly have surmised.

As I was too busy listening to take down his words, I shall try to describe rather than to reproduce what he said. At first, between bursts of laughter, he seemed to be making boyish love to a reluctant and inexperienced girl, for he kept repeating vague boasts about his experience as a man of the world, chiding the young lady for her prudishness. Then he became angry, and began to describe his prowess as a lover, using the fine old Anglo-Saxon four-letter monosyllables with that peculiar fervor which we sometimes notice in the remarks of patients coming out of either—an effect which must be the psychological atoning for repression of such terms in ordinary speech. Next he was releasing a speech which extolled the advantages of being a bastard. Chuckling with imbecilic glee, he announced that his father had become impotent, and that he himself had inherited his father’s mistresses.

All of this came out garbled with irrelevant words and inaudible whisperings. His ravings next took on a sad tone, and the word “Sarah” was repeated over and over, with promises of marriage and outburst of invective against his father.

Gradually he quieted, and I questioned his two scared friends. They were positive that he had never had such an attack before; but one of them remembered that while swimming, Ted had once fainted. He had recovered while being brought ashore, had thought that his rescuer was trying to duck him, and had promptly ducked the rescuer. Everyone thought at the time that he had been pretending, but Ted had insisted that nothing had happened until someone tried to duck him. This confirmed mu suspicion that the improperly diagnosed symptoms of a year back had been early phrases of the disease of epilepsy. Old Wyck himself surely could not have known what it was, or he would never have allowed the boy to act as his driver.

I had to proceed quickly now, and it seemed wise to take what I had learned and be satisfied, for the time being. So I told his friends to watch him, and above all things not to let him know that he had done anything other than faint from illness, explaining that an epileptic never realizes that he has had a fit unless told. Then I hastened to the clergyman, described what had happened, and cautioned him that it would be most unwise under the circumstances to mention me or my mission. With that I left for Nantucket. There I gave my Harvard friend all the data except the spoken phrases, confident that he would continue the case history, a fact which might be of use before I was through.

On board the boat, headed back to New Bedford, I had every reason to believe that all these new facts had been collected without the knowledge of Ted Gideon. Of the things he had said aloud he would have no memory whatever.

1. The narrator does not seem to realize the interesting point that such an amputation had been advocated to aid in curing the malady from which “Ted Gideon” is later described as being a sufferer. See the
   New International Encyclopaedia,
    vol. viii, page 25.—Ed.
   

Adequate sleep, food, and fresh air—the therapeutic three virtues which all good doctors prescribe for others and skimp for themselves—had worked their usual miracles with me. The chance discovery of Ted Gideon, while it shortened my mental vacation, eased my mind after homecoming. Nantucket physicians hardly would allow him to leave the island. I would know where to find him.

When I reached home, at 4 P.M. on August 29th, Biddy seemed genuinely glad to see me.

“Hello there, Mr. David. Did ye meet any pretty girls at the beach? I’ll bet ye did all yer sleepin’ in the mornin’.”

“Biddy,” I said, “I had trouble fighting them off, but ’tis God’s truth that I haven’t had a date in two weeks.”

“I don’t believe ye. But if there’s truth in it, then ye must be in love. And that reminds me—Daisy Towers called yesterday to inquire when you’d a be comin’ home. She says you told her today, in a letter, and I says why was you writin’ letters to her, I’d like to know?”

Feeling that my face was reddening, I explained that it was on hospital business. “How’s Mike?” I asked.

“They say he’ll niver be any better”—her voice caught—“oh, and God knows I miss him, Mr. David.”

I gave her a squeeze, told her she was a brave colleen, and hurried off to see Daisy, who threw me a kiss through the reception window.

“Well, Romeo, have you been resting or going in for frivolity and riot?” she asked with good-natured suspicion. Then she added in a whisper, “Lots has happened.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” I said softly. “What till I tell you who I saw.”

With eyes alone she asked the question—
Who?
 In the mirror I could now see the face of the housemother, listening intently, unaware of the reflection. I stepped back and silently framed with my lips the name, “Ted Watson.” Daisy pursed her lips, said “Number please,” and thrust a switchboard plug into the appropriate jack.

Eight-thirty came at last. Daisy was wearing a cool green frock, kind to her coppery hair and to the golden tan of her shoulders. Her mother was seated beside her on the porch, but soon excused herself.

“Thank goodness,” Daisy sighed. “I’ve been burning up since five o’clock. What about”—she lowered her voice—“Ted Watson?”

“The legal name’s Ted Gideon,” I corrected her, and then gave a full account of the case history, ending with a description of the epileptic seizure.

“Could the epilepsy have been hereditary? That might account for some of the old wretch’s conduct,” she said.

“It’s not likely. But we’ve got to work on the theory that this trail of monsters and maniacs leads back to a single primary cause. Mike and the son both mad, and three monsters born—”

“It’s five now, David. Since you left there was one miscarriage with the baby so macerated that no one could tell what it was. And there was—” She paused impressively.

“Another symmelus?” I asked grimly.

“Yes, a fourth symmelus, with no arms. The hands were like flippers. Except for the head and the color of it, you could think it was a baby seal.”

“You saw it?”

“Yes. It was an emergency case, born in the Widow’s old converted Cadillac ambulance. Dr. Kent hauled me out to help him tie off the umbilical cord. The thing that nearly threw me into a fit myself was the way it barked! Instead of a birth cry it lay barking—quick yelps—something like a terrier’s. I asked Dr. Kent about it afterward and he said the larynx wasn’t human at all.”

“Did it live long?” I asked, lighting a cigarette with a match that wobbled in my fingers.

“No. It died right there in the ambulance, and the mother died at the same time.”

“Who was she?”

“Mrs. Molyneaux, the Widow’s Canuck nurse. And do you know who was the appointed overseer of her place?”

“I thought it took the whole staff, more or less, to keep an eye on her.”

“It does, but Gideon Wyck was the official overseer from July 1, 1931, to January 1, 1932. You remember I told you about a call from the Widow to Dr. Alling, saying that she wouldn’t be responsible for Wyck’s safety?”

“Then do you know how many of these queer cases came from the Widow’s?” I asked suddenly.

“All five of the monsters were born to women living within a few miles of Altonville. But only the first and last came by way of the Widow.”

“Any woman by the time she got to the Widow’s would be beyond the stage where much could be done to influence the form of the fetus.”

“Yes, except in the case of the Widow’s nurse, Mrs. Molyneaux, who was the last one, and was there all the time—”

“And of Sarah Mullin,” I broke in, “who was living at Wyck’s own house up to the time she went to the Widow’s.”

“Exactly, David. In these two cases, and in all three others, Wyck could have exerted some kind of influence—God knows what—over the mothers during the formative stages of the embryos. Lucy Bennett, mother of the second one, lived out Center way, not very far from your famous ruined farm. What’s more, her skinflint old husband sent her in to the free ward for treatment, and the records show that Wyck took care of her. The mother of the third symmelus has been living alone in Alton Plain. Her husband’s a lumberjack, and hasn’t been home for a year, except a few days at Christmas, so Wyck could have had all the chances in the world to see her.”

“And the fourth, the messed-up one?”

“Sylvia Jones was the mother. Remember her?”

I nodded, and felt something of a pang of sadness. She was a gay, considerate little nurse, who had been discharged from the hospital in February, when she fainted while on attendance upon one of the cases of stillbirth. I had a notion that she had been Daisy’s friend, and inquired.

“She was,” she said, with a metallic tone of cold, controlled anger creeping into her voice, “and this completes my case.  It killed her. When she was dying, she asked for me, the poor sweet little kid. She wanted to confess something, but talked all around the subject, till it was too late.”

“You didn’t learn anything?”

“Not much, but enough to know that Wyck himself got her into trouble. Now I come to think of it, she might have meant Ted. Well, when she threatened to have what we so nicely call an illegal operation, Wyck gave her a prescription to take every day for six weeks, but it did no good.”

“Anything you’d take daily for six weeks couldn’t do any good. Do you suppose he—Daisy, did you get that prescription?”

“No, but she said it’s the only one she ever had filled, and it must be on file at the drugstore.”

“She must have been pretty dumb. Six weeks!”

“And the stuff he gave her may itself have been part of his experiment on her, you see.”

“Whew! That may be how he worked it with all of them, and the treatment itself was calculated to produce a monster. But why on earth should he want to produce monsters?”

“Why should he have wanted to drive Mike Connell mad with ideas about demons? He was mad himself, David. We must be a bit crazy, too, to sit down here trying to talk calmly and professionally about all this. If you’d heard the screaming of those poor women—each time you could hear it all over the hospital. It made me want never to have a child. Poor little Sylvia.”

“What’s Alling done?”

“He gave strict orders to hush it up, like the time before, and took all the monsters away to his laboratory.”

“Did he say why he wanted it all hushed up?”

“Yes. He called all of us who had witnessed them into a private room and said there was a legislative investigation of the medical school pending, and that if the news of all this funny business got out, we all might lose our jobs.”

For the next few days, Dr. Alling kept me busy at all hours, as if he feared physical violence, and wanted someone always to be near. But that could hardly be true, as he slept alone in a house in no way guarded. His cook and housekeeper both lived in the village. There was not even one extra bed or cot about for an emergency.

Perhaps it was only a result of knowing about Ted Gideon, but I was able by now to laugh at my own appalling suspicions of the spring.

There was reassurance in his own attitude when he said, one morning, “You’ve doubtless noticed that I deliberately skipped the chapter on fetal deformities in our outline. The reason is of course the obvious.” When I looked a little puzzled, he added, “I mean that I’ve got some firsthand specimens in my laboratory—in fact, too many for comfort—and I want to finish a complete detailed inspection of them before writing anything at all on that theme.”

In my renewed confidence, I asked, “What’s your explanation of them, sir? I mean, having too many for comfort all at once?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” he countered.

“You mean it’s linked with Dr. Wyck’ disappearance?”

“Of course. When I found out we were likely to be in for this visitation of monstrosities, I was sufficiently perturbed to avoid discussing it with anyone. I feel sure it will soon be over, for a number of reasons that I will tell you, like a wise prophet, after they prove true.”

As I strolled back past the school that afternoon, Charlie the diener hailed me. “I’ve been hopin’ you’d go by, Doc,” he explained. “ ’Bout time we pumped some air into that vault, with school openin’ in a coupla weeks. I’d just as life have somebody around in case anything goes flooey with the machinery.”

“Don’t trust your own invention?”