The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck Read Free

than could be got in any of the better equipped hospitals of the world’s great cities.
    The foregoing facts will make clear why several men of the highest rank in their profession are conducting an up-to-date medical school, and researches of a most advanced sort, in the midst of a largely decadent farming area; for it was only the coincidence of these apparently anomalous factors that made possible the events I am about to describe. Crime of an urban kind, with abstruse ramifications, has been committed in a setting provided with only the primitive police facilities of the back country. That, I suppose, is the reason why I am now writing of a still unsolved mystery.
    Before going on with my story, I ought to explain how I was able to discover so much concerning a matter which I from time to time have really tried to avoid. The crucial fact was my residence at the Connells’, where everything started. Another entangling circumstance was my old habit of keeping a shorthand diary, which served to sustain interest in many little occurrences that would otherwise have been soon forgotten, but which proved, long after I wrote about them, to be mutually significant. The main factor, however, was my job as secretary to our “Prexy,” Dr. Manfred Alling. The fact that he sometimes needed me at odd moments had the effect of freeing me from most of the curricular restraints.
    I had arranged to take dictation from Prexy every morning for two hours, until it was time for the eleven o’clock lecture. At half past eight, after a troubled sleep and a hasty breakfast, I was on my way to Dr. Alling’s house. My unpleasant reveries over the events that had occurred in the dark early hours of the morning were interrupted by the incisive noise of feminine heels behind me. It was Muriel Finch, walking stiffly, frowning. I waited for her to catch up, but she was not in a talkative mood.
    “Regular morning grouch?” I asked.
    “That’s the least you can expect, after an all-night shift.”
    “Why aren’t you in the dorm, then, by now?”
    “I wanted some air—fresh air. I hate that smelly place. Oh, how I hate it!”
    We had taken the left-hand turn, southward, onto Packard Road, the last house on which was my destination. Prexy had located his home for solitude, when he wanted it. We walked for a little way without speaking. Then Muriel sobbed suddenly, crying, “I hate this whole damned town. I’ll go crazy if I stay here another day. I know I will.”
    When I patted her shoulder, she shrank from the touch, and then apologized. “I just can’t help it. People are such muts. All of them. I don’t mean—any one person.” She looked up in a half-scared fashion and said, “You didn’t think I meant anybody in particular?”
    I thought I knew what was wrong with her. She went by the name of “the blond floozy” among the medical students, who had a theory that a unique impediment of speech made it very difficult for her to pronounce the word “no,” especially when the moon was shining, with a jug of applejack near by. There was a general tendency to be lenient about the private lives of nurses and of medics, so long as their affairs were managed without impairment of their duties and studies. But Muriel had several times been slated for lateness on the night shift, and for a fit or two of hysterics while in attendance upon critical operations. It was hard to understand why these derelictions, in her case, were being overlooked. As I did no learn the reason till later, I shall save it for its proper place in the narrative.
    “Dave,” she blurted suddenly, “do you think I could get a job somewhere else?”
    I asked where she had worked last, and she said, “I came right here from the farm. Father died. There are four kids younger than me. They need what I can send, they and Mom. But I’ll go crazy if I have to stay any longer.”
    “Want to tell me what’s the trouble?” I asked.
    She looked quickly sidewise, as if in