The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck Read Online Free Page A

a chocolate brown that had faded to the precise color of gingerbread. Obviously, nothing could have been done about the house without razing it and building it anew. I suppose both Wyck and his daughter had recognized that minor changes would only make matters worse. At least it was all of a piece: they had left it just as they found it: a monument to the most tasteless period of American Victorianism. In this setting Marjorie Wyck moved gracefully back and forth, indifferent to her surroundings. She was clad in a simple blue morning dress that seemed the height of fashion.
    “I think father will be done right away,” Marjorie said. “You should know better than to call so early, Dr. Alling. He’s seldom through shaving before half past ten.”
    “I know, my dear. But he left my laboratory early, last night. Early, that is, for him—around half past one.”
    I mentioned that Dr. Wyck had been called to the Connells’, and thence to the hospital. Prexy said, “Oh?” and Marjorie seemed to drift out of the room as if on a breeze. She is probably the most graceful, as well as the most preoccupied, person I have ever known.
    “Ah, here it is. Here’s what you’ll need your French for,” Prexy said, hopping slightly to pluck out an old book from the shelf second below the top. “The Geoffroys[ 3 ] were the first to go at the problem of abnormal births with any degree of thoroughness. We still use their awkward system of classification. That is, we have up until now. I’m putting the whole subject on a rational basis in my History.”
    Then a board creaked, and I looked up quickly to see Gideon Wyck lifting from the center table the book we had just returned at his request. “Morning,” he said sourly, letting the pages purr under an affectedly careless thumb. As the inserted paper marker flashed by, he snapped the book shut and slipped it into one of the big pockets of his gaudy dressing gown.
    “I say, you are  looking ill, Gideon,” Prexy remarked. “You didn’t get out of bed to see us, did you? Better go back, if you did.”
    “Nonsense. Never been sick a day in my life.”
    Dr. Wyck scowled, and took a cigarette from a box on the table.
    Nevertheless, he was pale—paler even than last night. His hand shook as he lit the cigarette. Then, as if in boyish bravado, he took a tremendously deep drag and stood eyeing us insolently as thick smoke streamed outward slowly from his nostrils. I remember noting his almost comical similarity to the theatrical idea of an old roué on a morning after. He wore claret-colored silk pyjamas, open at the neck, and a brocaded dressing gown. His hair, of a suspiciously purple blackness, had just a suggestion of gray at the roots, to indicate that it needed to be redyed. The paleness of his features certainly meant that, if he was not ill, he had had far too little sleep.
    “Did you get those slides finished, last night?” he inquired.
    “The ones from the calf, I did,” Prexy answered, “but the moths are no good. They crush under the sharpest blade in the shop.”
    “Forget the moths, Fred. I’ll have something better than moths for you before your lecture’s due.”
    “Will you? What?”
    “I’ll tell you when I’ve got it. I’m expecting it any day, now.”
    “Meanwhile, you plan to be cryptic, I gather. Suit yourself. Say, where’s the Atlas to this Geoffroy set? May we take the whole thing along?”
    “Yes, if you like. The picture book’s in my office, I guess. I’ll get it for you this afternoon.”
    “What else have you got on monsters[ 4 ] that I haven’t seen?”
    “I don’t think there’s much. You’ve got copies of my papers, haven’t you? I sent you copies of them all.”
    “Yes. Well, we’ll be going. And you’d better put yourself to bed. You don’t look a bit well. Oh, that reminds me—there’s another reason. I don’t want you to come to faculty meeting tonight. There was a student in to see me at breakfast time who’s going