The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck Read Online Free Page B

to have you fired by petition to the state legislature. What’s his name? P-something.”
    “Prendergast?” Dr. Wyck asked, chuckling.
    “That’s it. Prendergast. Prendergast. Now I’ll remember. I have enough trouble with the legislature as it is, without running into things like this, Gideon. You stay away. I want to handle it in my own fashion. It’s got to come up tonight, because he filed a formal petition. You’d better tell me about him now, though.”
    “Nothing much to tell, Fred. I caught him cribbing on his first exam in my course last fall. He knew he’d have to do a little extra work to convince me, after that, and I’ve given him all the leeway he could want. But he’s got steadily worse all year.”
    “Sure you haven’t been leaning down too hard, Gideon? He claims he’s in danger of losing his degree because of your deliberate unfairness.”
    “Tripe!” said Dr. Wyck, gruffly. “I could have had him fired on the spot. I gave him a chance, instead, but he went right on bluffing.”
    Prexy must have thought I was out of earshot, for he replied in a low voice. “All right. But it’s becoming more than just an embarrassment, Gideon, having the rest of the faculty forever voting you down on matters of grades and discipline. Remember, I’d prefer that you absent yourself because of illness, tonight. I can handle the rest of them better if you’re not there at all.”
    Marjorie called Prexy to the telephone. He came bustling out, looking remarkably cheerful.
    “Here’s luck, Saunders. Here’s a coincidence for you. There’s just been a monster born at the hospital. Want to see it while it’s still alive? You’ve just got time before your lecture.”
    He noticed my inconclusive expression, and his own face sobered.
    “Jekyll and Hyde,” he murmured. “Doctors have to keep a watch on their emotions, because in real life it’s the scientist, it’s Jekyll, that plays the brute. I suppose I really ought to weep at such news—and yet, for the last year I’ve been hankering to get some good slides of tissue from a symmelus.[ 5 ] That’s what it is, by the way—a symmelus. That bright girl at the switchboard had all the details. I think she knows where I am at any moment all day long. What’s her name?”
    “Daisy Towers,” I said. “She keeps tabs on me, even. She routed a call for me through to the dog cart, the other day. Said she knew I’d be eating there.”
    “Oh? Well, I’m glad she’s not on duty at night. I sense the difference at just about supper time. People stop finding me then, and I have a hunch that it’s because that girl must go off duty about then.”
    “She does. She goes off at seven o’clock. And then for the next hour you always have trouble getting people on the phone, because one of the hospital porters has the board till the night girl comes on at eight.”
    “So that’s the reason, eh? Well, Miss Towers is a remarkably smart girl. She said the mother of the monster died. Perhaps that’s lucky, the issue being a bastard as well as a monster.”
    Prexy Alling had delayed starting the car, upon hearing the phone ring a second time. But no one appeared at the doorway. As the car began to move, he said, “You know, I want to benefit from Wyck’s enormous learning on the subject, and I have my private opinion that he’s a very sick man. I didn’t want to speak of it before his daughter, but I’ve seldom seen a man’s general appearance change so in a few weeks as his has. Have you?”
    I shook my head. My mind seemed to be seething with disconnected portents. Things had been happening too rapidly for comfort, in the ten hours since a little past midnight. What was the demonic understanding, or misunderstanding, between Wyck and Mike Connell? Had the former really received some of the latter’s blood, to strengthen him against an ailment which he refused to acknowledge to the world? And why had he demanded the return of a certain book, secretly