The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck (31 page)

Farewell, then, and one last request. (My brain is swimming, but I shall hold death off to finish my letter, as I have held it off before.) This is a clinical demise, and I desire to go the whole way. It is therefore my well considered wish that my body be used for dissection in the anatomy course. I charge you to embalm it yourself, immediately, to assure its fitness, and I charge you to supervise its placing in the school vaults, in the next vacant stall, to be taken out for dissection in the normal course of events. Play no favorites with it.

My daughter has prepared a typewritten transcript of all my recent notes of scientific labors. These notes are to be held in absolute confidence for disposition at your own discretion. I suggest that you impound them with a trust company if you do not wish to take the responsibility for making them public or for withholding them. Perhaps you will want to order them published at the end of a period of years, the length of which you can judge best. My hand is like cotton. I shall say goodbye.

Gideon Wyck, M.D.

After this amazing letter had been read, Marjorie Wyck, the comptroller of the hospital, an several other persons familiar with Gideon Wyck’s handwriting were called in briefly in verify the holograph. Marjorie admitted that she had made a full transcript of a book of laboratory notes—probably the same one Daisy and I had found at the ruined farm—and had given the transcript to Dr. Alling in accordance with a wish expressed by her father before he disappeared. When she and Dr. Alling were asked to produce the original of the transcript, both testified that the original was not in their possession, and Dr. Alling refused in his capacity as trustee of the copy to make it public. Marjorie said that she had taken no note of the highly technical material, while copying, and could say nothing about its specific nature. She left the room, and Dr. Alling continued his story:

“Having read this letter, my first impulse was to refer to my watch, which I had stopped by striking it at the moment of the first symptom of violent reaction on the part of Mike Connell. It read 1:24, with the second hand at 49. I then opened the drawer in which the kymograph had been placed, and noticed that the record of pulsations had made something less than two full revolutions of the smoked drum. As two complete revolutions would have required one-half hour from the moment of starting at one o’clock, I saw at once that death had probably occurred at very nearly the same moment as that of the reaction noted in the blood donor, Mike Connell. I can only plead my scientific training, and my awe in the presence of an amazing implication, as excuse for having stopped then and there to calculate precisely the length of time which the kymograph had been running.

“Mr. Palmer, will you hand me the sheet of paper covered with figures, from the impounded material? Thank you. As you will see, the kymograph records the fact that Dr. Wyck’s heart ceased beating at 24 minutes and 28 seconds past one o’clock, after corrections have been made for the lag of the kymograph. Since Dr. Wyck’s watch, and therefore the kymograph, were 17 seconds faster than mine, it is necessary to add 17 seconds to 28 seconds to show the instant of Wyck’s death according to my own watch. Thus—using my watch to time both events, Wyck’s heard stopped at 1:24:45 o’clock, precisely, and Mike’s maniacal reaction occurred at 1:24:49 o’clock, or four seconds later.

“Assuming a connection between these events, it is to be expected that to any stimulus a sleeping man would react tardily, and that my consequent reaction in striking my watch was also a trifle delayed. Therefore, it was inescapable indicated that the death of Gideon Wyck did have a direct and violent effect upon the donor who had given him blood.”

The prosecutor interrupted to ask, “Do you yourself, as a sworn witness, believe that the reaction of Connell was caused by Wyck’s death.”

“I believe it implicitly,” Dr. Alling replied.

The prosecutor then turned to Coroner Kent and asked his opinion of the plausibility of the explanation. The reply of the coroner was:

“Such an explanation is contrary to all known laws of physics and of the science of medicine.”

“Do you think it is established, at least as a reasonable hypothesis, by these data?” the prosecutor inquired; and Kent answered, “I should personally want further proof before admitting such a thesis to the dignity of further consideration. Moreover, Dr. Alling has pointed out a coincidence in one case only, out of three seizures suffered by the blood donor. Of the other two, in the first case the coincidence is doubtful, and in the second no cause is given at all.”

Dr. Alling once asked Sheriff Palmer for the letter from Joe Baker’s mother and submitted it as evidence that the second seizure had certainly as much claim as the first to be related to the death of a recipient of Mike’s blood.

Q. (By prosecutor) Why do you suppose that Dr. Wyck himself did not refer to this second apparent coincidence?

A. I can only suggest that it was because he had swallowed a large quantity of poison, and felt that he did not have time to write about anything not absolutely vital.

Q. Very well. Will you please proceed with an account of your whereabouts and actions on the morning of April 4th?

“When I had read the letter and made these calculations,” Dr. Alling continued, “I next happened to notice that the heart action recorded on the kymograph, although progressively weaker through the second revolution, showed at the end a series of slowed, regular, and extremely exaggerated beats such as one might expect from the sudden inhibition of the accelerator nerves and the complete dominance of the vagus or inhibitor fibers.

“Please give the instrument to Dr. Kent, Mr. Palmer. Thank you. This was an indication that death when it came was violent and convulsive, which was not likely to have been the case if the cause of death had been veronal. I then realized that Dr. Wyck, despite his effort to commit suicide, had in reality been murdered, and that I was provided with an absolutely accurate record, on the kymograph, of the moment when the sharp instrument had severed the spinal cord.

“For perhaps ten minutes I pondered the question of what to do. Dr. Kent as my closest advisor is fully aware of the intense worry to which I have been put by Dr. Wyck’s conduct. It had brought us to the verge of a legislative investigation which might have had the most unfortunate results in rendering it impossible to get cadavers and animals for anatomy courses and laboratory experimentation, to say nothing of the danger of cessation of state funds, without which the school could not exist another month.

“In defense of my subsequent actions, I can only say that this acute worry, sharpened by the lecture which I had just been read by Senator Tolland, must have temporarily unbalanced my judgment. Under the stress of these happenings, it seemed to me that I was justified in following the course of action which Dr. Wyck had adjured me to follow, in the letter that was his last will and testament. I was convinced that a scandal in the school at that time would destroy it. This may have been a hallucination of extreme worry. At any rate, I found myself pushing Dr. Wyck’s body, still in the swivel chair, until I got it to the elevator. Then I lowered it and myself down to the preparation room. There, with the aid of the block and tackle, and an incline plane made from removable table top, I overcame my physical inadequacy by application of the laws of force, and got the cadaver in place for embalming.

“I then paused, but it seemed that I had gone too far to retrace my actions. As soon as the incision for introducing the embalming fluid had been made, I knew that I must go one, willy-nilly. When I had supervised the first rapid flow of fluid into the cadaver, I refilled the gravity reservoir, put Dr. Wyck’s swivel chair back on the lift, and went up again to remove to my own office all actual traces of the tragedy. The instrument with which the wound was inflicted was nowhere to be found, but I believe it to have been the scalpel which Dr. Wyck always kept on his desk to open letters, and which was also missing. I let the cadaver remain in place on the embalming table for perhaps an hour and a half, and then pushed it into the vault. I had covered it with a shroud, and was debating the possibility of getting it into a stall when I saw a pair of legs pass across the high cellar window at street level, which was visible through the vault door. The sight seemed to bring a sense of irrevocable guilt for what I had done. Three things remained to be done, in great haste. One, to get the clothing out of sight; two, to turn out the light in the vault; three, to bolt its door, so that the diener could seal it without having reason for a further inspection.

“As Dr. Kent knows, the switch which controls the vault is high on the wall, out of my normal reach. I had reached it first by standing on a chair, but afterward had moved the chair to the embalming table, to aid in climbing onto it when I filled the gravity reservoir, near the ceiling. The swivel chair had been too heavy, you see, for me to lift on to the table.

“It seemed to me that the legs I had seen go past the window must be those of a janitor or of the diner; so, rather than waste my time by carrying a chair across the room to turn out the light, I climbed on the edge of a stall in the vault, and twisted the light bulb. Even now, I do not remember that I had taken off my rubber gloves, but I must have done so, obviously. It was the slip that the man with a sense of guilt seems bound to make.

“I locked the padlock, gathered up the clothes, and cautiously ascended the stairs. I put the clothes in a case that happened to be in my office. The legs I had seen apparently had not been those of the janitor or of the diener, but, expecting that either or both might come early, I wanted to take no changes. So I left by the back way, carrying the suitcase. I saw nobody on my way to my own house. It was about dawn then, but cloudy. I am not sure of the hour. I slept for some time and then prepared for a conference with Senator Tolland in the latter part of the morning. That afternoon, I washed and cleaned the clothing myself, and ironed the linen next day.”

Such was the significant part of Dr. Alling’s testimony. His alibi was based upon the fact, attested by the autopsy, that the knife thrust had been the cause of death, and upon the inference that Mike’s reaction, while we were at his bedside, substantiated the kymograph’s testimony of the exact time of death. Biddy’s testimony and mine checked with his, on the matter of his whereabouts at the time when the wound was supposedly inflicted.

The next significant testimony was Charlie’s reason for not wanting to speak about his whereabouts, that night, to anyone except the grand jurors. Jap Ross, when questioned about the faculty meeting, was asked about his conduct for the next few hours, and reluctantly admitted that he had got drunk on applejack with Charlie and Mickey Rehan. It seemed to Jap the only thing to do, after giving testimony that resulted in the expulsion of a fellow student. Therefore he had wheedled a couple of quarts of applejack from Charlie. They had sat down to it about half past ten, and the two students had put Charlie to bed, very drunk, at three in the morning. His alarm clock had saved him from oversleeping, and he had been on hand, shaky but almost sober, to seal the vault in the presence of Dr. Kent. However, as he had been discharged once before for drinking with students, he had not wanted to give his alibi to anyone connected officially with the school.

Daisy was called to testify to the phone calls which had apprised Dr. Wyck of Baker’s death, and other minor testimony was given which, at the end of the morning’s session, seemed to have established the facts beyond question that Dr. Wyck actually had intended to commit suicide, that he had set up the apparatus and notified Dr. Alling, and that the latter had embalmed the body in the fashion which he described. Both Prendergast and his uncle substantiated Alling’s story about events just after the faculty meeting. The only seemingly moot points left were the question whether Wyck had actually called on Alling at about midnight, and, of course, the mystery about who had inflicted the knife would. We then recessed for a noon meal.

Ted Gideon in the early afternoon session refused to say anything at all except that he had been camping in the woods north of town, and that an old doctor had sometimes given him money to drive him out to Alton Center. He would answer no questions about the crucial night, insisting that they might tend to incriminate him. Alling was recalled, and asked whether he had noticed the car mentioned by Biddy, parked in front of the medical school building either when he passed it, walking to the Connells’ just before one o’clock, or afterward, when he returned from the hospital at some time after two. He denied that he had seen a car at either time, but was peculiarly insistent upon repeating, in each of his answers, a phrase descriptive of the radiator ornament—a leaping dog. The third time he did this, Coroner Kent interrupted by again suggesting that he, Dr. Kent, be relieved of his official part in the inquiry and subjected to questioning as to his own alibi. Again the offer was declined.

And that was about the state of the evidence when the hearing ended, at half past three in the afternoon. The coroner and the prosecutor then consulted together for half an hour, while all the witnesses continued to cool their heels. Finally the charge was agreed upon, and read to the third coroner’s jury empaneled in the Wyck case.

It was after five o’clock when the jury finished its deliberations, and we were summoned to hear the result. At this time, of course, I was unaware of the testimony of all except myself. I ha no inkling of what Dr. Alling ha told the coroner or the prosecutor. For seven hours, after my own testimony was given, I had been waiting, waiting, for a session of cross-questioning that ought to give me some hint of the frame-up which I had such good reasons for anticipating. The delay had alternately seemed a cause for greater hope and greater fear.

We all listened tensely as the foreman read the usual preamble, with a section repeating and reaffirming the acceptance of the original post-mortem examination findings. He then paused and cleared this throat, continuing: