Originally published: 1914
Genres: Mystery
Gutenberg link: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66740
Chapters: 55
Warning: This may include outdated and derogatory language and attitudes.
CHAPTER I
STARTLING INFORMATION
“There goes another, chief. That makes five so far. There surely is something going on tonight,” the young man at the window declared excitedly.
It was Patsy Garvan, Nick Carter’s second assistant, and he who was addressed was the great New York detective himself.
The closest friends would have known neither of them, however, unless they had been in the secret, for both were cleverly disguised.
Moreover, the room in which they seemed to be so much at home was not one of those in Nick’s handsome Madison Avenue residence in New York.
It was, in fact, a room in a house miles away from there, to the northward, in the Bronx section of the great city, a short distance from the New York Zoölogical Park.
On the first of the month, about ten days before, a family, which went by the name of Webb, had moved in there. The family consisted of three persons: The father, Charles Webb; a grown son, William, and the latter’s young wife, Mildred.
Such, at least, was the understanding of the neighbors. As a matter of fact, Charles Webb was Nick Carter, his “son” was better known as Patsy Garvan, the famous detective’s clever assistant, and “Mildred” was Adelina Garvan, Patsy’s pretty Chilean-Spanish wife, whose woman’s intuitions had materially assisted in solving more than one difficult problem in the mathematics of crime.
It was a peculiar case that had brought them to that out-of-the-way neighborhood and required delicate handling.
Their interest lay in the house next door, a big, rambling wooden structure, which, with theirs, stood somewhat apart, with vacant lots all about.
The house in question was occupied and had been for years, by its owner, Doctor Hiram A. Grantley.
Grantley was well-known in New York medical circles. Indeed, his fame was at least twenty-five years old.
He was accounted one of the most skillful surgeons in the State, which necessarily meant in the United States as well. He had a long list of remarkably daring and successful operations to his credit and might have been one of the wealthiest and most honored men in his profession had it not been for certain unfortunate peculiarities, which had grown upon him as the years passed.
People were afraid of him—that was the sum and substance of it.
He was altogether too daring and ruthless in his methods, too ready to operate on the slightest provocation. He was never satisfied with the conservative methods of his colleagues but was always seeking new ways of carving up the human frame. The individual patient meant nothing to him. It was a matter of supreme indifference to Doctor Hiram Grantley whether his “cases” lived or died, so long as they gave him a chance to test his theories.
Of course, he recognized as clearly as anyone that a surgeon’s ultimate success must lie in saving life, not in taking it. That was his goal, but, being apparently heartless, and looking upon the individuals who sought his services much as other surgeons looked upon guinea pigs—merely as subjects for experimentation—he usually preferred to try something new rather than follow a safe and sane procedure which had proved its worth in hundreds or thousands of cases.
That was the quickest way to advance the science of surgery, according to Grantley, and the result was that, years before, people who knew of his tendencies had ceased, for the most part, to go to him, unless they were in such desperate straits that they were willing to take a last, supreme chance.
Consequently, his practice had fallen away to a very marked extent, and, despite his acknowledged brilliancy and the many improved methods he had introduced from time to time, he had come to be looked upon with more or less distrust, even by the members of his own profession.
His income had once been a very large one, however, and when it dwindled, he gave up his house in one of the fashionable sections of the city and moved to the Bronx, where he turned the house he bought into a sort of private hospital.
His treatment at the hands of the public and his brother surgeons seemed to aggravate his tendencies rather than curb them, and he became more and more eccentric and ruthless, a sinister figure in appearance and in reputation.
When Nick Carter interested himself in Doctor Grantley, the latter was about fifty-five years of age. As a young man, he had had jet-black hair and eyes. His hair was now almost white, and it was always brushed straight back from his forehead, although worn rather long.
His brows were gray and shaggy, and under them gleamed his piercing black eyes. His forehead was high and denoted great intelligence. His nose was thin, prominent, and curved like the beak of an eagle, or the nose of an Egyptian mummy.
He was nearly six feet in height, very spare in build, and his long, sensitive fingers resembled claws at times, as they curved out from his bony hands.
For two or three years, Grantley had been at odds with the latest owner of the house next door, a certain John D. Wallace.
Wallace was an intelligent man of means, a retired businessman, who was an ardent antivivisectionist, whereas Grantley had always been famous—or infamous, as you please—for his experiments on living animals.
The former had bought the smaller house, next door, at a time when the surgeon had tried to get hold of it, probably because he did not care for such near neighbors unless he could choose them himself. Ever since then, there had been bad blood between Grantley and Wallace.
Wallace had complained of Grantley more than once, alleging that the doctor’s private hospital was a nuisance and that the howling of his animal subjects was intolerable.
Nothing further had been done about it by Wallace, however, and Grantley, in retaliation, had made it as uncomfortable as he could for Wallace’s tenants.
At last, Wallace had done some spying on his own account, and he had finally come to Nick Carter with a startling theory.
He believed that Doctor Grantley was not only using animals in his experiments in vivisection, but human beings as well, and he offered the detective a tempting fee to look into the matter.
The fee did not hold out as much interest to Nick as Wallace’s story did, for it bore out many more or less vague rumors that he had heard.
According to Wallace and others, Doctor Grantley had recently made a surprising move. Although he was about the last man in the world who would naturally be thought of as a philanthropist, he had begun to offer his services to the poor of the East Side, and without charge.
More than that, Wallace claimed to have spent hours in the house he owned, which was vacant at the time and had seen several patients enter the private hospital, all of whom seemed to be foreigners and far from prosperous enough to pay Grantley’s regular fees, which had always been large.
Wallace also reported that he had reason to believe that bodies were carried away from time to time, under cover of darkness.
Finally, he declared that several young men, who looked like doctors, frequented the place, especially at night. From this circumstance, he argued that Grantley had a following among young and unscrupulous surgeons, who came there to witness or take part in the older man’s gruesome experiments.
In answer to Nick’s inquiries, Wallace informed the detective that Doctor Grantley’s regular establishment included Grantley himself, Doctor Siebold, his young assistant; a nurse of perhaps thirty-five, Miss Rawlinson, and a German manservant, named Hoff.
The latter was the doctor’s only servant, and, apparently, did Grantley’s cooking. Wallace was inclined to think that Hoff had seen army service.
It will readily be seen that the case was no ordinary one. There is no law that covers the employment of living human beings in such experiments, for the simple reason that until lately there has been no demand for it and no suspicion that the practice existed anywhere.
If a death could be proved to have occurred under such circumstances, however, and not in the ordinary course of medical or surgical practice, the person responsible could be arrested and tried for manslaughter, or, failing in that, he might be exposed and driven into retirement, if definite proof could be obtained that he used men, women, or children in his ruthless pursuit of forbidden knowledge.
The detective saw that John Wallace was not a visionary crank but a practical man of affairs, who was not likely to exaggerate. Grantley’s reputation lent color to the possibility, of another thing, and, finally, the detective had strong convictions on the subject of vivisection, even as practiced upon animals.
In most cases he was willing to believe the claims of the vivisectionists that the living animals that they strapped down and cut open were generally under the influence of some drug, but, to Nick’s mind, that did not alter the fact that, after the poor creatures had been mutilated in a hundred different ways, they were frequently turned loose, suffering acutely, and with their wounds uncared for.
Nick’s kind heart led him to abhor such cruelty, especially when it was indulged in so freely and constantly that its oft-reiterated excuses lost most, if not all, of their original weight.
“A certain amount of vivisection, carried on under proper restrictions, may be an important factor in the advancement of science,” the detective was wont to say. “I don’t say it is, but it may be. Even so, it should be permitted only in the case of a few men, not indulged in by the wholesale in every medical school.”
It may be imagined, therefore, that he was more than interested when it was hinted to him that Doctor Hiram Grantley had gone farther than anyone else was known to have dared to go, and had extended his experiments to the defenseless and ignorant poor of the East Side.
Nick hoped that Wallace was wrong, but he determined to find out for himself as soon as possible and made his plans accordingly.
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