Chapter IV: Nick Stirs Up the Animals

Nick, Patsy, and Doctor Cooke had concealed their weapons in order not to provoke trouble unnecessarily. At this move on Grantley’s part, however, Nick whipped out his automatic and covered the surgeon.

“None of that, my man!” he commanded. “We’re all armed.”

The sharply spoken words and the steady muzzles of the three automatics--for Nick’s companions had followed suit immediately--froze Doctor Grantley into inaction for a moment.

One hand was still extended toward Doctor Siebold, but it had been arrested in mid-air, and the younger surgeon made no attempt to take the weapon.

All eyes were fixed upon Nick Carter, save those of his own companions.

“I don’t care a whoop whether you’re armed or not,” Grantley snarled, but he made no further attempt at aggression. As a matter of fact, he lowered his extended arm. “You can’t bluff me like that,” he went on. “What do you want here, anyway?”

He was trying his best to bluff it out, but it was obvious that he was not finding it an easy matter.

Suddenly his eyes shifted to Doctor Cooke, and he gave a start of recognition. At the same time a still more frightened look came into his eyes.

“So that’s it, is it?” he growled. “You’re behind this, you young whippersnapper!”

“I am not ‘behind’ it,” Cooke corrected. “Nothing would have given me greater pleasure, but, as it happens, I was merely asked to come along in order to give a surgeon’s opinion of your scientific orgies. I have seen all that is necessary. There is nothing the matter with your victim’s heart--nothing whatever. You had absolutely no excuse, either from the standpoint of surgery or humanity, for performing any sort of an operation upon it, least of all to drag it out of this poor child’s body and make a show of it. Her lungs are more or less affected, that is all, and it was doubtless to the excuse of treating her for tuberculosis that you got her in your power. If I had not seen with my own eyes, Doctor Grantley, I would not have believed it possible that any doctor could be guilty of such a fiendish misuse of professional privileges. What did you expect to find that you did not already know, and if these satellites of yours were so ignorant of heart action--which I am not prepared to believe even of them--why could you not enlighten them just as well with a dog or a cat or a guinea pig?”

Doctor Cooke’s fiery earnestness and withering scorn were good to see, but Grantley’s attitude remained one of sullen defiance.

“None of your business!” he retorted angrily. “I refuse to answer to my inferiors for anything I do. What’s more, I’m beyond the reach of the law, and you know it. I am searching for something of which you and your kind have never dreamed, and if I choose to use a piece of worthless human flesh, doomed already by disease, it is no affair of yours or the world’s.”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” Nick spoke up. “By the way, permit me to introduce myself. I am Nick Carter, the detective, of whom you may possibly have heard, and this is one of my assistants. We have been living next door to you for a short time, but quite long enough to become convinced that there was something radically wrong here.”

Doctor Grantley paled at the mention of Nick’s name, and a perceptible tremor of surprise and fear passed over the group of doctors behind him. Seeing this, Doctor Cooke broke in grimly:

“And while we’re about it, Mr. Carter, I might as well make known to you a couple of Grantley’s hangers-on there. I know two of them well by sight. The one with the mustache is Doctor Hunter, and the one with reddish hair is Doctor Willard. I can furnish you with their addresses if you wish.”

The two men named cringed before Doctor Cooke’s accusing finger.

“Thank you, Cooke, that will help,” Nick replied quietly. “And now, gentlemen, I am afraid I shall have to give you another little jolt. I am a special officer and am quite within my rights in arresting you all for malpractice, which I intend to do forthwith. The nurse, here, will be detained as a material witness.”

“I’d like to see you try it!” stormed Grantley. “Such a charge is ridiculous. I can take the position that the displacement of the heart was only incidental, that I was really trying to find a surgical method of dealing with tuberculosis. Nobody could prove that I wasn’t, and I can get any number of expert witnesses to testify in my behalf, or, at least, to admit that I might have been looking for what I claimed. You wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. I tell you there’s no law that can touch me.”

“Perhaps not,” admitted the detective. “That is comparatively unimportant, however.”

“Unimportant? How the devil do you make that out?”

“The charge of malpractice is a good-enough excuse for your arrest. After that the newspapers will try your case before a jury of millions, and when they finish, the argument for the prosecution----”

Doctor Grantley quailed.

“You mean----” he began, in an unsteady voice.

“I mean that public opinion is going to be given an opportunity to try and condemn you, Grantley,” Nick answered evenly. “I know as well as you do that you’re in very little danger of a prison sentence, as things are now, but the greatest punishment of all is available--the universal execration of your fellow men. That is going to be meted out to you and your accomplices, and the result of your showing up will be that laws will be speedily passed to cover such revolting crimes as this. In short, we’re going to ‘break’ you, Grantley. You have no one but yourself to blame, and you will deserve all you get. Incidentally, I might add that I am ransacking the East Side for other evidence against you, in connection with previous offenses of this sort, which I have reason to believe have ended fatally for your victims. The charge I shall make against you to-night will serve to hold you until one of manslaughter can be sustained.”

Patsy Garvan looked at his chief in surprise. It was decidedly unlike Nick to bandy words in this way, or to “rub it in,” either before or after arrest. In the present instance, moreover, his assistant feared that he was making trouble for himself and his companions. He was giving away his hand in a peculiarly reckless fashion, and it was more than possible that Grantley and the others, seeing the pit that yawned for them, might be driven to desperate measures in their desire to escape arrest.

As a matter of fact, that was precisely what Nick desired.

He knew only too well that he was treading in the midst of uncertainties and that his case was lamentably weak, from a strictly legal standpoint. Consequently, he hoped to provoke resistance, because he could count on that to strengthen the sentiment against Grantley and the latter’s followers.

He did not look, though, for anything like the outburst that followed.