ELLERY QUEEN, DILETTANTE OF criminology, had no stomach for blood. Raised on stories of crime, fed with tales of murder, in daily contact with desperadoes and manhunters, he nevertheless endured the sight of maltreated flesh with difficulty. His position as son of a policeman; his association with brutality and warped minds; his own literary dabblings in the mire of criminal psychology—these had not inured him to the reeking evidences of man’s inhumanity to man. On the scene of a slaughter his eyes were keen, his judgment swift, but always his heart was sick. …
He had never attended a surgical operation. Dead bodies he had seen galore; mangled corpses in morgues, fished out of rivers and the sea, huddled on railroad tracks, lying still in the streets after gang-fights—of death at its unprettiest he had bitter and plentiful knowledge. But chilled steel biting into warm flesh, cutting through live tissue, severing veins through which red blood spurted—the thought nauseated him.
It was with a sensation of mingled dread and excitement, then, that he took his seat in the gallery of the Dutch Memorial Hospital Amphitheater, eyes glued on the scene of calm noiseless activity being enacted twenty feet away in the orchestra of the theater. Dr. Minchen lolled in a chair by his side, quick blue eyes missing nothing of the preparations for the operation. … A whisper of conversation came dimly to their ears from a group of people seated about them in the gallery. Directly in the center was a handful of white-garbed men and women—internes and nurses gathered to watch the professional handiwork of the surgeon. They were very still. Behind Ellery and Dr. Minchen sat a man, also in hospital regalia, and a fragile-looking young woman in white who whispered intermittently in his ear. The man was Dr. Lucius Dunning, Chief Internist; the girl his daughter, attached to the Social Service Department of the institution. Dr. Dunning was grey, with a startling seamed face from which mild brown eyes peered. The girl was fair and unhandsome. There was an appreciable tic in one eyelid.
The gallery rose from the floor of the theater, separated from the orchestra by a high impassable barrier of white wood. The rows of seats ascended steeply toward the rear—much as in the balcony of a theater for the drama. At the rear wall was a door, opening outward on a circular staircase which led to the floor below and gave directly on the North Corridor.*
The sound of footsteps now became audible, the door swung open, and Philip Morehouse stepped nervously into the gallery, his eyes roving. His brown overcoat and hat had disappeared. Spying the Medical Director, he ran down the stepped ramp and bent over to whisper into Minchen’s ear.
Minchen nodded gravely, turned to Ellery. “Meet Mr. Morehouse, Ellery—Mr. Queen.” He waved his fingers. “Mrs. Doorn’s attorney.” The two men shook hands; Ellery smiled mechanically, turned back to watch the orchestra.
Philip Morehouse was a lean man with steady eyes and a stubborn jaw. “Hulda, Fuller, Hendrik Doorn—they’re downstairs now in the Waiting Room. Can’t they possibly be present during the operation, Doctor?” he whispered urgently. Minchen shook his head. He indicated the seat next to him. Morehouse frowned, but sank into the chair and instantly became absorbed in the movements of the nurses below.
An old man in white shuffled up the steps, peered into the gallery, caught the eye of an interne, nodded violently, and at once disappeared. The click of the lock in the door held a note of finality. For an instant the old man could be heard rustling about behind the door; then even the sound of his movements died.
The orchestra of the Amphitheater had settled down now to a hushed expectancy. Ellery thought it very like the moment in a legitimate theater just before the rise of the curtain, when the audience holds its breath and absolute quiet descends on the house. … Under a triple brace of electric globes of immense size, emitting a cold, steady and brilliant light, stood an operating-table. It was denuded, pitiless in its lack of color. Near it was a table stacked with bandage, antiseptic cotton, small bottles of drugs. A glass-covered case of shining, wicked-looking steel instruments was being watched over by an interne, who kept sterilizing them in a compact little machine at his right hand. At one side of the room two white-gowned surgical assistants—men—stood over porcelain bowls carefully washing their hands in a bluish fluid. One imperiously reached for a towel handed him by a nurse; he dried his hands quickly and on the instant bathed them once more, this time in a watery-looking fluid.
“Bichloride of mercury solution, then alcohol,” whispered Minchen to Ellery.
Immediately upon drying his hands of the alcohol, the assistant surgeon held them out while a nurse removed a pair of rubber gloves from a sterilizing machine and smoothed them onto the doctor’s hands. A similar procedure was followed with the other surgeon.
Suddenly the door at the left of the room opened and the slight, limping figure of Dr. Janney appeared. He looked around with one of his bird-like glances, then limped rapidly over to a wash-bowl. He slipped out of his gown and a nurse skilfully dressed him in a freshly sterilized gown. While the surgeon bent over the bowl, rinsing his hands thoroughly in the blue bichloride solution, another adjusted a fresh white cap on his head, carefully tucking in his greyish hair.
Dr. Janney spoke without looking up. “The patient,” he said brusquely. Two assistant nurses quickly opened the door leading to the Anteroom. “The patient; Miss Price!” one said. They disappeared into the room, emerging a moment later pushing a long, white rubber-shod wheel-table on which lay a quiet figure covered with a sheet. The patient’s head was thrown far back; it was ghastly, bluish-white. The sheet was tucked around the neck. The eyes were closed. A third figure entered the operating-room from the Anteroom—another nurse. She stood quietly in a corner, waiting.
The patient was lifted from the wheel-table and deposited on the operating-table. The wheel-table was instantly removed to the Anteroom by the third nurse. She closed the door carefully, disappearing from sight. A gowned and gagged figure took his place close by the operating-table, fussing with a small taboret on which were various instruments and cones.
The anæsthetist,” muttered Minchen; “they’ve got to keep one handy in case Abby comes out of the coma during the operation.”
The two assisting surgeons approached the operating-table from opposite sides. The sheet was whipped off the patient, discarded; a peculiarly-cut garment was immediately substituted. Dr. Janney, now gloved, gowned and capped, was standing patiently at one side while a substitute nurse adjusted a gag about his mouth and nose.
Minchen leaned forward in the chair, a curiously intent look in his eyes. His gaze was riveted on the body of the patient. He muttered to Ellery in a queerly tense tone.
“Something wrong, Ellery; something wrong!”
Ellery answered without turning his head. “Is it the stiffness?” he whispered. “I noticed that. A diabetic. …”
The two assisting surgeons were bending over the operating-table. One lifted an arm, let it fall. It was rigid and unbending. The other touched an eyelid, peered at the eyeball. They looked at each other.
“Dr. Janney!” said one of them insistently, straightening up.
The surgeon wheeled, stared. “What’s the matter?” He brushed aside a nurse; limped forward rapidly. In a flash he had covered the distance, bent over the inert body. He tore the garment from the table, felt at the old woman’s neck. Ellery saw his back stiffen as if he had been struck.
Without raising his head Dr. Janney uttered two words: “Adrenalin. Pulmotor.” As if by magic the two surgical assistants, the two nurses, the two substituting nurses leaped into activity. The words were hardly dead before a large slender cylinder was carried over and several figures grew busy about the table. A nurse handed Dr. Janney a small glistening object; he forced open the mouth of the patient, held the object before it. He then intently examined its surface—it was a metal mirror. He threw it aside with a muffled curse, reached with one prehensile arm for a hypodermic ready in the hand of a nurse. He bared the torso of the old woman, plunged the needle into her body directly over the heart Already the pulmotor was in operation, forcing oxygen into her lungs. …
In the gallery the nurses and internes, Dr. Dunning, his daughter, Philip Morehouse, Dr. Minchen, Ellery sat on the edge of their seats, motionless. There was no sound in the Amphitheater except the sucking of the pulmotor.
In fifteen minutes, exactly at 11:05—Ellery mechanically consulted his watch—Dr. Janney straightened from his crouched position above the patient, turned around and crooked his forefinger furiously toward Dr. Minchen. Without a word the Medical Director left his seat, ran up the steps toward the door at the rear and disappeared. A moment later he had burst through the theater-door on the West Corridor and run up to the operating-table. Janney stepped back, pointed mutely at the neck of the old woman.
Minchen’s face whitened. … Like Janney, he too stepped back and turned; and this time the crooked finger beckoned Ellery, who sat like stone where Minchen had left him.
Ellery rose. His eyebrows went up. His lips formed one soundless word, which Minchen caught. Dr. Minchen nodded. The word was:
“Murder?”