Chapter Twelve

DOCTOR PELLMAN was not immediately cared for, as he appeared a shade more alive than the others who were being carried from Pennsylvania Station. All available crews of ambulance men in the city were hard at work striving to take care of the injured, dead and dying who were strewn throughout the station.

Doctor Pellman braced himself with his hands and through a fog of pain watched the harassed workers rushing in and out with stretchers and listened to the rising and falling chorus of sirens which rocked New York.

He must have been there an hour because an extra was already on the streets, being hawked in the station itself by now. Half of it was devoted to the chaos here and the other half to the hope that Doughface Jack and his mysterious “Witch Girl” were gone from New York for good. There was a rumor, the story said, that they had taken a limousine outside the station and had been seen again on the Jersey side of the Holland Tunnel. Destination was not definitely known.

It had happened that a news reporter with a candid camera had risked death in the station—and received it—by getting a shot of the pair and the edition promised that the next would carry that picture.

The picture had been published when they finally got to Doctor Pellman. The second extra was being cried on the walk and as though from a great distance he heard, “Witch Girl, Queen of Beauties, aiding madman with Evil Eye. Beauty and the Beast join hands in devastation in Pennsylvania Station.”

Pellman sank into a stupor through which the scream of the siren barely penetrated. He was not aware of being carried into a ward and laid, fully clothed because of the necessity for speed and the lack of helpers, on a white cot.

He did not know that this place would not long contain him and so he was very confused, two days later, to come more fully to life and discover himself in quite another place.

The room was a surgical ward, vaguely familiar. And it was not New York because the only sound was a robin’s call. Pellman tried to raise himself and a gentle hand pushed him back. Bewildered, he saw that it was Miss Finch.

“Gladys,” he whispered, weakly.

“Shhhh,” she cautioned. “He’s coming around, Doctor Thorpe.”

Somebody else moved in the room and Pellman turned his head to his friend of long standing, Doctor Thorpe. The man was the greatest brain surgeon, according to repute, in the nation. His hands were those of an artist: sure and without a blemish to mar their smooth whiteness. His face was a very professional mask until he saw that Pellman had really come around. Then he relaxed a trifle.

“Well,” said Thorpe, “I thought you were a goner, Jim Pellman.”

“You would have been too,” said Miss Finch, “if Doctor Thorpe hadn’t read your name in the casualty list and sent his ambulance all the way into the city for you.”

“What did you do?” said Pellman, weakly.

“Series of transfusions, that’s all. What else could I do? You, along with all the rest, had the worst case of anemia I ever hope to see, Jim. You’ll take weeks to get well, even now.”

Pellman raised up a trifle. “Is there any further news?”

“News? Well, no. That fellow seems to be gone from New York. At least nobody has seen him.”

“I know where he is,” said Pellman bleakly.

“Then you had better tell the cops,” replied Thorpe.

“The police,” sniffed Pellman. “And what would they do? Run out the riot squad and lose it to a man. Turn out the Army and lose that to a man. You saw what he did. Hundreds and hundreds of people … How many lived, Doc?”

Thorpe looked grave. “Don’t excite yourself, Jim.”

But Pellman was not to be put off. He raised himself into a sitting posture and when the room stopped madly spinning he focused his eyes on Thorpe. “You heard me.”

“All right,” fidgeted the great surgeon, “you asked for it. It takes a victim about three weeks to die. You were lucky. You weren’t as badly hit as the rest and you had some care. But the others …” he shrugged. “Ten days to two weeks.”

“We’ve got to do something, Doc,” said Pellman. “We’ve got to do something! Don’t you realize that all this is on my head? Can’t you see it? I’m the man that gave him that! I’m the man that killed those people!”

“Please,” said Miss Finch.

“‘Please’ be damned,” said Pellman. “Don’t you know what is going to happen? That girl is using Doughface Jack. Yes, she’s using him. And she’s taking him higher than he would ever have dreamed of going. He was a menace before. He’s sudden death now. Doughface Jack is heading for Washington, DC.”

Thorpe got it.

“You mean …” said Miss Finch.

“I mean he knows he isn’t safe unless he’s at the top. The girl has told him that. The papers are right. She’s a witch. I don’t know where …” He frowned. “Do you suppose … but no!”

“What?” said Thorpe.

“Maybe she’s one of his victims. Maybe she’s an old woman and the same thing happened to her that happened to me. Maybe …” He sat up even straighter and when Miss Finch strove to keep him from doing so he cast her aside with a motion he did not even know he made, so deep was his mental concentration. “Thorpe, I think I’ve got it!”

There was something in his tone which made Thorpe signal Miss Finch to stand back and not interfere. He poured out three fingers of whiskey into a beaker and handed it to Pellman who downed it.

“Yes?” said Thorpe.

Pellman took a deep breath. “Doc, you’re the greatest brain surgeon in the world.”

“There’s some question about that since you fixed up that tramp,” smiled Thorpe.

“To hell with that. You can do it all the time and I can only do it some of the time. Listen, Doc, you’ve got to do something for me.”

“Anything within reason,” said Thorpe carefully. “You’re taking this tramp thing too much to heart.”

“Yeah,” said Pellman. “Yeah,” bitterly, “too much to heart. Only a few hundred have been affected so far. It’s the nation tomorrow.”

“The nation?”

“What do you think he went to Washington for? Play tiddlywinks with Grant’s Memorial? That woman is clever.”

“As for that woman, I can tell you something,” said Thorpe. “When I was in medical school I saw her.”

“What?”

“Yes, I saw her. She was an actress of some renown and an accident with hydrogen gas put out her eyes. I watched an operation which sought to restore that sight. That was thirty-eight years ago and I was eighteen. But I’ll still remember her and I saw her again in that picture in the paper, bad as it was.”

“That proves it!” said Pellman. “That proves it, don’t you see? He made her young. He gave her back her sight. And she’s got brains. She’s had thirty-eight years of misery and she’ll try to even up the score and with Doughface Jack at her side she can do it! ‘Witch Girl’ is right! But look, Thorpe, that isn’t the point either. According to what I heard about a Greek he knocked out, Doughface Jack can undo his own work.”

“Yes, somebody has been saying that in the papers too,” said Thorpe.

“But he won’t undo his own work because he thinks he’ll be shot down on sight,” said Pellman. “That leaves only one thing, Doc.”

“What?” said Thorpe, unsuspecting.

“Thorpe, I know how I did that operation. Get me a stiff out of the morgue this afternoon and I’ll perform it on that stiff while you watch. And then … Well,” he said quietly, “then you perform that operation on me.”

Miss Finch screamed and flung herself at the operating table.

Thorpe yelled, “no! You damned fool! I might kill you with the smallest slip.”

“That’s my chance,” said Pellman, an ecstatic light in his eyes. “That’s my chance, Thorpe. I could heal those hundreds before they die. I could track Doughface Jack and meet him face to face without any fear.…”

“And maybe be burned to a crisp, both of you!” cried Thorpe.

“That’s my chance. You’ve got to let me take it. You’ve got to! I did this thing. It’s up to me to undo it. Get that stiff, Thorpe; we’re wasting time.”

Thorpe looked at him steadily for a long while and then, abruptly, about-faced and walked quickly to the door, determination in his every move. Outside Pellman heard him tell a nurse, “Miss Dawson, get a man from the morgue and have it sent in here.”