CHAPTER III.

AN APPALLING SIGHT.

They heard a commotion in Grantley’s house, and the scuffling of many feet as they ran across the yard.

Evidently the occupants were scurrying to the front to see what had happened. The ruse seemed to have worked so far. It remained to be seen how successfully the rest would turn out.

Nick and his companions were already under cover back of the doctor’s house before any one emerged at the front.

They found the rear door locked, and left it alone after giving the knob one quick wrench. The nearest windows were all fastened, but Nick’s jimmy was put to use at once, and in half a minute a sharp click told that the catch had given way.

The window was pried up swiftly but silently and the detective slipped in, his example being imitated at once by the others.

They found themselves in a large kitchen, which was brightly lighted, and which gave evidence that Hoff had been there very recently, probably at the time of the explosion, for there was a dishpan in the sink and dishes in the draining rack alongside.

In their previous study of the windows they had learned that there was a rear stairway, for they had often seen Hoff passing a small window as he went up and down.

They had reason to believe that the operating room
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was on the second floor, somewhere in the center of the house, and they meant to reach it, if possible, by way of the rear stairs.

In fact, that was their only hope of doing so unobserved, since they could not count on the bomb having emptied the house completely.

The door from the kitchen into the lower hall had been left open, and Nick and his friends dodged through it. Fortunately, the hall contained a turn, which shut them off from observation on the part of those on the front stairs and at the door.

They heard hurried footsteps descending the other stairs, however, and concluded that several persons were clustered about the front door.

The rear stairway was easily located, and they started upward with as much care as their desire for haste permitted. It was no part of their plan to leave the house again without being seen. They knew that was practically out of the question. However, they wished to see as much as they could before they were discovered, and were, naturally, anxious to find something that would justify their intrusion before Doctor Grantley became aware of their presence.

But luck was against them.

When they reached the head of the servants’ stairs, they saw the open door of an unusually brightly lighted room about fifteen feet ahead of them.

The detective instantly came to the conclusion that they had found the room they sought, for the brilliancy of the light told him that a big arc lamp, or other illuminating device of similar power, must be in use.

As he started toward the door, however, he became
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aware, for the first time, that there was a figure standing in the dimmer light of the hall, beyond the operating room, probably at the head of the first flight at the front.

More than that, the figure’s posture was a tense, listening one, and a white face was turned over its shoulder.

The form was that of a woman in a nurse’s garb. Undoubtedly their presence had been detected by Miss Rawlinson, who had evidently not seen fit to descend the stairs with the rest, but was waiting for their report as to the cause of the explosion.

When Nick first caught sight of her, she had seemed to be held spellbound by this unlooked-for invasion from the rear, but in a moment she recovered her self-possession.

“Help, Doctor Grantley—quick!” she called down the front stairs, in a high, shrill voice. “There are men in the house! It’s a trick!”

And as soon as she had shrieked her warning, instead of running to meet her friends, she turned and came flying along the hall toward the detectives.

Nick had thrown all caution to the winds as soon as he saw her looking at him. With a low-toned command to the others to follow him, he had leaped forward, and when the nurse started back to meet him—or, more likely, with the idea of keeping him out of the operating room if she could—he had almost reached the brightly lighted doorway.

“Stop! What are you doing here?” the woman demanded harshly. “You must not do——”

But, although the detective heard a clamor of alarm
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downstairs and the sounds of running feet, he ignored the nurse and sprang into the room.

Patsy entered a moment or two later, but Doctor Cooke, who brought up the rear, was intercepted by the nurse, who fearlessly grabbed him and sought to hold him back, calling wildly to her employer and the others to hurry.

It went against the grain, but the young surgeon, knowing that every second was precious, kept on his way after a momentary pause.

He did not lay a finger upon the nurse. He simply dragged her with him, despite all of her struggles to hold him back, as a football player drags the opponents who are trying to down him.

Thus the three gained access to the room before any of the men reached the head of the stairs.

The sight that met their gaze was an appalling one, and their hearts contracted with horror and pity.

A girl, plainly the same one whom Patsy had seen arriving that afternoon, lay on an operating table, in the full glare of a large arc lamp, which was shaded in such a way as to throw all of its rays downward with pitiless intensity.

At first glance she appeared to be lifeless, but she was doubtless merely under the influence of some anæsthetic.

In fact, there was the best reason in the world for thinking that she was alive—her heart was in full view, its rhythmic contractions being revealed in the most ghastly way.

The lower part of her body was covered with a sheet, but the upper part was bare, and a great hole
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had been cut in the wall of her chest, through which her beating heart had been lifted out.

Something had been inserted beneath the heart, after it had been raised through the incision, with the result that the naked organ, red and pulsating, stood out in startling relief against the whiteness of her body.

“Good Lord!” exclaimed the detective reverently, as he got his first view of it. “The fiends!”

Patsy, used as he was to scenes of crime and bloodshed, actually shrank back a little as his eyes fell upon the horrible spectacle, and even Doctor Cooke was visibly affected when he staggered in, with the nurse clinging desperately to him.

Nick and Patsy made way for him without attempting to draw nearer to the table. They had seen all they could endure for the moment, and were already waiting for the advent of the surgeons.

Willis Cooke kept on to the unconscious girl’s side, however, without paying any more attention to the nurse than if she had been a puppy tugging at his trousers leg.

He bent over the still, mutilated form, scrutinized the exposed heart for a moment, and then took in the thinness of the arms, the prominence of the ribs in the slightly emaciated body, and the rather sunken cheeks, in which faint spots of unnatural color still lingered, despite the pallor, due to the drug and the operation.

Suddenly he raised his head and turned to Nick. His jaw was suggestively prominent, and there was a steely glitter in his eyes, which boded no good to Doctor Hiram Grantley and the latter’s associates.

“There is absolutely no excuse for this,” he said
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quickly, as if conscious that those responsible for the girl’s condition were already at the door. “Her heart is perfectly healthy. She has tuberculosis—that’s the way Grantley got his hands on her. I suppose he promised to cure——”

But he had no time to finish the sentence.

At that moment Doctor Grantley himself, clothed in white from head to foot, burst into the room, a malignant snarl on his strongly marked, sinister face.

And after him came Doctor Siebold and the six visiting surgeons.

“What is the meaning of this?” howled Grantley. “Who are you and what in thunder are you doing in my house, curse you!”

And with that he jerked out one of the drawers of a desk which stood beside the door and took out a couple of revolvers, one of which he started to pass to his assistant.
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