0060740124.(F4) by Robert W. Walker

Author:Robert W. Walker [Walker, Robert W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2008-11-10T06:02:29+00:00

158

ROBERT W. WALKER

“Operation?”

“Business. Do you do business say with Shanks and

Gwinn from time to time?”

“Only in the past. They’re out of the business.”

“Then who is it you are currently working with? Who brought you these specimens?” Ransom pointed to the three desiccated bodies on the slabs here.

“Why, these were purchased at auction, bought at fair price from the pool of John and Jane Does that go unclaimed.”

“All those go direct to Rush College and Cook County now.”

“Precisely why we haven’t a single fresh cadaver! Short of digging up a fresh grave, what am I to do?”

“You’ve made no other arrangement with anyone, then?”

“None whatever.”

“Can I trust you are telling the truth?” Oddly, Ransom believed the man. Something in his manner. Cagey, yes, but his body and features hid nothing. In fact, he’d proven far more forthcoming than had Pinkerton, who seemed bent on his beginning with Insbruckton before moving on to the mysterious Dr. Tewes. But if this were so, why was Nell targeting Insbruckton?

“I tell you, I am destitute, and I fear my school doomed,”

Insbruckton was saying as if to himself, walking about in a small circle.

“Doc, show me what you have in the way of organs in jars.”

Insbruckton’s rabbitlike manner and demeanor annoyed Ransom. His little pinched nose, bifocals perched there, the beady eyes so rodentlike, the demure and unmoving lips as he spoke, all conspired to irritate Ransom. The man simply annoyed, and he tried to picture him before a class explaining the intricacies of a surgical maneuver. He imagined the boredom of the man’s students. Then he began to suspect that perhaps it was not Insbruckton at all Nell shadowed but one or more of the surgeon’s students, who, out of sheer hellish boredom and frustration over the lack of a good caCITY OF THE ABSENT

159

daver to work on, simply began their own side studies by helping themselves to a citizen or two. He imagined a number of such bored lads. Boredom led to crime as surely as a river fed its banks.

Was it possible? After what he had seen in his city, the perversions and cannibalism and blood-taking, anything could happen here, he told himself.

Insbruckton showed him a collection of withered limbs and organs in jars, the most powerful to assault Ransom’s senses being an unborn child.

“How is it you came by this?”

“An abortion. Mother’s life was in jeopardy, and if you look closely at the head, you’ll see the child had encephalitis.”

The head looked normal to Ransom. All the same, there were no fresh hearts, lungs, kidneys, or livers. The whole of the place seemed a sad museum of lost souls, and nowhere could the word “vital” or “fresh” be found.

“You have no other rooms down here?”

“None. You’ve seen all save my private quarters and the half-dozen rooms for the surgical students.”

“Have you a half-dozen students?”

“I have fi ve using the residence hall. One left me. Others arrive from off campus.”

“I’d like to see any records kept on the five on hand.”

“Records?”

“Yes, including the one that got ’way.

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