The Man in the Moonlight by Helen McCloy

Author:Helen McCloy [McCloy, Helen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Agora Books
Published: 2020-12-09T16:00:00+00:00

12

Extermination

Monday’s dawn was misty, but by the time Basil reached his office in the psychiatric wing of his hospital, the sun was out once more. A messenger from Foyle greeted him with a copy of the autopsy report on Kurt Dietrich:

…We find it difficult to estimate the age of deceased. Superficially, his appearance is that of a boy of 18 or 20. But this appearance may be explained by the fact that the thymus gland was unusually large for an adult, weighing 32 grams and measuring 6¼ inches long, 1 inch wide and 1 inch thick. We venture the hypothesis that deceased was what is known as a thymus type. In such cases, the thymus gland of childhood, which shrinks and finally atrophies in the normal adult, remains as large as ever and its chemical action on the body, especially on the face, skin and hair, preserves a false appearance of youthfulness well into the middle age.

Therefore, we cannot even hazard a guess as to the actual age of deceased. But we may add that such a temporal dwarf usually has difficulty adjusting himself to any normal social environment. The fact that others regard him as immature long after he has ceased to be anything of the sort may be a considerable handicap economically as well as emotionally. Perhaps for this reason the thymus type is not infrequently driven into the criminal class where he is generally known by some such nickname as “Pretty Boy” or “Baby Face.”…

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