Suddenly his eyes shifted to Doctor Cooke, and he gave a start of recognition. At the same time a still more frightened look came into his eyes.
“So that’s it, is it?” he growled. “You’re behind this, you young whippersnapper!”
“I am not ‘behind’ it,” Cooke corrected. “Nothing would have given me greater pleasure, but, as it happens, I was merely asked to come along in order to give a surgeon’s opinion of your scientific orgies. I have seen all that is necessary. There is nothing the matter with your victim’s heart—nothing whatever. You had absolutely no excuse, either from the standpoint of surgery or humanity, for performing any sort of an operation upon it, least of all to drag it out of this poor child’s body and make a show of it. Her lungs are more or less affected, that is all, and it was doubtless to the excuse of treating her for tuberculosis that you got her in your power. If I had not seen with my own eyes, Doctor Grantley, I would not have believed it possible that any doctor could be guilty of such a fiendish misuse of professional privileges. What did you expect to find that you did not already know, and if these satellites of yours were so ignorant of heart action—which I am not prepared to believe even of them—why could you not enlighten them just as well with a dog or a cat or a guinea pig?”
Doctor Cooke’s fiery earnestness and withering scorn were good to see, but Grantley’s attitude remained one of sullen defiance.
“None of your business!” he retorted angrily. “I refuse to answer to my inferiors for anything I do. What’s more, I’m beyond the reach of the law, and you know it. I am searching for something of which you and your kind have never dreamed, and if I choose to use a piece of worthless human flesh, doomed already by disease, it is no affair of yours or the world’s.”
“Don’t be too sure of that,” Nick spoke up. “By the way, permit me to introduce myself. I am Nick Carter, the detective, of whom you may possibly have heard, and this is one of my assistants. We have been living next door to you for a short time, but quite long enough to become convinced that there was something radically wrong here.”
Doctor Grantley paled at the mention of Nick’s name, and a perceptible tremor of surprise and fear passed over the group of doctors behind him. Seeing this, Doctor Cooke broke in grimly:
“And while we’re about it, Mr. Carter, I might as well make known to you a couple of Grantley’s hangers-on there. I know two of them well by sight. The one with the mustache is Doctor Hunter, and the one with reddish hair is Doctor Willard. I can furnish you with their addresses if you wish.”
The two men named cringed before Doctor Cooke’s accusing finger.
“Thank you, Cooke, that will help,” Nick replied quietly. “And now, gentlemen, I am afraid I shall have to give you another little jolt. I am a special officer and am quite within my rights in arresting you all for malpractice, which I intend to do forthwith. The nurse, here, will be detained as a material witness.”