“I’d like to see you try it!” stormed Grantley. “Such a charge is ridiculous. I can take the position that the displacement of the heart was only incidental, that I was really trying to find a surgical method of dealing with tuberculosis. Nobody could prove that I wasn’t, and I can get any number of expert witnesses to testify in my behalf, or, at least, to admit that I might have been looking for what I claimed. You wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. I tell you there’s no law that can touch me.”
“Perhaps not,” admitted the detective. “That is comparatively unimportant, however.”
“Unimportant? How the devil do you make that out?”
“The charge of malpractice is a good-enough excuse for your arrest. After that the newspapers will try your case before a jury of millions, and when they finish, the argument for the prosecution——”
Doctor Grantley quailed.
“You mean——” he began, in an unsteady voice.
“I mean that public opinion is going to be given an opportunity to try and condemn you, Grantley,” Nick answered evenly. “I know as well as you do that you’re in very little danger of a prison sentence, as things are now, but the greatest punishment of all is available—the universal execration of your fellow men. That is going to be meted out to you and your accomplices, and the result of your showing up will be that laws will be speedily passed to cover such revolting crimes as this. In short, we’re going to ‘break’ you, Grantley. You have no one but yourself to blame, and you will deserve all you get. Incidentally, I might add that I am ransacking the East Side for other evidence against you, in connection with previous offenses of this sort, which I have reason to believe have ended fatally for your victims. The charge I shall make against you to-night will serve to hold you until one of manslaughter can be sustained.”
Patsy Garvan looked at his chief in surprise. It was decidedly unlike Nick to bandy words in this way, or to “rub it in,” either before or after arrest. In the present instance, moreover, his assistant feared that he was making trouble for himself and his companions. He was giving away his hand in a peculiarly reckless fashion, and it was more than possible that Grantley and the others, seeing the pit that yawned for them, might be driven to desperate measures in their desire to escape arrest.
As a matter of fact, that was precisely what Nick desired.
He knew only too well that he was treading in the midst of uncertainties and that his case was lamentably weak, from a strictly legal standpoint. Consequently, he hoped to provoke resistance, because he could count on that to strengthen the sentiment against Grantley and the latter’s followers.