“I’ll go you one better. If I had my way, they’d get the Georgia treatment!”
“What’s that?”
“Lynching!”
Edwards was silent.
“The trouble is,” Carlson went on, “that we have too much legal red tape, too much politics, too many lawyers, and too little real law.”
“I suppose so,” said Edwards. “When we haven’t children of our own, it takes some special circumstance to bring home to us the meaning of a damnable crime like kidnapping. This Holden case brings it home to me.”
“Indeed!”
“Very much so. It has to do with an unusual surgical case, which I believe was reported in the International Journal of Surgery or The London Lancet by Professor Meyerovitch.”
“I don’t remember reading it. Please tell me about it.”
“I will. It was when I was house surgeon at the Presbyterian Hospital in Chicago. One night a child of seven was brought in with all the signs of fulminating appendicitis. That child was Ina Holden.”