assist in an operation at a hospital with which he had once been
connected, and unexpected complications arising, it was not until two
in the morning that he started away. His man and carriage, that he had
ordered to await him, had gone. The night was mild and it must have
been weariness or restiveness, that had caused the departure. Although
some distance lay between the hospital and his home, he started afoot.
Not a soul was to been seen in the street, which, thanks to the light
of the moon late rising in its last quarter, lay visible to his sight.
As he passed an alleyway, shortly after leaving the hospital, his
attention was attracted by the sound of snores, and he discovered a
man whose features were well shrouded in the upturned collar of an
ulster, seated with his back against a house wall, asleep. The man
stirred uneasily as he bent over him, but thinking it best not to
disturb him, the doctor passed on. As he did so, he became conscious
that the snores had ceased, and looking back, he beheld the man walk
drowsily across the sidewalk and finally stand gazing in the direction
of the hospital. The doctor began to hasten his steps, but ever and
anon glancing back, and presently he saw the man was now looking after
him, that he leaned to the right and leaned to the left, and stooped
down in his scrutinizing. Suddenly the man reached forward with a
cane, smote the sidewalk, "rap, rap--rap; rap, rap--rap," and taken up
on either side of the way, louder and louder as it came up the street
toward the now fleeing doctor, from sequestered nooks between
buildings, ran the fateful, hurrying volley of "rap, rap--rap; rap,
rap--rap." The last raps came right behind the doctor's heels at the
mouth of an alley he was clearing at a bound, and glancing back, he
saw a succession of men hurrying silently after him at all speed. He
was encumbered with a long ulster, while his pursuers, if they had
worn overcoats, had now cast them aside. The man just behind,
apparently did not wish to close in alone, preferring to allow others
to catch up and assist him, and at the second block the doctor could
hear two pairs of heels behind him and a third pair just beyond. The
pursuers were gaining. Though he would have to pause to do it, he must
throw off his overcoat. At the third corner, he tore at the long
garment, it swung under his feet, and he pitched headlong----. He
heard a cry of savage joy and a rush of feet, a sudden great soft
whirr, and he arose to see an automobile halted between him and his
pursuers. A gentleman of a rotund person, clothed in correct evening
dress and whose speech was of a thickness to indicate recent
indulgence in intoxicating liquors, alighted from the carriage.
"I do not believe thish ish the place. No, thish ish not the place I
told you to come to, driver. I'm glad it isn't anyway, as I'm afraid
we're too drunk to sing a serenade. Here's another man as's drunk,
too. So drunk he fell down on hisself. Couldn't leave him here. Never
go back on a man as is drunk. Get in brother. Take you home with us.
Get in."
It is needless to say that Dr. McDill responded to his invitation with
the greatest alacrity and gratitude. For the first time did the rotund
gentleman become aware that there were other persons present. Some
four of the doctor's pursuers had now gathered at the curb of the
crossing and the rest were coming thither, though with no great haste,
for they were gentry to whom caution was second nature and it was by
no means certain what the arrival of the automobile might portend. The
four at the curb, deterred from retreat by that sense of shame which
is not entirely absent even in the lowest and most depraved, were now
insistently giving their rap to incite their comrades to hasten. The
rotund gentleman walked around to that side of the carriage and gazed
at them with some degree of interest and curiosity. "Rap, rap--rap;
rap, rap--rap," went the sticks of the four and down the street came
answering raps and soon the four were joined by two more.
"Don't let him go now, we've almost got him. We'd had him, if Red
hadn't gone to sleep and let him get by. Come on, come on."
The six rushed at the carriage, whereat the rotund gentleman, with an
agility not to be looked for in one of his contour and condition,
received the foremost with smash, smash--smash, in each eye and on the
nose, and the second likewise, when bidding the driver be off, he
leaped into the carriage with his comrades. A single bullet whistled
after them as they whirled away.
"Rap, rap--rap. I rapped 'em," said the rotund gentleman. "I always
did hate a knocker."
With your permission I will here interpolate the remark that the
further adventures of the eminent surgeon with the mysterious
confederacy that sought his life, bore evidence that these depraved
and ruffianly men were not without a certain rude artistic temperament
as well as a tinge of romance, and a dramatic sense that many who
write for the stage might well envy them.
The elation of the doctor over his escape from the toils of the
thieves was not of long duration. His breakfast was interrupted by a
call to the telephone and over the wires came to his startled ears a
hollow "knock, knock--knock; knock, knock--knock." At his office door
down town softly came "tap, tap--tap; tap, tap--tap," and snatch the
door open as hastily as he might, he saw nothing, heard nothing, heard
nothing but the electric bells on the floors above and floors below
calling for the elevator: "buzz, buzz--buzz; buzz, buzz--buzz." He
walked along State Street at the busy hour of noon and all about him
in the throngs was the dull impact of canes upon the pavement, "thud,
thud--thud; thud, thud--thud." As he rode home in the street car at
nightfall, back of him in the train at street corner after corner he
heard passengers jingle the bell for stopping, "ding, ding--ding;
ding, ding--ding."
Although Dr. McDill was a man of great native resolution and intrepid
in the face of known and seen dangers, the horrors of the invisible
forces of death everywhere surrounding him so wore at his soul that he
returned down town and spent the night at a hotel. On the morrow, he
severely condemned himself for this yielding to fear, for on the front
steps of his house lay the dead form of his great watch dog, Jacques.
There were evidences of a struggle in which the assailants had not
been unscathed. Bits of cloth lay about and examining the stains of
blood that plentifully blotched the walk, he discovered that some of
it was human blood.
"Ah," he said, in deep self-reproach, "if I had stayed here as I
should, I would have been able to fight with poor Jacques and brought
low some of my enemies. How easily I could have fired from the upper
windows as Jacques made their presence known. It is evident that the
noise of the struggle was so great that the fiends were afraid to
continue the attack and ran away."
Philosophers and poets have found a theme for dissertation in the fact
that the dog leaves his own kindred to dwell with man and fights them
in behalf of his master. It has ever seemed to me that this were but
half of the tale, for full many a man loves his dog better than the
rest of mankind, and so the devotion of the race of dogs finds return
and recompense. Outside his own family, there was no living thing in
the city of Chicago which had so dwelt in the affections of Dr. McDill
as the dog Jacques. Of the truth of this, he had had but dim
realization until now and he was like to burst with sorrow and with
hatred of the vile beings who had marked him and his for slaughter.
Lifting the stiff form of his humble comrade, for the first time did
he observe a poniard thrust in the poor beast's throat. The blade
impaled a piece of paper and upon it was written the word "Knock."
"Knock!" cried the doctor: "but henceforth it shall be I that knock.
Hasten the time when we may meet, malignant knaves. Never again shall
I avoid you. Henceforth, I go about my business as before, for it is
thus that I may expect the sooner to encounter you."
An urgent matter would require the doctor's presence in the
municipality of Evanston that night. He could not expect to return
before twelve o'clock in the morning and of this informing the cook,
who in the temporary reduction of the family carried on the household
without the aid of a second girl, he departed northward. It was past
the hour of one when he let himself in the front door of his
residence. A pleasant savor of various viands saluted his nostrils and
in the drawing-room he observed that the chairs and tables had all
been thrust against the wall as if to clear the floor for dancing. In
the dining-room, the evidence of recent festivity was complete, for
the table was covered with the remnants of a sumptuous repast. No
words were needed to tell him that Olga Blomgren, the cook, had taken
advantage of the foreknowledge of his absence to entertain a wide
circle of friends; but here indeed was a mystery. Why had she not set
everything in order and removed all traces of the entertainment? He
moved toward the kitchen in wonder and--his heart stood still. The
beams of the lamp held above his head were shot back by the gleam of
blue and white satin, his wife's favorite ball dress on the kitchen
floor. But it was not his wife's fair hair and snowy shoulders that,
rising out of the glistening blue and white, were striped with a
glistening red, but the snowy shoulders and fair hair of poor Olga
Blomgren. Thus had she paid for her hour of magnificence. Thus had
death cut her down because the maid's form was of the same statuesque
beauty as her mistress's. Tenderly the doctor stooped to lift up the
dead girl, stricken in her mistress's stead. There was a poniard in
her throat, and it impaled a piece of paper upon which was written
"Knock."
"Knock, knock--" the next knock would be upon his own heart.
Whatever design the doctor had held of not appealing to the police for
protection against his invisible foes, his affairs had now reached a
point where the intervention of the officers of the law could no
longer be avoided. Poor Jacques could be consigned to earth without
the intervention of priest or police, but the murder of Olga was a
matter for official investigation. With that crafty and subtle way the
astute sleuths of the Chicago constabulary have of informing the
public through the intermediary of the press of all measures projected
against evil-doers, of moves to be made, of arrests to be attempted,
all citizens were in possession of the fact that owing to the
startling plot just brought to light, all gatherings and coteries of
men, especially at late hours, were to be watched, investigated, and
made to give accounts of themselves. Dr. McDill fumed at the turn
affairs had taken. That the confederacy of thieves would abandon their
attempts upon his life, was not to be dreamed of. But they would
forego the pleasure of witnessing his death in the presence of all
assembled together. They would now delegate the attack to a single
individual, and in event of his death, he could hope to carry with him
but one of his enemies.
Again was Dr. McDill called to the hospital for a night operation.
Leaving his driver without, he cautioned him.
"August, I don't want you to be fooled the way you were before. If any
man comes out of the hospital and says I send word for you to drive
home without waiting for me, pay no attention to him. Take no orders
from anybody but me."
"All right. They can't fool me vonce again already."
But when a cab drove up and let out a tall gentleman in a silk hat,
who went into the hospital, and after a little the cab driver, a
friendly and talkative person of Irish extraction, offered August a
flask full of a beverage also of Irish extraction, August took a
drink.
"He told me not to take no orders yet already from nobody but him. But
he didn't say nothin' about takin' a drink vonce."
"Take a drink twice, then, Hans," said the person of Irish extraction,
"already, yet, and by and by, too."
It was all of four hours later that Dr. McDill stepped out of the
hospital door. He paused under the light of the globe over the porch
and examining a large bag of water-proof silk, he thrust therein a
sponge upon which he poured the contents of a small phial, after
which, seeing that a noose of string that closed the mouth of the bag
was not entangled, he strode briskly toward his buggy. The side
curtains were on and consequently the interior was in a dark shadow.
Pausing a moment on the step, as if to arrange his overcoat, he made a
quick, dexterous movement toward the person in the carriage and,
throwing the bag over his head, pulled the noose. A terrific blow
struck the doctor in the breast, but the arm that struck it fell
powerless before it could be repeated and the striker lurched forward
on the dashboard in the utter limpness of complete insensibility.
"It is not August," said the doctor, straightening up the hooded
figure and taking the reins. "How well was my precaution taken! I
believe that was the last knock that any member of that band of
diabolical assassins will ever strike."
In the private laboratory of his own home, the doctor sat facing his
captive, whom, after binding hand and foot, he had restored to his
senses. The outlaw was the first to break the silence.
"You've got me and you think you'll do me," said the outlaw, with a
succession of oaths and vile epithets it would be needless as well as
improper for me to repeat. "But if you harm me, my friends will more
than pay you up for it, just as they have everybody that crossed
them."
"Your friends are of a mind to kill me, whatever befall. Sparing or
killing you, will in nowise affect their purpose. Whatever may come
to-morrow, to-night you must obey my commands."
"I won't do a thing you tell me to. I don't have to, see? My friends
will look for you just as soon as I don't turn up, and it will go hard
with you."
"Just as soon as you do not turn up with the news you have killed me.
We'll see whether you will do what I tell you to."
"You dassen't kill me. You're afraid to kill me. My friends would fix
you and the law would get you, if they did not."
"Your profession relies upon the forbearance and softheartedness of
the public. You know that those you rob hesitate to shoot. No such
hesitation hampers you. It is part of your stock in trade to keep the
public terrorized. You kill all who disobey your orders, for if people
began to resist you successfully you must needs go out of business.
Did all put aside their repugnance to shed blood and kill your kind as
they would wolves, we would have no more of you."
"You dassen't kill me, you dassen't kill me," cried the robber. It was
the snarl of the wild beast, hopelessly held in the toils.
"It is true that I hesitate to kill. I am not proud of this
hesitation, for the trend of the best medical and sociological thought
is now toward the execution of all degenerates and criminals, that
they may not contaminate the race with descendants. However, my office
is to save life and I cannot do otherwise. But I am a surgeon, and
every day I do things in the effort to save and prolong life that to a
layman are repulsive and awful, more revolting to him than the sight
of bloodless death itself. From the taking of human life I draw back.
But no repugnance, no horror, unsteadies my hand elsewhere. The end of
the crimes of your devilish confederacy has come. The law has not
restrained you, could not. Your own unparalleled wickedness has
delivered you into my hands. Many a man have you brought low, many a
family have you desolated. Widows and orphans cry out against you, and
not in vain. I shall so knock your gang that never again shall one of
you harm even the weakest. You shall all live, but it shall be your
prayer, if you black hearts can utter prayer, that you be dead."
The outlaw's tongue moved thickly in a mouth that dried suddenly at
these solemn words of the doctor. "You can't do it, you can't do it,
you can't do it, you duffer----" and his voice rumbled on in a long
string of imprecations.
The doctor seized him and carrying him to the cellar, lay him against
the coal bin. Then the captive heard him in a room above engaged upon
some sort of carpentry, and whether it was the captive's imagination,
or design of the doctor, or whether unconsciously the doctor's mind
had become possessed, the sounds of the hammer as it drove nails and
struck pieces of wood into place echoed in the cellar; "knock,
knock--knock; knock, knock--knock." Soon the stairs groaned under the
weight of the doctor carrying some great contrivance, and the outlaw
found himself lying stretched out upon some sort of operating chair,
his ankles held in a pair of stocks below, his outstretched arms held
by the wrists in a pair of stocks above. All was black in the cellar,
all but where a single blood red bar of light from the open door of
the furnace fell upon the doctor turning at the winch of the bed of
torture upon which lay the robber.
Hardly ten turns did he make, for at the first little twinges of pain,
premonishing the agonies to come, the caitiff chattered in terror
promises to do all the doctor should order, and so was released.
Cringing and fawning, the outlaw heard what he was required to do. He
was to write a letter. In this, he was to tell of the method of his
capture. He was to say he was confined in a second-story room, feet
and hands shackled, and that he was also chained to a staple in the
floor. (That this all might be true, the doctor took him to a
second-story room and so fettered him.) He found himself able to use
his hands to write, and, happily, discovered writing material and
stamps upon a table. He would write a letter and throw it on the porch
below, where perhaps the postman would find it and send it to its
destination. He asked help. His friends must come that night. The
doctor would be on guard, and who could say he would not call in
others? The doors and windows were all well secured, all but a cellar
window on the east side. (Of this, the doctor informed him, that he,
the doctor, might not be guilty of instigating the writing of anything
that was false in any particular.) They must enter by this window. The
door leading above stairs from the cellar could be easily forced and
the noise thus occasioned could not be heard outside of the house.
They must come at two in the morning. Come before another dawn, as the
doctor was going to hold him one day before turning him over to the
police, hoping the gang would do something to involve themselves in
some way they would not if the police were after them with a hue and
cry.
The outlaw wrote the letter as ordered, addressed it to Barry O'Toole,
and threw it out of the window. It fell beyond the porch, on the
ground. But this the doctor remedied by hiring a small boy for ten
cents to pick it up and put it in a mail box. After which, the doctor
betook himself to the nearest extensive hardware establishment.
At two o'clock the next morning, the beams of a dark lantern shone
athwart the darkness of the cellar of Dr. McDill's residence.
"It's all right, boys. I can smell escaping gas, but it's all right.
There's nobody in there. Now for the doctor. We'll kill him and all
who are in there with him, and burn the house," said a voice behind
the lantern, and one after another, eleven burly men dropped into the
cellar through the narrow east window high in the wall. As the feet of
the last man struck the ground, there was a sound as of a rope jerked
by some one in the orifice by which they had just entered, and they
heard two succeeding crashes within the cellar, followed by the slam
of an iron shutter over the window. There was a sound of a spasmodic
rush upon the cellar stairs and a beating upon the door, and then a
succession of softer sounds, as of men rolling down stairs, and then
silence.
A match was struck upon the outside of the iron shutter. It revealed
the face of Dr. McDill, lighting a cigar.
"The gas alone would have been almost sufficient. But when all those
bottles of ether and chloroform broke---- I had better open the window
so it will work off and I can get them out. I will write to my wife to
stay away two months longer. Olga is dead and Kate is gone. I'll
discharge August to-morrow, as he deserves. The field is clear."
One morning, as Hans Olson, cook of the King Olaf Magnus, staunch
schooner engaged in the shingle trade between Chicago and the city of
Manistee, state of Michigan, on this particular morning lying in the
Chicago River--on this morning, as Mr. Olson was pouring overboard
some dishwater, preparing the breakfast for the yet sleeping crew, he
was horrified to see floating in the current that would eventually
carry them past the great city of St. Louis, twelve naked human arms.
Despite his horror and alarm at this grewsome array of severed
members, he noted that so far as he could observe, they were all left
arms, forearms, disjointed at the elbows. Subsequent examination but
added to the mystery. It was no trick of medical students intended to
set the town agog. They were not dissecting subjects, but limbs lately
taken from living bodies, and they were detached with the highest
skill known to the art of chirurgery. The town talked and it was a
day's wonder, but the solving of the mystery proving impossible, it
was passing into tradition when all were horrified anew to hear that
Johannes Klubertanz, a member of the great and honest German-American
element, while walking through Lincoln Park early one morning,
stumbled over some objects which, upon examination, proved to be
twelve human forearms, _right forearms_!
Again were the wisest baffled in even guessing at this riddle, as they
were a third time, when one Prosper B. Shaw came with the story that
while rowing down in the drainage canal, he had come upon, floating
gently along, dissevered at the knee joint, _twelve human legs_!
The whole community shuddered at the dark secret hidden in their
midst, but at last came the answer, yet not the answer. Of all strange
crews that mortal sight has gazed upon, that was the strangest, that
dozen men who out of nowhere appeared suddenly in the streets one
morning, armless all, all with wooden left legs. Their story you would
ask in vain, for just the little chord by which the tongue forms
intelligible words was gone. Their babblings came just to the border
of articulate speech, but not beyond. Torrents of half-formed words
they poured forth, but only half-formed, and to their mouthed jabber
the crowd listened without understanding. Did you thrust a pencil in
their jaws and bid them write their tale? Gone was some little muscle
that grips the jaws and the pencils lolled between teeth that could
not nip them. And as for their lips, oh, their mouths, their mouths!
Such an example of the chirurgery that has to do with the altering of
the human face had never before been witnessed, for nature had never
made those faces. One such countenance she might have made in cruel
sport, but never twelve, and twelve altogether, as like as peas in a
pod, twelve human jack o'lanterns, twelve travesties upon humanity's
front. Howsoever they might once have looked, not even their own
mothers could know them now. Around each eye the same wrinkles led
away. On each face was a bulbous nose. But the mouths, oh, the mouths!
Each was drawn back over the teeth in a perpetual grin, each was
upturned at corners which ended well nigh in the middle of the cheek.
Here were the victims of the horrors that had made the city shudder,
but dumb and unrecognizable. In all the thousands that looked at them,
not one could say he had ever seen them before. In all these
thousands, there was not one to whom they could speak. There were
their stiff faces, frozen into that terrible perpetual grin, so many
idols of wood, save for their eyes, and they were the only things that
lived in their dead faces.
Such rudimentary human beings it would be hard to conceive, and so
after a while it occurred to some one that the same scientific methods
that discover and disclose to us the modes of life, the habits, and
even thoughts of primitive and rudimentary man, might be devoted to
establishing a means of communication with them and unveil the secret
the whole world was eager to know. Accordingly, they were taken to the
University of Chicago and turned over to the department of
anthropology. The learned expounders of this science were not long in
devising a simple means of communication. The twelve unfortunates were
seated upon a recitation bench and a doctor of philosophy wrote out an
alphabet upon the blackboard.
"One rap of your foot will be A," said the doctor of philosophy. "Two
will be B. Two raps, a pause, and one will be C. We will soon learn
your story."
At this moment, the reverberations of a prodigious blow upon the door
outside echoed through the room, "bang, bang--bang, bang, bang--bang."