The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck by Alexander Laing

would report to us who saw him after that time, don’t you?”
    I got a better grip on myself, and answered, “I can’t see why anyone should withhold information—that is, unless he was afraid it might implicate him in something he really had nothing to do with.”
    “Of course. To continue: I’ve inquired at the bank. On March 26th he made the abnormal withdrawal of five hundred dollars in cash. He pays bills by check, and that sum is unaccountably gone. What are we to conclude from that?”
    “It seems to me, sir, that everything points to his deliberate disappearance. Did he know that he was going to be retired?”
    “He had good reason to suspect it, certainly.”
    “Well, then, he may have known he was going insane, and so drew enough money to go far away somewhere—perhaps to fight it, away from old influences. Who knows?”
    I was almost prepared again to make a clean breast of the facts I knew, since they seemed to corroborate this theory. Then I remembered that a perhaps trivial incident had occurred to make me wonder whether Dr. Alling really trusted me. It was the occasion of discovering that the symélien plate was missing from Geoffroy Atlas. I had wondered at the time whether he suspected me of taking it, and he said nothing about the coincidence that a symmelus had been born that very day.
    Here, again, he was definitely avoiding an even more obvious coincidence in asking nothing by way of explanation of my bloodstained appearance on the crucial night. I decided to keep my secret until convinced of his sincerity.

Eleven
     A kind of tense calm settled upon Altonville—an aspect of everything going scrupulously right on the surface, the better to hide some brooding catastrophe below. When we lacked even a hint of what had happened to the old doctor, there had been nothing definite to think about; but the mailing of his clothes was an act of mystery, provoking all sorts of conjectural solutions.
    In my case it had the effect of making me wonder whether the doctor might still be near at hand, playing dead in order to gain some new advantage. There no longer seemed any question but that he had been demented toward the last. A madman was an unpredictable element. Whatever deviltry he had been up to, of nights, on the hillside north of town might still be going on.
    There had been a consequent temptation to o more exploring by daylight; but several things stood in the way. I was (and still am) working my way through medical school—a routing which leaves one with little enough time for sleep, let alone exploring. I hoped, moreover, to have a talk with Muriel, who obviously knew the secret of the hill. And, finally, I still suspected Dr. Alling’s motives. He might have his own reasons for assuming that Wyck’s machinations had been conducted somewhere up that lonely road. If so, it was a good place for me to avoid. Prexy had taken over some of Wyck’s work in the school, and also had been called out of town several times to consult with legislative committees and with the county prosecutor. One morning he told me that he did no see any prospects of taking up his historical work for some time to come and asked whether I would care to take a position, at an increased salary, as nurse and “keeper” to Mike.
    The hospital authorities were still uncertain whether it would be necessary to commit him to an asylum. They had voted to let him go home for the time being, under observation. After the long sleep which followed his period of violent mania he had been docile; there had been no repetition of the baffling seizures, all of which had occurred within twenty-four hours. I had been allowed to see him, under guard, and he ha shown no tendency to repeat his rough treatment of me. He was, however, definitely deranged—receptive, but uncommunicative.
    Biddy’s agonized appeal, “Just to give him a chance to get well, Mr. David,” had won me over. It was agreed that one or the other of us must be with