Page:Weird Tales Volume 7 Number 1 (1926-01).djvu/14

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Case of Dr. Linn, as it came to be called in Caledonia, was startling, to say the least. The doctor, as was set forth in the first chapter, was a small man, calm in a crisis but of a nervous temperament otherwise. He was well known as a surgeon who had been successful in many difficult operations. The doctor had a large practise which paid him a goodly amount, and in the meantime was slowly wearing his life away. It is difficult to say why the doctor served on the jury when he might easily have claimed exemption. Perhaps it was to get away entirely from his work that he accepted his assignment without a protest.

The doctor was perhaps forty years old at the time of this narrative and, as one can well infer, enjoyed a splendid reputation in the city in which he practised. That he was open and above board in all that he did goes without saying. That he would ignore the ethics of his profession for any except the noblest of reasons, if such coincidence is possible, would be a foolish supposition.

The fact that Dr. Linn began to lose case after case did not at first turn patients away from him, but it did bring lines of worry into his face. When he, too, began to dream about the hunchback he had condemned, he began to think that his work was too much and had caused him to begin thinking overtime of his late unpleasant duty.

However, when he saw the hunchback illusion was causing the deaths of several persons through his hands, his calm disappeared and he became much the same as his old friend Jason Andrews had been—abrupt, immersed in thought, silent to taciturnity, terror-stricken within.

Now when his first patients began to die or to recover in a deformed condition due to improper healing of the wounds, Dr. Linn attributed it to nervousness. The strange thing about these operations was that he never felt that he was himself while in the act of performing them. He knew that it was his body; he knew that his brain directed his nimble fingers; but he felt deep within him that some insidious power was directing that brain.

He did not at first attribute this to the hunchback; but later he began to think that this abnormal being had something vitally important to do with the strange results of his work.

Dr. Linn had a night operation to perform occasionally and he found that usually it was this night work that went wrong. He first became truly alarmed after the death of the district attorney.

This official was suddenly stricken with appendicitis. Dr. Linn was called from his bed to take care of the case. He decided that the appendix was broken and that an immediate operation was absolutely necessary.

The doctor felt no different than usual until he had actually begun his work. As his scalpel pierced the iodine-painted skin, he suddenly knew in his heart that he hated the district attorney, nor did he stop to reason why. The two were not friends, nor had they been enemies. A speaking acquaintance existed between them, but that was all.

Nevertheless there burned within the doctor's brain the desire to eliminate this man from the world. As he looked down upon the unconscious lawyer through his mask he wondered why he had never thought of his hatred before. Why, the chap was actually repulsive! And the strangest part of the weird imaginings that filtered through the mind of the doctor was this: he began to believe that the district attorney had committed a great crime against society by send-