Page:Weird Tales volume 32 number 01.djvu/72



OCTOR HARRIMAN paused in the corridor of the maternity ward and asked, "What about that woman in 27?"

There was pity in the eyes of the plump, crisply dressed head nurse as she answered, "She died an hour after the birth of her baby, doctor. Her heart was bad, you know."

The physician nodded, his spare, clean-shaven face thoughtful. "Yes, I remember now—she and her husband were injured in an electrical explosion in a subway a year ago, and the husband died recently. What about the baby?"

The nurse hesitated. "A fine, healthy little boy, except"

"Except what?"

"Except that he is humpbacked, doctor."

Doctor Harriman swore in pity. "What horrible luck for the poor little devil! Born an orphan, and deformed, too." He said with sudden decision, "I'll look at the infant. Perhaps we could do something for him."

But when he and the nurse bent together over the crib in which red-faced little David Rand lay squalling lustily, the doctor shook his head. "No, we can't do anything for that back. What a shame!"

David Rand's little red body was as straight and dean-lined as that of any baby ever born—except for his back. From the back of the infant's shoulder-blades jutted two humped projections, one on each side, that curved down toward the lower ribs.

Those twin humps were so long and streamlined in their jutting curve that they hardly looked like deformities. The skilful hands of Doctor Harriman gently probed them. Then an expression of perplexity came over his face.

"This doesn't seem any ordinary deformity," he said puzzledly. "I think we'll look at them through the X-ray. Tell Doctor Morris to get the apparatus going."

Doctor Morris was a stocky, red-headed young man who looked in pity, also, at the crying, red-faced baby lying in front of the X-ray machine, later.

He muttered, "Tough on the poor kid, that back. Ready, doctor?"

Harriman nodded. "Go ahead."

The X-rays broke into sputtering, crackling life. Doctor Harriman applied his eyes to the fluoroscope. His body stiffened. It was a long, silent minute before he straightened from his inspection. His spare face had gone dead white and the waiting nurse wondered what had so excited him.

Harriman said, a little thickly, "Morris! Take a look through this. I'm either seeing things, or else something utterly unprecedented has happened."

Morris, with a puzzled frown at his superior, gazed through the instrument. His head jerked up. 70