That he was a surgeon of extraordinary ability I readily acknowledge. But Belleville was the last place where one would expect to find a man of such surgical skill, and, most undoubtedly, the last place one would choose for the scene of the startling events brought about as a result of the doctor’s purchase of the ape “Horace” from Barber’s World-famous 3-Ring Show.
Had the doctor merely put up at the hotel I might have believed him, like myself, merely summering at Belleville. For it was a restful hamlet, situated in a mountainous valley, something like a day’s run from New York. But his renting of the Thornsdale place aroused latent suspicions in my mind, probably instilled there by that strange article I had read in _The Surgical Monthly_.
Large enough for a hotel or boarding-house, but out-of-the-way located--also because of the enormous rent demanded by its heirs--the Thornsdale place had stood vacant since the last of the Thornsdale line had died ten years before. Its doors had been closed and padlocked, and its windows barricaded.
It had been the finest residence in the old town in its day, but was now regarded as a sort of historic oddity. On the whole, it afforded a formidable appearance, crouching behind its great elms, looming huge and weather-beaten, with its board-shuttered and frowning windows. But just the sort of place the eccentric Dr. Calgroni could work in, unmolested.
I saw the peculiar doctor one morning as I was leaving the small post office. It was just after train time, and many of the villagers were loitering about the place, among them a young man named Jason Murdock.
Murdock was of that type one always hears of in a small community--the village “devil.” He came of a good family, and had plenty of money and all that: but had succeeded, despite rich heritage-blood, in igniting more fire and brimstone than all five of the village preachers had in their imagination conceived. He was coarsely good-looking, and big and husky.
Aristocratic hoodlum though he was, all rather secretly admired the fellow, probably because he injected “pep” into the lazy old town.
I beheld Jason Murdock pointing to a shriveled-up figure of a little man, stooped of shoulder.
“There he goes--that Dr. Can-groanee, who’s movin’ into the Thornsdale place. I wonder if there’s any good liquor in his cellar? That old Thornsdale dump has a good wine cellar.”
Dr. Calgroni paid not the slightest attention to Jason’s insolent babble, but walked hurriedly along, his clean-shaven, dried-up countenance turning neither to the right nor left.
“Who is that man?” I asked the postmaster, who had now come to the door for air.
“I dunno, excepting his mail is addressed Dr.--I’ll have to spell it--C-A-L-G-R-O-N-I--and it is mostly foreign, out of Vienna, forwarded here from New York.”
“Sort of a man of mystery, eh?” I hazarded.
“I should say he’s sort of a fool for rentin’ that old Thornsdale rat-trap, for God-knows-what, that’s stood vacant these ten years.”
I nodded and left in the direction taken by the doctor.
Here was an element of mystery; for I alone, of all the villagers, knew that this eminent surgeon’s presence in Belleville boded ill.
* * * * *
I soon caught sight of the doctor. For a man of his age and physique, his gait was exceedingly fast--as though propelled by a nervous dynamo.
Stretching my legs, I kept a safe distance between him and myself, until he swung open the tall wooden gate and quickly vanished through the wilderness of tall bushes and low trees into the Thornsdale house. I halted safe from observation and lighted my pipe.
Leaning against a tree there, I ran over in my mind the odd significance of that remarkable article I had recently read in the staid and ever-authentic _Surgical Monthly_.
This Dr. Calgroni, it appeared, had stated to the interviewer that he was here from Austria on a vacation--and to feel out the opinions of American surgeons anent his new theory. One _Herr_ von Meine, a noted surgeon of Vienna, he added with some asperity, had scoffed at the absurdity and unorthodox idea of the unprecedented theory advanced by him, and had declared that his, Calgroni’s, operation was extremely impossible, not to say foolish--that it would never be a success.
Dr. Calgroni claimed that he could prolong a human life indefinitely by the insertion of a live thigh gland from a young quadrumanous mammal, such as the _Pithecoid_.
Much discussion and argument had been provoked throughout the entire medical world by the famous doctor’s theory, and consensus was that he was an impracticable theorist gone mad.
And now here was Dr. Calgroni, living in the quiet little town of Belleville, where none was aware of his sensational hypothesis, renting this immense old ramshackle place, and his remarkable intent known to no one but himself.
I had taken a seat on a tree stump, in front of the gate, which had a ring stapled to it, used in former days as a hitching-post. Time hung heavily upon me in Belleville, but this new element of mystery promised some possible interest and excitement.
Having sat there until my pipe was empty and cold, I was aroused by the noise of the gate opening behind me, followed by the _tap-tap_ of a hammer. I turned.
There stood the doctor in his shirt sleeves, tacking a sign to the gate post. Crudely painted in black on white cardboard I read:
_POSITIVELY NO ADMITTANCE!_
_Anyone entering here does so at his own risk._
_T. Calgroni._
Without even casting a glance my way, the doctor closed the gate behind him and seemed about to depart up the weed-grown gravel walk, when, glancing down the dusky street, he checked himself.
My gaze followed the direction of his eyes. A wagon was approaching. It drew up at the stump and halted. Loaded with big boxes, the mules were sweating after the pull. Their surly-faced driver stopped twenty feet away and turned to the doctor:
“I know I’m late,” I overheard him grumble, “but I handled the boxes carefully as you said. Shall I drive in?”
“You’d better,” returned Calgroni in crisp English, still not noticing me. “And remember, if there’s a thing broken not a cent do you get.” And he wheeled up the path.
“Dam’ him!” swore the teamster, turning to me. “Did you ever see such an old crab?”
“Glass inside the boxes?” I suggested.
The fellow looked at me suspiciously then his lips contracted like a vise and he turned to his mules. I watched him drive through the wagon gate, and on up through the moss-covered trees to the house.
_II._
The next morning I arose early, with the intention of strolling past the old Thornsdale place. I found Main Street lifeless, except for two men busily engaged in posting up the glaring announcement of the coming of:
“BARBER’S WORLD-FAMOUS 3-RING SHOW”
Pausing, I watched them swab the long multi-hued strips of paper with their paste brush and sling them upon the billboard. A small crowd of big-eyed youngsters and loafers gradually congregated about the busy circus advance men.
The most glaring and conspicuous poster represented two gorillas peering angrily out from behind the bars of their cage. Beneath it was lithographed in huge, red letters:
“MIMMIE AND HORACE ONLY WILD GORILLAS IN CAPTIVITY!”
I turned to leave--and, momentarily startled, faced what seemed to be one of the gorillas at large! Only it wore clothes. Gazing at the poster with a look of blank curiosity, was a man, short in stature, immense of shoulder and deep of chest, his hair thatching his forehead almost to his bushy eyebrows. He was hideous to look upon. I recognized him, though, after an instant, as the village half-wit, known as “Simple Will.”
I had seen him before, a poor, weak-minded creature, wandering helplessly about the village, pitied, but spurned except when someone needed the help of powerful hands and a strong back.
Drooling and muttering, Will followed the circus men as they started off.
I idly strolled down the first street; then, reaching the outskirts of town, I found myself in the rear of the Thornsdale place. To my surprise, I beheld another warning notice similar to the one that Dr. Calgroni had tacked to his front gate last evening. Not only in one but many places, on trees and the high fence, I saw the warning signs of “No Trespassing.” The doctor himself was nowhere to be seen.
A week slipped by and nothing happened further than gossip concerning the queer doctor. Occasionally Dr. Calgroni, in person, purchased supplies and called for his mail. Although I contrived to be near him whenever possible, he seldom uttered more than half a dozen words--and never to me. Once, though, I thought I caught him peering surreptitiously at me in a queer manner.
Obviously, the doctor was his own servant, housekeeper and cook. No one took the risk of entering his place--not even the daring Jason Murdock.