Any of you ever been there?"

No one had. The young doctor went on.

"Quite a place for experiments. They've got a big room on the fifth
floor where somebody is always dissecting, or carrying out some kind of
investigations into this bodily thing we call a home. My work led me
past there a good deal, and I'd gotten so I hardly noticed it. But one
Sunday night, I guess it was along toward midnight, I saw something that
brought me up short. I happened to look in and saw a man in there,
murdering another one with a wooden mallet."

"Murdering him?" The statement had caused a rise from the rest of the
auditors. The doctor laughed.

"Well, perhaps I used too sentimental a phrase. I should have said,
acting out a murder. You can't very well murder a dead man. The fellow
he was killing already was a corpse.

"You mean--"

"Just what I'm saying. There were two or three assistants. Pretty big
doctors, I learned later, all of them from Boston. They had taken a
cadaver from the refrigerator and stood it in a certain position. Then
the one man had struck it on the head with the mallet with all the force
he could summon. Of course it knocked the corpse down--I'm telling you,
it was gruesome, even to an interne! The last I saw of them, the doctors
were working with their microscopes--evidently to see what effect the
blow had produced."

"What was the idea?"

"Never found out. They're pretty close-mouthed about that sort of thing.
You see, opposite sides in a trial are always carrying out experiments
and trying their level best to keep the other fellow from knowing what's
going on. I found out later that the door was supposed to have been
locked. I passed through about ten minutes later and saw them working on
another human body--evidently one of a number that they had been trying
the tests on. About that time some one heard me and came out like a
bullet. The next thing I knew, everything was closed. How long the
experiments had been going on, I couldn't say. I do know, however, that
they didn't leave there until about three o'clock in the morning."

"You--you don't know who the men were?" Houston, forcing himself to be
casual, had asked the question. The young doctor shook his head.

"No--except that they were from Boston. At least, the doctors were. One
of the nurses knew them. I suppose the other man was a district
attorney--they usually are around somewhere during an experiment."

"You nev