Dealer in Human Parts

THE street lights were burning early tonight. A moist snow drifted down through the gloom, but only in isolated spots did the prints of human feet break the white surface that covered the sidewalks of Iron City.

The courthouse reared upward, blackened with age. The clock in the tower was entirely lost in the falling snow, and only one window among the hundreds showed a light. Inside, the big building was deserted. The corridors were in darkness. The marble floor gleamed faintly.

But up on the fourth level, behind a door marked “Assistant District Attorney,” Leonard Gault paced his office. He was not seeing the falling snow or the grayness of the sky outside. He was listening.

“There’ll be another one before midnight,” he muttered. “He hasn’t passed up a night like this in three years.” He stopped before his desk and lit a cigarette. Sometime between now and midnight he would hear the siren. The ambulance would race by. Police headquarters would be deathly still, waiting for a patrolman to call.

“Shabbily dressed man found dead in the gutter,” would be the report, and the commissioner, with dull fear in his eyes, would call the morgue and ask for an immediate autopsy. That was the only way they could tell about the bodies.

One more would finish Leonard Gault. There would be no marriage to Julia at Christmas, for her father was the richest man in Iron City—and Leonard would be out of a job by Christmas. Julia would marry somebody else. Perhaps it would be the district attorney himself—W. L. Bishop, sleek, fat, prosperous.