"Thanks for the lift, Edwards. Come in for a minute, won't you!"
"No. I was up nearly all last night and I must get some sleep."
"To be sure! But you've got time for a nip before you go."
"Well-since you you put it that way, and in these arid times"
"Good! Come along."
Dr. Herbert Carlson opened the door of his office on the first floor with his latch key, snapped on the lights, and entered with his colleague, Dr. Clark Edwards. Carlson hung up his overcoat and hat and Edwards threw his own over a chair, and then Carlson produced from an inner room a bottle, two glasses, and a siphon of carbonic.
"Like the good old days," smiled Edwards sipping his glass. "How do you get it?"
"A voluntary donation from a grateful patient, a second steward on board the-but that would be telling."
Edwards took another sip. "I wish I had one or two patients like that!"
"You're not likely to get them as long as you stick to your specialty."
"I suppose not-Hello! What's all that shouting for?"
Both men listened. Newsboys were yelling an "Extra." Carlson opened a window, leaned far out and drew up a paper.
"Just another bank robbery. They're so common now as to be hardly worth mentioning."
"Exactly. Anything new in the Holden case?"
"Let's see. . . . O yes! Here it is: 'Father of of Ina Holden gets another threatening letter'"
Edwards jaw set. "If I had my way," he said, "every kidnapper would go to the chair!"
"I'll go you one better. If I had my way, they'd get the Georgia treatment!"
"What's that?"
"Lynching!"
Edwards was silent.
"The trouble is," Carlson went on, "that we have too much legal red tape, too much politics, too many lawyers, and too little real law."
"I suppose so," said Edwards. "When we haven't children of our own, it takes some special circumstance to bring home to us the meaning of a damnable crime like kidnapping. This Holden case brings it home to me."
"Indeed?"
"Very much so. It has to do with an unusual surgical case, which I believe was reported in the International Journal of Surgery or The London Lancet by Professor Meyerovitch."
"I don't remember reading it. Please tell me about it."
"I will. It was when I was house surgeon to the Presbyterian Hospital in Chicago. One night a child of seven was brought in with all the signs of fulminating appendicitis. That child was Ina Holden."
"Ah!"
