The Frankenstein Factory by Edward D. Hoch Read Free Book Online Page A

gone Freddy took the floor. He stood with hands behind his back, acting just a bit like a somewhat vulgar schoolmaster. “Well, boys and girls, this is the way I see it. We’re going to have to take turns guarding that guy downstairs. We’ve been lax in letting him slumber along unwatched till now.”
    “The bell would have rung if he’d started moving around down there,” Vera pointed out.
    “No bell rang last night, my dear girl. Though I venture a guess that with Tony keeping you occupied you wouldn’t have heard it anyway.”
    “I’ve had enough of your lip,” Cooper said, and sprang at him without warning. His first punch connected with Freddy’s jaw.
    Freddy went back against the wall as Cooper grabbed him about the throat. Earl was the first to move. He was on them in an instant, pulling them apart. “Come on, you two! Let’s start behaving like adults!”
    Freddy O’Connor wiped a drop of blood from his lip. “And for this I became a brain surgeon!”
    Hobbes came back into the room, clutching a file folder. “What’s been going on here?”
    “Nothing, nothing,” Freddy assured him. “Just a little of man’s usual beastliness. What did you find?”
    The stocky man cleared his throat. “Nothing I haven’t known all along. The shell body belongs to a young man named John Kaval.”
    “He’ll still be Frank to me,” Freddy said.
    “Please.” Hobbes gave him a freezing glance. “There are times when your sheer childishness amazes me, O’Connor.” He cleared his throat once more. “As I already told you, Kaval died of a brain tumor. Certain other organs were affected before death, necessitating the multiple transplant operation performed here the other night.”
    Earl suddenly realized that he had no notion of what day it was. He’d arrived on a Sunday, and the operation had been performed Sunday night. That made this Tuesday morning. Was it possible he’d been on Horseshoe Island less than forty-eight hours in all? He glanced at his watch. Yes, just about forty-eight hours.
    Lawrence Hobbes was still speaking. “The other organs are unimportant at the moment. I gather you’re most interested in the brain as the controlling mechanism. The brain was from the body of a middle-aged professor of English named Theodore Ruskin.”
    “How did he die?” Freddy asked.
    Hobbes cleared his throat again. “He killed himself, actually. Jumped in front of a subway train in New York City. He died two days later at the hospital. Happily, he’d already arranged for his body to be quick-frozen at the moment of death. And the brain was undamaged.”
    “Why did he kill himself?”
    “His wife was found dead in their East Side apartment. She’d been shot in the head. She had cancer. The police assumed he killed her and then threw himself in front of that subway train.”
    “You mean he was a murderer?” Vera asked. “We’ve put a murderer’s brain into that young man’s body?”
    “Now, now! Hobbes held up a calming hand. “At worst his crime was mercy killing.”
    “But he killed once,” Freddy said. “And he could kill again.”
    “He’ll have to be guarded,” Armstrong agreed. “Especially now that the alarm system’s inoperative.”
    Earl turned to Hobbes. “Can’t it be fixed?”
    “Not without supplies from the mainland. A whole stretch of wire was removed.”
    “Why would anyone take a piece of electrical cord?” Vera asked.
    “Don’t you know, my dear?” Freddy responded. “That’s the cord we found around Dr. MacKenzie’s neck.”
    Hilda went out and gathered some of the stiff tall grass that grew near the side door and then cut it into five long blades and a sixth, shorter one. While Vera held them in her hand with just the tips showing, the six men drew straws to see who would be the first to sit with Frank in the downstairs operating room.
    “You’re it,” Freddy said as Phil Whalen drew the short stem.
    Whalen nodded agreeably. “How long do I stay