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The Cancer House
by
She had fainted. In an instant I was at her side, helping Kennedy bring her around.
“There, there,” soothed Kennedy several minutes later as her deep eyes looked at him appealingly. “Perhaps, after all, there may be something I can do. If I should go out to Norwood with you as soon as you feel better, wouldn’t that be all right?”
“Oh–will you?” she cried, overjoyed. “If you would–how could I ever thank you? I feel better. No–don’t stop me. I’ve been living on nerve. I can do more. Please–let me telephone Lionel that we are coming.”
Kennedy humored her, although I knew he had several important investigations going on at the time. It was scarcely an hour before we were on the train and in the early forenoon we were met by her brother at the station in a light car.
Through the beautiful streets of the quaint old Connecticut town we rode until at last we stopped before a great stone house which had been the Moreton mansion for several generations.
It was a double house, a gloomy sort of place, surrounded by fir trees, damp and suggestive of decay. I could not help feeling that if ever there were a house about which I could associate the story which Myra had poured forth, this was it. Somehow, to me at least, it had all the mystery of being haunted.
Darius Moreton, her father, happened to be at home to lunch when we arrived. He was a man past middle age. Like his father and grandfather, he was a manufacturer of optical goods and had increased the business very well. But, like many successful business men, he was one of those who are very positive, with whom one cannot argue.
Myra introduced Kennedy as interested in cause and treatment of cancer, and especially in the tracing down of a definite case of a “cancer house.”
“No,” he shook his head grimly, “I’m afraid it is heredity. My friend, Dr. Loeb, is the only one who understands it. I have the most absolute confidence in him.”
He said it in a way that seemed to discourage all argument. Kennedy did not antagonize him by disagreeing, but turned to Lionel, who was a rather interesting type of young man. Son of Darius Moreton by his first wife, Lionel had gone to the scientific school as had his father and, graduating, had taken up the business of the Moreton family as a matter of course.
Myra seemed overcome by the journey to the city to see Kennedy and, after a light luncheon, Lionel undertook to talk to us and show us through the house. It was depressing, almost ghastly, to think of the slow succession of tragedies which these walls had witnessed.
“This is a most unusual case,” commented Craig thoughtfully as Lionel went over briefly the family history. “If it can be authenticated that this is a cancer house, I am sure the medical profession will be interested, for they seem to be divided into two camps on the question.”
“Authenticated?” hastened Lionel. “Well, take the record. First there was my Uncle Frank, who was father’s partner in the factory. He died just about five years ago at the age of fifty-one. That same year his wife, my Aunt Julia, died. She was just forty-eight. Then my other aunt, Fanny, father’s sister, died of cancer of the throat. She was rather older, fifty-four. Not quite two years afterward my cousin, George, son of Uncle Frank, died. He was several years younger than I, twenty-nine. Finally my step-mother died, last week. She was forty-nine. So, I suppose we may be pardoned if, somehow, in spite of the fact, as you say, that many believe that the disease is not contagious or infectious or whatever you call it, we believe that it lurks in the house. Myra and I would get out tomorrow, only father insists that there is nothing in it, says it is all heredity. I don’t know but that that’s worse. That means that there is no escape.”