Chapter 1

It began when a pedestrian got hit by a cab at the corner of 59th Street and Park Avenue, Manhattan, New York City, U.S.A. No doubt it was the first motor mishap in the history of creation that reached out among the stars.

The pedestrian was walking south on Park Avenue, toward Grand Central Station. He was looking at the upper skeleton of the vast new Pan Am Building which blocked out the sky in that direction. But he should have been watching traffic because a yellow cab tagged him neatly and knocked him across the walk into a clump of pigeons that scattered upward in all directions.

The cab driver swore. Citizenry gathered. An alert free-lance news photographer who happened to be passing took the most important shot of his career. After a while, the ambulance came and the dazed pedestrian was pointed toward the nearest emergency ward, which happened to be in the Park Hill Hospital.

The pigeons settled back. The curious went their different ways.

And far out in space, among the yellow pinpoints we call stars, a signal was registered. The signal was of grave import to those who received it.

The signal said, Something has gone wrong.

From the springboard of this incident, there emerged several occurrences of note. The first in sequence took place in the Park Hill Hospital. The time of that particular ambulance’s arrival was 11:15 P.M. At that hour the harvest of violence in Manhattan was being delivered to its logical granaries in the form of broken heads, slashed bodies, and dazed, shock-strained eyes. The examining rooms at Park Hill were full, and some cases of lesser import were waiting on stretchers and benches in the corridors.

That was where the pedestrian waited. Unlike others, he was very patient. He seemed to understand that this sort of thing took time; or perhaps he didn’t. At any rate, he lay staring up at the ceiling, unmoving, seemingly uncaring, until an intern named Frank Corson stopped beside his stretcher and looked down at him in moody-eyed weariness. Then Corson managed a smile.

“Sorry about the service, mister. Full house tonight.”

“That’s quite all--right.”

Corson touched the broken leg. “I can give you a shot if the pain’s hitting too hard.”

“It does not--pain.”

“Stout fellow.” Frank Corson probed with fingers that were growing more expert day by day. “Good clean break. Not swelling, either.” He touched the patient’s wrist, then put a stethoscope to his chest.

Actually, he was thinking of a different chest and different legs at the time--the ones belonging to a copper-haired girl named Rhoda Kane. Rhoda’s legs were far more alluring. Her chest had added equipment that was a haven of rest under trying circumstances, and Corson yearned for midnight when he would quit this charnel house and climb into Rhoda’s convertible and--perhaps later--do a little chest analysis without benefit of stethoscope.

Now he sighed, commandeered a passing orderly, and went to work.

Twenty minutes later he saw his patient deposited in a ten-bed ward. He transcribed his data onto the clipboard at the foot of the bed, and looked guiltily into the hall to see how things were going. He felt guilty because he was tempted to dog it. And he did. He headed for the locker room where he punched a cup of coffee out of the machine and thought some more about Rhoda’s legs.

Fifteen minutes later, Corson climbed into the convertible and leaned over and kissed Rhoda Kane. “Hi, baby. You smell wonderful.”

“You smell of disinfectant, darling.” She wore a yellow print dress that exposed a lot of healthily tanned skin. “Did you have a rough day?”

He leaned back against the seat and pushed his legs as far under the dashboard as possible. He sighed and closed his eyes. But then he opened them again and his face went blank.

She waited a few more moments and then said, “Honey--I’m here. Little Rhoda. Remember me?”

The vague, thoughtful look vanished as he jerked his head around. “Oh, sure--sure, baby.” He grinned. “A rough one. If I’d known doctoring was like this I’d have been a nice prosperous butcher.”

“Do you want to drive?”

“No, you drive. I’ll sit here and look at your beautiful profile.”

They drove to Rhoda’s apartment--Frank couldn’t afford one--and he put Rhoda at one end of the sofa and stretched out with his head in her lap. He unbuttoned her blouse, put a hand over her breast, and teased the nipple.

“Mr. Corson, you’re a wolf.”

“Kiss me.”

“Well, I don’t know,” she teased.

He pulled her head down and she murmured, “Oh, darling...”

But he let go of her in the middle of the kiss and, when she straightened, the blank, thoughtful look was back on his face.

“Frank--what is it?”

The look stayed. “I don’t know.”

“Something’s bothering you.”

“It seems to be. But I don’t know what it is.”

“Did it happen at the hospital?”

He frowned. “I guess it must have. It’s been bugging me since--”

Rhoda showed concern. “Did it have to do with a patient?”

“Patients are all I work with. Let’s see--” He stopped and his frown deepened. “It was that damned accident case. Broken leg. I set it and put him in ward five. I--”

His frown deepened as he sat up. “Uh-huh. It was that damned pulse. That’s it. There was something wrong. That pulse was even and steady but, Goddamn it, something was wrong!” He got to his feet. “Baby--I’ve got to go back to Park Hill.”

“Do you want to take the car or shall I drive you?”

“You drive,” he said absently as he got up from the sofa and reached for his necktie.

Frank hurried in through the emergency entrance and went to the admissions desk. A kindly, gray-haired nurse was working with papers and she dug deep into the pile in response to Frank’s query.

“We didn’t find much on him. An identification card with the name William Matson. Nothing else except a wallet initialed W. M. containing thirty-six dollars in cash.”

“Nothing else?”

The gray-haired nurse shook her head. “No social security number, no driver’s license, no home or business address.”

“Damned odd, don’t you think?”

“Not at Park Hill. We get them in here without a blessed thing but their clothing. In fact, two weeks ago the boys picked up a stark-naked blonde out of a car crash on East River Drive.”

Frank grinned automatically, but the grin fell from his face like a mask the moment he turned from the desk. He went through the locker room and got his stethoscope on the way to Ward Five.

The patient known to the hospital as William Matson lay quietly on his back, staring at the ceiling. Frank checked the clipboard. There were no notations but his own. He went around the bed and stood looking down at the patient.

“Feeling better?”

“I feel all--right.”

There’s some sort of a speech block here, Frank thought as he bent over and lowered the sheet. “I’m just doing a little checking,” he said casually. “No cause for alarm.”

“I am not--alarmed.”

Corson frowned slightly as he concentrated on his work. He went over the patient’s torso, up and down, back and forth. At times he straightened to rest his back and stared down into the calm, expressionless face on the pillow.

Twenty minutes passed, during which time Frank Corson checked and rechecked every inch of the man’s torso. When he finished, he slowly folded his stethoscope and pulled the sheet back into place. He stared at the patient for a full minute without bringing the slightest change in the empty expression.

“Sleep well,” he said, and walked slowly away.

Back in the street, five minutes later, he dropped into the seat beside Rhoda. She eyed him questioningly and when he did not respond, she asked, “Everything all right?”

“I don’t know. I guess so.”

“What do you mean--guess so? It is or it isn’t.”

“There was something about a patient’s heartbeat. I passed it over on the first examination, but it stuck in my mind. That’s why I had to go back.”

“And... ?”

“He’s got two hearts.”

“He’s what?”

“He’s got two hearts, my beautiful love. One in his chest, where it ought to be, and one in the center of his lower abdomen.”

“You’re--you’re kidding.”

“No, darling,” Frank Corson said dreamily. “On this night of nights I found a man who is pretty rare indeed. A man with two healthy, functioning hearts.”

“All right,” Rhoda asked wonderingly. “What do we do about it?”

“We go home for the time being, baby--to your nice, private, wonderful apartment.”

“And... ?”

“We make love,” he said absently.