Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 8, Number 20, DeMotte, Jasper County, 14 April 1938 — Floyd Gibbons' [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Floyd Gibbons'

ADVENTURERS’ CLUB HEADLINES FROM THE LIVES OF PEOPLE LIKE YOURSELF!

"The Doctor and the Killer’

By FLOYD GIBBONS

Famous Headline Hunter Hello everybody: You know, boys and girls, a doctor’s life is full of adventure. It’s full of inconveniences too. They never know at what hour of the day or the telephone might ring and send them rushing along on a call. A doctor crashes Adventurers’ club today with the story of his most nerve wracking experience. Dr. John A. Mangieri of Brooklyn, N. Y,, is his name. Speaking about doctors, though, I want to tell you first a thing I saw in a theater one evening.- The play was a melodrama. The packed house = was silent at a particularly thrilling moment when suddenly a voice rang out from the audience. “Is there a doctor in the house?” Everybody looked around at the interruption. The actors stopped in the middle of their lines. A little man with a serious face was standing in the aisle. Then another man with a beard got up next to me. He called toward the man in the aisle. • “Yes,” he said, “I’m a doctor.” The little man looked the doctor over while we all watched with bated breath. Then he waved his hand: “Hello, Doc!” he said. And sat down! L • - That’s, all there was to it. But there ought to be a law. Don’t you bhink so? Called Out at Two in the Morning. Our Doc. Mangieri’s cal! wasn’t any joke. Doc had gape to bed, dog-tired after a busy day at the hospital when that hipesning phone of his tore him out of the drowsy arms of Morpheus. Doc rubbed his sleepy eyes and glanced at the clock. Two o’clock in the morning! Swell time for anybody to get sick, he thought, and answered the insistent ring. But it wasn’t the phone. * It was the doorbell. Worse luck! Probably an emergency accident. Well, sir. Doc dragged hrs weary limbs out of bed, the way he had done many times since hanging out his shingle, and staggered down to the door. Doc was practicing medicine at that time in the Bath Junc-

tion section of'Brooklyn. A stranger stood at the door. The stranger looked pretty tough and he seemed nervous. “A pal of mine is sick,” he said, and begged the doctor to come at once and visit him. Doc says he admits he didn’t like the looks of the rpan, but a doctor's duty comes first, so he climbed into his clothes and stepped out to make the call. A taxi stood at the door and the stranger insisted that Doc ride with him. Doc noticed another shady looking gent sitting in the back seat of the cab, so. he decided he’d take his own car and play safe. “I’ll follow you,” Doc said and climbed into his coupe, j Evil Looking House in a Bad Street. The cab shot away and turned so many streets as Doc folbwed that the good doctor didn’t know' where he was. Finally the cab stopped in an evil looking street and Doc drew up at the curb. The house they had come to was even more evil lookirig. It was a forbidding looking frame-house without any lights showing. As the cab drove away Doc was escorted up the rickety steps by the two men. The second man. Doc says, was even tougher looking thanjthe first. They opened the sagging door with a latch key and went inside. A dim gas light burned low' in the hall. Without a word one of the men led the way up the stairs while tpe other dropped in behind Doc. Doc says he just knew' something wds wrong and wondered if they were going to attack him. They turned into a half dark bedroom. On Hie bed fully dressed was a third hdrd boiled looking gent. : Ordered to Treat a Wounded Man. _ r And then Doc understood. The man on the bed had been shot. His hands as he gripped his stomach w r ere red w'ith blood. Doc was in a bad spot. There is a law' that forbids doctors to treat bullet wounds without immediately reporting them to the police. The law r is very strict. A doctor in the Dillinger case is in jail now for treating the wounded gunman. Doc hesitated, but as he glanced around at the glowering faces he he’d have to do something OR ELSE! One of the men nudged him roughly. j “Get busy. Doc,” he growled. Doc did some quick thinking. The men he knew now' were gangsters. If he didn’t treat thevr pal they might give him the same dose of lead. If he did, the police would have to be notified and the gangsters would come back at him for that. He stalled and told them he had left his stethoscope in the car. They let him go and Doc went out. In the street he got a break. A policeman was passing. Doc didn’t w'ant to leave a wounded man die without medical attention, so he decided to go back. But he told the policeman that if he wasn't out in 20 minutes to edme after him. Then Doc as he entered left the latch off the door. Police Came at the Right Moment. His patient. Doc found, had been shot in the stomach. His friends dropped their pretense and told him bluntly to extract the bullet and be fast about it. Doc told the truth that the operation was difficult without an X-ray. He suggested a hospital. The patience of the gunmen was now exhausted. Doc expected any minute to have,his head bashed in. One of the thugs raised a clenched fist. “Can that hospital stuff,” he growled, “or w'e’il send you there.” And just at tha* moment, like in a play, the policeman came with radio ear reinforcements and took the gang off Doc’s neck. # And the next day Doc read in the papers that his patient and his pals were held in jail for wholesale murder! That was years ago, before the G-men made it safe for doctors—and Doc hasn’t failed to treat a patient since. Copyright.—WNU Service.

The Man on the Bed Had Been Shot.