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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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Wonder Stories, March 1931, with "The Synthetic Monster"
THE true test of a "wonder" story is the answer to the question, "Despite the strangeness of this yarn, does it seem realistic, does it have the touch of truth about it?"
In the stories of Francis Flagg, the answer is inevitably "yes," for our author has the undoubted ability to convince us even against our will that the strange things that he describes so well could really happen.
We are getting too close to the production of protoplasm in our laboratories to scoff at it any more. From both America and Mexico, at the time of this writing, there come authentic stories of technicians coming closer and closer to the secret of "what is organic life." We cannot of course tell what the learning of this secret may mean to us. It may not mean that we can produce living things of a high complexity such as man, but it will mean, in any case, that our prosy world will be disturbed in a manner suggested by Mr. Flagg, as it never has been before!
DOCTOR Jacobs is dead. He came to his death in a most horrible and tragic fashion. But he was not killed by an abnormal human being as the police and coroner's report would indicate. No, the thing that killed Doctor Jacobs was not human. It was...
But let me go back to the beginning of it all so that you may the better understand just what it was that killed Doctor Jacobs. The story is an incredible one; and yet in support of what I tell you there is the evidence of my experience, Mrs. Reynolds' testimony, and above all the weight of Doctor Jacobs' own diary.
AS every one knows I came to Tucson for my health. Years
of working in the chemical department of a great research
establishment in New Jersey had affected my lungs. I lived
out in the desert, went naked in the sun, had a negro lad
to do my cooking, and so within eighteen months had won
back some measure of health.
My doctor pronounced me an "arrested case," but told me it would be foolhardy to think of returning east too soon. "You need a few more years of this dry atmosphere for a perfect cure," he said. I took his advice.
Truth to tell, I had fallen in love with the desert and thought seriously of making Tucson my permanent home. But the few savings I had were being rapidly depleted, and it was imperative that I should find some means of subsistence. In this predicament I wrote about my financial difficulties to the director of the research establishment back east with whom I had kept up a somewhat desultory correspondence and was overjoyed to receive his prompt answer.
"Your letter," he wrote, "came at an opportune moment.
"Our organization has just been in receipt of a communication from Doctor Jacobs the physicist, who also resides in Tucson, asking our help in finding a competent chemist for some routine work he wishes done. I do not know whether you have ever heard of Doctor Jacobs or not; perhaps he was before your time; but years ago he held the chair of physics at Yale and was accounted a brilliant, though somewhat erratic scientist.
"However, owing to the ridicule and bitter controversy his wild theories aroused among his fellow professors and in the scientific world in general, he resigned his chair at New Haven and dropped from sight. You will probably find him an eccentric, and very queer. But he offers a good salary and the work is in your line. I have written him, warmly recommending you, and enclosed find a note of introduction."
Needless to say, I lost no time in approaching Doctor Jacobs. He was an elderly man, his great height offset by the decided stoop of narrow shoulders. In appearance he was not attractive, having a sharp, feral face reminiscent of a fox, an effect heightened by the brush of reddish-grey hair which swept back from a high, sloping forehead. The work he required was of a private nature in the laboratories of his home on Speedway. The big house sat within low stone walls, in untidy lawns burnt out and gone to seed.
A tangle of bushes grew in the rear of the house, and a giant pepper-tree in front. The house was a large one, but only a few rooms were in actual use, the rest being shut away. My own bedroom, on the second floor and across the corridor from the Doctor's, was big and cheerless. Mrs. Reynolds tried brightening it for me with a few cretonne hangings and knick-knacks.
At first I paid little attention to Mrs. Reynolds. She did not sleep on the premises but came to work every morning at eight and left for her own home after the evening meal. But as the weeks and months passed her quiet charm and well-bred poise grew on me. However, this is not a story of my romance with Mrs. Reynolds.
Suffice it to say that I soon grew in the habit of walking with her to the bus, of offering to take her to the theatre. She told me that her husband had died of tuberculosis. Occasionally she accepted my invitations, but our real intimacy did not develop until after the terrible and uncanny occurrences I am going to relate.
I quickly discovered that by nature and training Doctor Jacobs was a quiet, secretive man. He spoke little and had no friends that I could see. But this jibed with my own temperament. Perhaps I had better make it plain that I am not of an inquisitive or inquiring turn of mind. Though I had spent years of my life in a chemical laboratory, I had not the least interest in chemistry, accepting my job and profession merely as means of making a living. In the research establishment I had been one of a half hundred other routine men who received orders, compounded chemicals, without bothering as to the meaning of it all. But I am a conscientious routine man, and a conscientious routine man was what Doctor Jacobs wanted. I mixed his prescriptions according to formulae, noted the results, and passed the information (with the compounds) along to him. The work was light and the hours far from arduous. Generally I was through at one o'clock, and the doctor at that hour taking over the laboratory and dismissing me.
Once I noticed him regarding me curiously. I think now that he was hungry to confide in some one, that if I had shown more interest, more scientific curiosity, he would have unburdened himself of his plans and intentions.
"Do you never wonder what the purpose may be of all those experiments I have you make?" he asked. I shook my head with a smile.
"None," I answered. "That is, your business, sir." He made no reply at the time, but one day he called me into his private laboratory and workshop, a place I had hitherto never entered, situated on the second floor, and pointed at a strange machine which stood in the center of the room. "What do you think of that, Edwards?" he queried.
I examined the mechanism perfunctorily. It appeared to be a haphazard arrangement of crystal and glass tubes, electrodes, a carbon-arc device, and a container full of dark, metallic fluid with a slightly yellow tinge.
"That fluid," said Doctor Jacobs quietly, "is the result of all your labors." Then he turned from the machine and drew attention to what appeared to be a viscous mass of jelly lying on a white-topped table. "And that," he said. "Ah, if you knew what that was! And if the stupid dolts who ridiculed my theories knew!"
He spoke the last sentence with concentrated passion and seized me by the shoulder. It was the first time I had ever observed him show much emotion. Perhaps if I had responded to that emotion with some display of eagerness he would have confided in me there and then. But truth to tell the thought ran through my mind that he was a harmless old eccentric, a crank, and perhaps the thought registered on my face.
At any rate, as if ashamed of his excitement he dropped his hand and in his normal voice said: "You might get after that Number Three Formula, Edwards, I'll be needing quite a quantity of it."
I waited a moment after his palpable dismissal, but the opportunity of winning the doctor's confidence had passed never to present itself again. Though I worked with him day after day, sometimes under his personal direction, and always with him tramping in and out of the laboratory, we were as much strangers to one another as on the day I entered his employ. I believe that in some obscure fashion he despised me for my lack of scientific initiative. However that may be, his one outburst was his last, and I never saw the inside of his private laboratory again until...
IT was a cold and rainy evening in December. I had seen Mrs. Reynolds as far as the bus. Returning, I let myself in at the front entrance and walked up the wide staircase. I made no particular effort to be silent. I was thinking, to be exact, of Laura, Mrs. Reynolds, of how sweet and desirable her face had looked smiling at me from the bus window before the vehicle whirled her away. The rain had dampened her hair—she wore no hat—and the wind had whipped a glowing color into her usually pale cheeks.
It came over me with a wave of self-pity that I was returning to a cheerless, womanless habitat. Why, I wondered, had I lacked the courage to accompany her all the way home? Perhaps she would have invited me in; I would have met her sister and the little niece she often mentioned. There might have been an hour or two of delightful talk, an hour or two of watching the vivid emotions coming and going on her lovely face; while her eyes, forget-me-not blue, now and then met my own.
Immersed in such thought, I say, I climbed the stairs and stepped onto the upper landing. It was in darkness save for a stream of light which came from the half-open door of Doctor Jacobs' private laboratory. Passing the door, I glanced in. The Doctor was standing with his back towards me, bending over a long, low table. Outside the wind was beating the branches of the pepper-tree against the house with a great deal of force. Doctor Jacobs neither saw nor heard me. I knew that he was growing quite deaf, and the noise of the wind and the tree was certainly loud enough to cover the sound of my approach to even keener ears.
I glanced in, I say, and saw the machine mentioned once before standing to one side of the room. I saw the tables littered with all kinds of laboratory paraphernalia. I saw the doctor as I have described. But it was not the sight of these things which brought me to an abrupt stop, staring with open mouth. No, it was the sight of the body lying on the table over which the doctor bent, and which with long gleaming surgical knives he was busy carving and mutilating.
It was only a moment that I stood, glaring, then as the doctor straightened and made to turn, I fled along the passage to my own room. Good God, I asked myself, what could it mean? For while the body had been too mutilated for me to grasp but the vaguest concept of its outlines, there could be no mistaking the nature of the clear, pink skin which covered its dissevered portions. The doctor had been cutting and slicing flesh—human flesh!
I will not attempt to describe my chaotic emotions. The man is mad, I told myself, stark, staring mad; he has murdered someone. If this first thought of mine sounds somewhat bizarre, you must recollect that from the moment of entering the doctor's employ I had thought him a little "touched." But as my first horror subsided I began to think more sanely.
What I had seen was the doctor dissecting a corpse—a dead body he had probably obtained from some graveyard or poorhouse. Such cadavers could be obtained, I knew, though with some trouble. But why was the doctor dissecting and how had he managed to smuggle the body into the house? The latter part of the question was easy to answer. Mrs. Reynolds often went away for two hours in the afternoon, and I myself generally took long walks. But it was gruesome to think of the body of some poor devil being carved into pieces next door to where one slept. The sight of those gleaming surgical knives had made my flesh creep, filled me with a species of loathing.
The impulse did come to seek the doctor, tell him what I had seen, and ask for an explanation. If I only had! But the truth is I am by nature a timid person. Not a coward, exactly. A coward would not have rushed to Mrs. Reynolds' rescue on that last fatal evening. But certainly I lacked determination and initiative. At any rate, I put off interviewing the doctor that night, and when I met him in the morning he was his quiet, secretive self; so much so that every time I opened my mouth, I lacked the courage to proceed.
"What is it, Edwards?" he demanded once, rather irritably, the impatience showing, not in his voice, but in the way he lifted his brows. If he had displayed any emotion out of the ordinary, acted in any singular fashion, I believe I should have blurted out what I wanted to say. But as it was, what business of mine could it be if he chose to dissect a body? Doubtless the dissecting had something to do with the experiments he was engaged in. Better keep still and not risk losing a perfectly congenial job and employer by unwanted inquisitiveness.
So I reasoned; and so to my everlasting regret I acted—or failed to act. I believe now that if I had approached the doctor, questioned him, that he would have taken me into his confidence, and that the knowledge so gained might have been the means of saving him from a hideous fate, and Mrs. Reynolds from an experience that almost unseated her reason. However, it is too late to speculate on that now. Talking to Mrs. Reynolds the next evening, I mentioned what I had seen the previous night.
"But indeed, Mr. Edwards, you must be mistaken," she exclaimed.
"No," I said, "it was human flesh."
"But how could that be? The doctor called me to clean up for him in his laboratory this morning—he does that about once or twice a month—and the knives you mention were lying on the table dirty, and the table itself I cleaned. I saw nothing of any body. Besides if you saw what you say you did there would be blood on the knives and table, would there not? But there wasn't."
"I suppose so," I said, wondering if by any manner of means or trick of lighting my eyes could have played me false. "Really, I never dissected a dead body so I can't say. Did you clean the sink closet too?"
"Yes."
"And there was nothing to excite your curiosity?"
"Only some sticky and jelly-like substance on the table and adhering to the knives with a peculiarly bad smell. There was a lot of it in the sink. I turned up my nose at it and Doctor Jacobs laughed."
"Which is more than he ever does for me," I bantered, changing the subject.
THE thing was a mystery. I gave it up and had almost forgotten the incident when a still more uncanny occurrence threw my mind into a turmoil. About a month after that I have related, on a clear, sunny afternoon, I was returning from a walk and about to enter the house, when, glancing up at the upper hall window immediately over the front doorway, I was frozen in my tracks by seeing the face of something dreadful staring down at me.
I cannot describe that face. I saw it but momentarily. But it was flat and white and hairless, with a wide, protruding, sucker-like mouth—that was the impression—which writhed and glued itself to the window-glass and made blubbering noises. I did not hear those noises; but have you never seen objects which you instinctively connect with and change into sound? For perhaps twenty seconds this nightmare countenance glared into my own; then with a jerk it was gone, and released from the spell which had rooted me to the spot, I staggered around to the back door and made my way into the kitchen.
Mrs. Reynolds looked at me with concern. "Why, what is the matter?" she asked in alarm.
I did not mention the cause of my condition. I had no wish to frighten her needlessly. "The heat," I murmured.
"But it isn't hot today; it's quite cold."
I cursed myself for a fool.
"Just a dizzy spell," I said as calmly as I could. "Perhaps a drink of water...."
But she made me sit down and sip a cup of hot coffee that she hastily brewed. The color came back into my face; the beverage imparted some courage to my heart. Finally, I summoned enough resolution to climb the steps to my room.
Nothing was in the upper hallway. I met the doctor descending the steps. He looked at me sharply. There seemed to be a suppressed excitement in his manner. Or perhaps that was only my imagination; I couldn't decide. I sat on the edge of the bed and wondered if I could really be losing my mind. First there was the matter of the doctor carving human flesh, and now this. Could my eyes be playing me tricks? But my eyes had never given me any bother; I had, in fact, always enjoyed excellent sight. No, I felt sure that I couldn't lay the blame on my eyes. But still there was the face I had seen.
Ghosts! Was the place haunted?
I laughed at the idea. I did not believe in ghosts. And anyway ghosts could not harm me. It was creatures of flesh and blood that frightened me—or so I told myself. Yet passing down the darkening corridor and staircase to my dinner I was conscious of that prickling sensation which runs over the skin and the scalp when one is in a nervous and jumpy mood. At the table, I came almost near questioning the doctor—almost, not quite.
"I must be seeing things," I said with a nervous laugh. He raised his head with a jerk and stared at me from under forbidding brows. "Faces," I said, watching him closely for the effect of my words. "Flat, eyeless faces with mouths." But his expression did not alter.
"Indigestion," he said bruskly. "Something doesn't agree with you. Better watch your diet."
TWO nights later I awoke to hear something in my room.
The night being close I had foolishly left my door open to
create a circuit of fresh air from the window.
"What's that?" I called sharply. There was no answer; but I heard the slithering sound of something being shuffled, not lifted, along the floor. Leaping from bed, I fumbled for the light-switch, losing precious seconds in my frightened haste, while the sound of slithering retreated rapidly.
At last I found the switch, turned on the lights, and ran into the hall. The hall, of course, was in darkness, the light streaming from my doorway only partially dispelling the gloom. The sudden radiance had also dazzled my vision. Yet I thought that I saw something gliding into the doctor's private laboratory, the door of which was ajar.
Even as I sprang forward with a shout, the doctor's bedroom door opened and he came out in his pajamas, the electric light back of him framing his tall, stooped figure and chasing the shadows from that end of the hall. His face, however, was veiled in obscurity.
"What's the matter, Edwards?" he demanded excitedly. "Why are you chasing about at this hour?"
"Something," I said, "was in my room."
"Nonsense," he declared, but I sensed the agitation his voice could not conceal.
"But there was," I persisted. "I heard it moving around. And what is more, I saw it too! Whatever it was entered your laboratory."
"I think," said the doctor in calmer tones, "that you have had a nightmare. But to show you that you are mistaken I will look into the laboratory, of course."
HE stepped forward swiftly, switched on the lights from
the doorway, entered, and closed the door after him. After
a few moments he came out again, this time springing the
Yale lock which automatically locked the door as he pulled
it shut.
"There is nothing in there," he said briefly; "the place is empty."
I did not believe him, for I had seen what he without his glasses had evidently overlooked, a track of dampness, as of water or oil, which led from my chamber to the laboratory entrance. However, I said no more but retired to my room. All my uneasiness as to supernatural visitants vanished. That trail had been made by some living creature. Doctor Jacobs was concealing something in his laboratory—something which he desired to keep from my knowledge.
I tried to conjecture what it could be: a monkey, a dog. But a monkey or dog could not have made that continuous track. They would have left the impress of paws. That track had been left by something that slithered, scuffled along; something that crawled—like a snake! But here I brought myself up with a jerk. The thing I had glimpsed, however briefly and in the gloom, had certainly not been a snake.
From pondering the nature of the concealed creature, my thoughts turned to a consideration of the doctor himself. I began to wonder about his mental state. After all, could he be called entirely sane? A man of an introspective and brooding temperament, without friends or intimates, who had evidently given his life over to a pursuit of that which had become a mania with him.
Geniuses were like this, of course, but so also were madmen. From the first I had thought the doctor "queer," but sensible enough. But of late there could be no blinking the fact that his "queerness" had increased. Even Mrs. Reynolds had commented on the change in his manner. As quiet and secretive as ever, his quietness and secrecy had changed radically from that of the first months I spent in his employ and seemed now based on a suppressed excitement which showed itself in a certain tenseness of features, of abrupt movements punctuated every so often with irritable explosions.
Sometimes, for hours at a time, (the floor of his private laboratory was the ceiling over the main one where I worked), I could hear him pacing restlessly back and forth, back and forth. When he came to his meals he ate little. I knew that he was sleeping less.
What was he seeking to discover that kept him many hours, and sometimes all through the night, experimenting.... working? But bow that my curiosity was aroused, the opportunity for gratifying it had passed. Doctor Jacobs had no intention of confiding in me, and before the intimidation of his manner my courage shrank until it was actually impossible for me to question him.
And in relation to his own work there was the matter of my own. At first the compounds had varied and I had produced them by the ounce and pint. But towards the end, during the last six months, a certain amount of those compounds became standardized, and of these I mixed, not ounces and pints, but pounds and gallons. Yes, pounds and gallons, which poured into his private laboratory.
What did he do with it all? I remembered the machine he had shown me, the viscous jelly-like mass on the table. His words came back to me. "Ah, if you knew what that was! And if the stupid dolts who ridiculed my theories knew!"
What had it been? I cursed the stupidity which had led me to rebuff the doctor's confidence by lack of interest. Whatever it was, I assured myself, it was not what the poor, deluded doctor thought it to be. Palpably, he was laboring under a delusion. As long as that delusion took a harmless form there was no cause for worry, but when it caused him to secrete strange creatures in his laboratory, creatures that prowled around at nights and disturbed people, then it was something else again. The creature, however, was not big and plainly timorous, at large only through accident, and fleeing at the sound of a voice.
Nonetheless, I retrieved my old Colt revolver from the bottom of my trunk where it had lain for years wrapped in oily rags and loaded it with care. And after that one experience I locked my door. For I remembered the face I had seen looking out of the window, and I wondered if the creature had that face....
In the morning Mrs. Reynolds asked me if I knew who had made the oily tracks all over the dining-room and kitchen.
"Ugh!" she said, "it smells like that greasy stuff in the doctor's laboratory."
I saw that the tracks were the same as those running between my own bedroom and the laboratory door.
"And someone," she went on aggrieved, "has eaten practically all the bread, and the roast I prepared yesterday for tonight's dinner.
"Perhaps," I said, "the doctor got hungry during the night."
Thinking of the doctor made me ask her a question.
"When did you last clean the private laboratory?"
"A week ago Thursday gone."
"And there was nothing in it to excite your curiosity—no animal, for instance?"
She looked at me in amazement. "Why of course not! What makes you ask such a question."
"Nothing," I stammered, "nothing at all."
I did not tell her of what had happened during the night. There was no need, I reflected, to alarm her unduly. She slept at home and through the day I vowed to be always within call. If only I had suspected the terrible thing which was to happen within the week! But then if I had suspected it, it would probably never have happened.
THE week passed without further alarm, but I noticed the increasing change in Doctor Jacobs' demeanor. He had become more than ever engrossed in his experiment, calling for larger and larger quantities of standardized compounds. His manner became feverishly nervous and intense, and when once I ventured to ask him if he were ill, he replied explosively that his health was no concern of mine.
He missed many of his meals entirely and Mrs. Reynolds remarked that he was making himself ill. I must admit that to all her inquiries he returned courteous if somewhat impatient answers. Yet in that last week he did an unusual thing. For some time Mrs. Reynolds had been missing loaves of bread overnight. Now the doctor ordered six loaves of bread daily, and many pounds of cheap cuts of raw meat, which he carried to his laboratory.
"But what is it for?" questioned Mrs. Reynolds of me. "It can't be possible that he is eating it himself."
I shook my head. I was afraid that the strain of too intensive work had unseated the doctor's reason. I contemplated bearding him in his den, but testified [sic] for lack of courage. I wonder if I can make it clear just how intimidating a man Doctor Jacobs was. I did think of discussing the situation with some third person outside of our household, but I had few acquaintances, no intimate friends, and it was easy to procrastinate and let the days glide by.
That I am sorry now for my lack of decision and courage goes without saying. But the ordering of bread and meat in large quantities really went on only over a period of four days, from Wednesday to Saturday. This phenomenon did alarm me; more than I dared confess to Mrs. Reynolds. Besides the sight of the doctor's haggard face was disturbing.
I am doubtful if he slept at all during the last week. Sometimes I heard him muttering to himself. Once he gave a sharp laugh and clapped his hands. Yes, I decided, he must be crazy. Now I know that he was only expressing his triumph, triumph over....
Many a time I crept to the private laboratory door and listened intently. If there were something confined in there it kept reasonably quiet. I could hear the doctor moving about, even hear what seemed to be a stamping and slithering sound. But these latter noises could be ascribed to the machine, to the wielding of a hammer. Yet there must be something inside the room with him; something alive, that could eat; for there was the meat, the bread, the creature that had aroused me one night. So I watched and listened, and waited, and then on Saturday night it happened.
After dinner on that fatal evening I had gone to my room to shave and change my clothes, for I was going to take Mrs. Reynolds to a "talkie" at the Fox theatre.
The doctor had not come to the table. Much disturbed, and without telling me her intention, Mrs. Reynolds arranged some food on a tray and carried it upstairs to the laboratory. It was getting dusk, the hall-light not yet turned on, but there was sufficient light coming through the big hall-window for one to see his way through the corridor.
She knocked on the laboratory door, found it ajar, pushed it open and entered. I was fastening my collar in front of the bureau mirror when I heard the crash of the tray and its contents as they struck the floor. Mrs. Reynolds' voice went up, up, in a terrified scream. Even as I threw open my door and leapt into the hall, she screamed again, a scream that expired in mid-utterance. Again and again in her delirium, she told what happened. "The face," she babbled, "the face!" And then: "O God, it's got me, got me!" But that was later.
I heard her scream from the laboratory, I say, and thought the doctor had at last gone violently insane and was killing her. I thought.... But even as I thought I hurled myself down the hallway, through the laboratory, all cowardice swallowed up in the danger of the woman I loved.
"Laura!" I mouthed, calling her by the name that so far I had dared only utter to myself, sick with fear, my heart leaping like mad. "Laura!"
She did not answer. Mercifully she had swooned.
A MOMENT before there had been sufficient light by which to see, but at that indeterminate period between day and night, darkness comes swiftly and already the interior of the laboratory was shrouded in gloom. Yet through that gloom I saw something looming, something monstrous, menacing. I hurled myself at this dimly-seen figure, I beat at it with my fists.
I was screaming, cursing. Then a flailing limb of what I now realized was not Doctor Jacobs but the hideous creature he kept secreted in the room, the creature that devoured the bread and meat, felled me to the floor. I fell across the body of Mrs. Reynolds.
Dazed, and on hands and knees, I dragged her to safety through the doorway and into the hall. Behind me I could hear blubber-like noises, noises horrible, indescribable. I think the monstrous creature was rooting for the food spilled on the floor. Perhaps that was what allowed me to gain the hallway without interference.
Even as I did so the lights in the hall came on and I saw the doctor standing over me with wild, distorted face. It has since been my guess that he must have been worn out mentally and physically from his days and nights of constant experimenting and gone to his bedroom for some needed rest. In his utterly exhausted condition he must have forgotten to lock the laboratory door—as he had forgotten once before—and so left the way open for Mrs. Reynolds to enter.
"Damn you!" I screamed, "look! She is dead! It is your fault, your fault! You've killed her with your damnable monster, killed her!"
But he dashed past me without a word, entering the laboratory, slamming shut the door after him, the Yale lock catching. I heard his voice rise as if in a rapid stream of curses. Then there was a crash; it sounded like the machine toppling over. Came the noise of interlocked bodies swaying, struggling. The blubber-like noises rose, rose, intermingled with shrieks, with gasping groans and cries which could emanate from no one but the doctor himself. The doctor was fighting for his life; but I thought only of Mrs. Reynolds. The doctor must do the best he could. To attempt going to his rescue might loose the terrible monstrosity on the woman I loved. So I picked up her still unconscious body and staggered down the steps. In the hall below was a telephone. Taking down the receiver I yelled into the mouthpiece: "Murder! Murder! Police, Police! Murder!"
AT last the police came. It seemed like hours until
they did, but in reality couldn't have been more than ten
minutes. When they broke into the laboratory the thing was
already mortally wounded, dying, and the doctor.... But
before I tell what happened to the doctor let me seek to
give an inkling of the origin of the creature which was to
be his death.
I know that the explanation will sound wild and incredible. Learned doctors of science will probably point out the absolute impossibility of such a thing; as for the average layman, he will believe me a raving fool. But there is my own experience, for what it is worth, and the evidence of the doctor's diary found in his chamber. The diary is quite exhaustive, but unfortunately the doctor had failed, or been too careful, to give any but the vaguest reference to the construction of the machine destroyed in his battle for life.
From it, however, I have taken the following widely separated entries. Perhaps they will serve to make clear the seemingly incredible thing the doctor accomplished and establish once and for all the origin of his murderer. The first entry I quote was made in 1932, a few days before my employment.
"June 5th. I am on the right track. After years of laborious research and disappointment I begin to see light. Doctor Hammet's experiments with proliferation of root tips, and with the stimulation of reproduction in paramecium,[*] prove but one thing. Sulphur is the basic constituent I have been looking for. Sulphur!"
[* A simple one-celled form of life.]
"Tuesday. (No date). Protoplasm—I have manufactured synthetic protoplasm. God! what would they say—they who flouted, scorned me and my theories? It was very simple after all. Infra-red and ultraviolet rays filtered and diffused through certain arranged crystals and prisms. The reaction on the compound has created the basic stuff of life itself. Protoplasm...."
"August 1st. I have shown Edwards the machine, the protoplasm. He does hot recognize the latter. I was tempted to take him further into my confidence. Oh, if there was only some one to whom I could talk! But this miracle would be nothing to him. He would believe me mad. He is a competent worker but without the brains, the attributes of a true scientist. No, no, I will keep the secret to myself. I could startle the world with what I now have done, confound my fellow scientists; but what I have done so far is nothing to what I shall do. The protoplasm must be grown into cells, the cells into flesh and blood, the flesh and blood into—Ha! that shall be my triumph, my justification, when I present them with man—man...."
"September 10th. Failure.... failure...."
"October (no date). Hurrah! it is the refraction that does it, the refraction of—. I have made flesh!"
"October 2nd. Good God! the creatures I grow under the lamp! I am half afraid of them. If there is anything to the theory of a soul.... But that is religious superstition. They are small and harmless. I try to fashion them into human shape. But they have no entrails, or hearts and lungs. Only a mouth and a sack for food. I don't know. I dissect them, I cut them into pieces. I must find out what prevents them from growing into normal beings. I must...."
"January 7th. I must be careful. The one I grew yesterday escaped into the hall. Edwards must have glimpsed it. He's been talking about faces. Fortunately I caught it before he came upstairs. It is a hideous thing. I shall kill it tonight."
"Entry (no day or date). Curious, curious. It is not the same with animal flesh. Exposed to ordinary quartz rays the synthetic flesh turns back into protoplasm, into viscous jelly, runs away like oil."
"January 9th. The creature made this afternoon escaped tonight and aroused Edwards. Luckily it is small...."
"January 12th. Good God! it is growing. Under the light I accidentally left on. I ought to kill it. But it fascinates me. The second one to have eyes. I have tied it for safety. It is horrible to watch it feed."
"January 14th. The thing grows, it's filling out. I feed it loaves of bread and raw meat. In a ghastly way it is becoming more human, more manlike...."
"January 15th. I am tired, tired. No sleep. Still the creature grows. I will keep it alive until Sunday and then I shall kill it. Yes, I shall kill it on Sunday."
"January 16th. Day and night I have been watching. I am dead on my feet. But the thing is big enough. I have turned off the light. It is securely bound. Tonight I will sleep.... sleep...."
THAT is the last entry into the diary. We know what happened later. Made careless from lack of sleep, Doctor Jacobs left his laboratory and forgot to latch the door behind him. Roused from his exhausted slumber by Mrs. Reynolds' screams and my own cries, he rushed into the laboratory, bolted the door, and evidently snatched up a gleaming surgical knife and attempted to slay the creature he had created.
But the creature had broken its bonds. Hungry, all but brainless, it turned on Doctor Jacobs in its ferocity and crushed him to death in its huge shapeless arms. Not, however, before he had slashed it into bloody ribbons with the surgeon's knife. When the police finally crashed open the door and entered the private laboratory, it was to find the doctor dead and the hideous creature weak and dying on the floor.
But horrible to relate, even in its dying moments, the synthetic monster was still actuated by blind, unreasoning hunger and trying to devour the doctor. Its loathsome, blubbering mouth had already ingested his head to the shoulders....
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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