Chapter 3
The next day I was heavy-eyed and heavy-headed. When I entered the Cataloguing Department, Peter Runcible grinned at me knowingly.
“Well, well, Milburn! Overindulged a little last night, did we? I didn’t think you were that sort.” Chuckling, he walked away. Alma Halsey looked at me sympathetically, but later, when I was sipping tea in the staff room and starting to feel a little better, she said,
“Evidently classicists are as reluctant as most men to practice what they preach.”
“It wasn’t I that was preaching, it was you,” I replied grumpily. “And anyway, as excesses go this was minor.”
“Oh, now he’s a man of the world! Forgive me, but I think for you this was a major debauch.” Curiosity got the better of her then, for she asked, “So where did you go, some saloon on Water Street?” This was where Arkham’s seedier drinking establishments were located.
I tried to give her a withering look, but that’s hard to do when your head is still pounding, and anyway, it was always hard to wither Alma.
“We went to Da Vinci’s Grill, if you must know. And had quite a good meal, too.”
Alma whistled. “Da Vinci’s, eh? I’m almost sorry I didn’t go with you. It would have been quite the field trip, seeing the arrivistes of Arkham in their own milieu.”
“Oh don’t get all hoity toity and intellectual with me, Alma,” I said. “You’re just jealous. It was quite an interesting evening.”
“I’ll bet it was,” she answered. “Look, Charles, there’s something I’d like to talk to you about. How about if you come to my place for afternoon tea tomorrow?”
West had not sworn me to secrecy, or even asked for my discretion, but it didn’t take much imagination to realize that if I wanted to throw in my lot with him, the true nature of his research must be kept absolutely secret. I resolved to maintain a close watch on my tongue the next afternoon.
Alma lived in a curious little apartment at the top of a house on French Hill Street. Although only a short distance from Arkham’s best neighbourhoods, the area was showing signs of decline. Many of the houses had been turned into apartment buildings. Paint had faded and peeled, and efforts to conceal small blights such as ash cans and laundry lines were flagging. It was as though the waterfront slum to the north had thrown out a tentacle and induced a subtle decay.
Alma’s place was furnished in a style which could be described only as eclectic, but the atmosphere was warm and welcoming. No less so was Alma herself, wearing a kind of smock over her skirt and blouse, her hair tied back with a ribbon.
She motioned me to a cushion-laden sofa and went to make tea while I admired the way she had accommodated the comforts of life in the small space at her disposal. Her home resembled a ship’s cabin, afloat on the sea of leaves visible through the windows.
Once she had furnished me with a cup of tea fragrant with honey, Alma lost no time in pressing me for more details about my dinner with Herbert West.
“What did he want from you, anyway?”
“What makes you so sure he wanted something? Besides someone to share a meal with, I mean. He’d just finished exams, he said, and wanted to celebrate.”
“Hmm. From what I know of Mr. West he is not usually given to such spontaneous conviviality.”
“He didn’t seem to want anything much, really, just to talk about… well, his studies and that sort of thing.”
Alma looked unconvinced. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s softening you up for something.”
“What do you have against Herbert West, anyway?” I asked. “It was quite plain to me from the moment we met him at the concert that you don’t care for him.”
“You’re quite right there. I don’t like him. I think he’s unscrupulous and devious. And a real manipulator. Look at the effect he’s had on you, for example.”
“What effect?”
“Well, I think you’re quite impressed. I do admit he is very attractive. But make no mistake, he’s entirely self-centred. And cold as ice.”
I was beginning to think that Alma’s aversion to West was rooted in nothing more than some sort of romantic connection gone wrong. She quickly dispelled this notion, however.
“Oh, don’t think I dislike him because he rejected my charms, or something silly like that. He’s not my type, for one thing. I’ve had very little to do with him, but I’ve heard quite a lot, from Papa and others at the Med. School.”
“So what is it you’ve heard?” I asked.
She looked serious. “That’s why I asked you here, actually, Charles. To tell you what I know about Herbert West so you have something to counterbalance your romantic notions. Because I still think he sought you out with some purpose in mind.”
“Sought me out? But he just happened to be at that concert – ”
“Never mind all that. Just listen.”
I listened.
Herbert West had gained admission to the Miskatonic University Medical School some three years previously, Alma said, having first obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry. In short order he began to make a nuisance of himself by proposing wild theories about the reversibility of death, and worse, carrying out bizarre and unauthorized experiments on animals in the Medical School’s laboratories. It was this latter habit that had caused the college authorities to step in and threaten to restrict his laboratory privileges.
“Why?” I interjected. “Was he breaking the law – stealing people’s pet dogs and cats, for example?”
“Well, no,” Alma answered, “but there was something undisciplined and unstructured about his carryings on. They weren’t part of a program of rational study, which is what first and second year medical students are supposed to be engaged in. They aren’t expected to do original research at that stage, for God’s sake.”
I reflected that for whosever sake West did his experiments, it wasn’t God’s. Aloud I said,
“It sounds to me as though they were out of their depth with him. Did it ever occur to anyone that he might be the medical equivalent of a prodigy? Like that young fellow we heard playing the violin the other night.”
“Oh Charles,” Alma said, shaking her head, “it’s quite obvious that West did a good job of impressing you. I’m probably wasting my breath. But he didn’t stop at cats and dogs, however legitimately acquired.
“He got a dead human body from somewhere. Probably one of his father’s mortuaries. This would have been the fall before last – October or thereabouts. He’d been told to stop his animal experiments by a certain date, or else. So I guess he got desperate and decided to try a human being.” She shook her head again. “Such a waste of his talents. Papa says he’s really very competent at his normal studies.”
I refrained from pointing out that this could be another indication that the good professor-doctors of the Medical School simply didn’t know what to do with the cuckoo in their nest.
“Anyway,” Alma continued, “he got this corpse into the lab somehow, late at night, of course. He’d bribed the night watchman not to report him. First and second year students aren’t allowed into the labs at night, you see.”
West had also smuggled into the lab some sort of apparatus which he had connected to the corpse. He was engaged in pumping a fluid into it when he was discovered.
“It was bizarre and horrible to see, apparently,” said Alma. “It looked as though he’d had an accident with the equipment. A tube had burst, or something. When Papa and Dr. Hobson got there the place looked like a slaughterhouse – blood everywhere – the ‘patient’s’ blood, of course, and all over West too. There he was, blood all over that pretty face of his, but cool as can be, and laughing! That’s what really bothered them.”
I nearly laughed myself, realizing that this description of the scene neither surprised nor shocked me. In fact, it was exactly what I would have expected of the Herbert West I had begun to know. I wondered what had prompted his laughter. The experiment had failed, of course, so it must ha
ve been ironic amusement at the outrage of those whom he believed to be willfully ignorant.
“How did your father happen to know that West was in the laboratory that night?” I asked.
She looked uneasy. “I think someone tipped him off. Another student, maybe.” She didn’t go so far as to suggest that West had been watched, but I remembered what he had said about betrayal.
“Anyway, the next day Papa called West on the carpet and told him he had one chance to redeem himself. And he was forbidden to use any laboratory at the Medical School except under close supervision, for his course work only, for the remainder of the year.” She paused. “That seems pretty lenient to me, considering that he was already under threat of suspension. I wouldn’t be surprised if West senior weighed in with the senior college administration to smooth things over for his boy.”
“Yes, what about Hiram West?” I asked. “His son seemed rather ambivalent about him.”
“Really? A point in his favour, there. Hiram’s a typical businessman, in most ways. Into every kind of enterprise, and filthy rich. But none too scrupulous, if what I’ve heard is true. The thing is, he’s the sort of person that could be persuaded to be a major benefactor of Miskatonic. So it’s not really in the interests of the college to discipline his son too harshly. And in your case it’s another reason to be careful.”
“I hardly think I’ll ever pose any threat to Hiram West,” I said. “Really, Alma, you’re taking all this much too seriously. I admit I find West a rather interesting type, but our paths aren’t likely to cross very often, after all.”
“I hope not, for your sake. I have a bad feeling about that young man.”
“And this young man?” I asked, feeling suddenly playful. “What sort of feeling do you have about him?”
She regarded me with her head tilted to one side, a little smile on her lips. “Oh, I think he’s a very nice young man. I quite enjoy his company. Seriously, Charles, I do. I’m glad you came to Miskatonic.”
We went on then to talk about other things, including Alma’s ideas about the ‘new woman.’ She felt very strongly that young women should be encouraged to leave their parents’ homes and support themselves for a while before they married.
“Otherwise the poor things are perfectly helpless, aside from housekeeping and looking after children. And so dull, too.”
“You are surely an example of the other kind of woman, then, Alma. There’s nothing dull about you.”
“I hope not,” she said, looking pleased.
We parted in this mood of friendly bantering. But walking homeward, I knew that my mind was operating on two levels. On one, I was developing a closeness with Alma that I found pleasing and gratifying. On the other, I was ready to throw myself heart and soul into whatever adventures I could find in the proximity of Herbert West. It was as though I stood in a house looking out through two different windows. From one I saw a warm and sunlit meadow, humming with bees, from the other a black sky blazing with unknown stars.
The next morning I decided to go to church. I was not a regular churchgoer, and when I went it was not for the conventional reasons. I went to honour the memory of my mother, Helen Devereaux Milburn, and to hear the music. I did not consider myself a practicing Catholic, but my mother had been one, and for her sake I maintained a tenuous link with the Roman Church.
There was no Catholic church in Arkham. That town had not gone so far from its Puritan roots as to permit such a thing. It was necessary to go to neighbouring Bolton, where a large population of Irish and Italian immigrants attended the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.
It had rained in the night, but the sky had cleared by the time I set out. The sun was swimming up from a sea of mist which gave ordinary things an otherworldly air. The venerable buildings of Arkham were softened in outline, yet sparkled as sun-shot raindrops fell from eaves and cornices. The air was sweetly fragrant and birds sang loudly. A short walk took me to River Street, where I boarded the old, rattling bus that shuttled between Arkham and Bolton twice a day.
Bolton is situated on a small hill, and so escapes the fogs and mists that plague Arkham. The hill falls sharply to the river on one side. At its summit is the Cathedral, a neo-Gothic building of the late 19th century, built large to accommodate the sizeable congregation of Bolton and the surrounding districts. No restraint had been exercised in the frescoes, which depicted various scenes from the Bible and the lives of the saints in vivid, almost lurid detail.
And yet, I found it peaceful. The effect of the frescoes was softened by the scale of the building and the way the light fell through the tall windows. There was an atmosphere of stillness which is common to all places of worship, from a Quaker meeting house to St. Peter’s Basilica itself.
The Catholic service must be admired for its universality. One may attend a church in any city, with a congregation that speaks who knows what language, and experience the same Mass as in one’s own church at home. I enjoyed hearing the Latin words spoken too, even though it was ecclesiastical Latin with the singsong accents of Italy.
The Cathedral was blessed with an enthusiastic choir and a choir director who was a true musician – Franz Marcello, an Austrian-Italian. He was a skilled organist, composer and choir director. The congregation was regularly treated to very fine singing, and occasionally to miracles of Renaissance polyphony. To hear the Mass sung, rather than spoken is a true pleasure, when the singers know their work and do it well. Today, to my delight, it was Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli, which strikes such a fine balance between ornateness and simplicity.
I lost myself in the overlapping waves of pure sound, unfolding and unfolding around me until I felt myself to be in the middle of a crystal globe suspended in a gulf of sunlight. From the first notes, I was borne upward by the voices, clear sopranos and deep baritones, floating on the sunlit air charged with dust motes. I was more than usually moved, probably because of the strangeness and potential dangers of the things about which West had told me, and the need to come up with an answer for him the next day.
During the sermon, which was a long one, I thought again of West’s ideas about death and its possible reversal. Did I believe him? What did I myself think about death? Both my parents had died prematurely, my father by his own hand. I could not see that revivification such as West proposed would have served either of them – had my father returned to life he would still have been a failed banker. And my mother would have been the widow of a suicide, who had lost her home, her social position and her garden.
My mother’s garden! I think it was the great joy of her life, more than my father, certainly, or me, or even music. It was when she no longer had it that she sickened and died.
We must have had several gardeners, over the years, but I remember only one. Michael O’Connor had been something else before taking up horticulture, perhaps a teacher, probably a poet. He did more than dig and prune and cut the grass to order. He advised my mother as to what to plant and how to achieve perfection in the perennial borders and shrubberies. The two of them would have long conversations while walking among the beds and borders, comparing the merits of one rose versus another, or debating whether lilies would do better with a southern or an eastern exposure. The garden was their joint enterprise. I realized that, even though my father did not. Michael left us when I was ten or so. I did not know the reason for his going and I never saw him again.
One fall when I was perhaps seven years old, I found a dead bird in the garden. Distressed, I demanded that the creature be given a funeral. A cigar box was found for a coffin, and Michael O’Connor fetched a spade and dug a grave beneath some shrubs. After we had deposited the little coffin and refilled the hole I asked,
“What about birds that don’t have people to bury them, Michael? What happens to them?”
“Most birds, most critters, really, don’t get buried by people, Charlie. Funerals are something only people do.”
“So what happens to them? Birds and critters, I
mean.”
“They go back to the earth. To the place of life and death. Come over here. I’ll show you something.”
Near the potting shed, fallen leaves had been raked into great heaps. Michael pointed to one of them and said, “Here’s one of those places. You see all these leaves? They’ll rot here over the winter and next spring and summer. And next fall I’ll take the black stuff they’ll have turned into and spread it around the garden. The plants will use that black stuff to grow better. So you get life coming from death. It’s the same with that bird. When it was alive it ate seeds and bugs and worms. They died, and the bird lived. Now the bird’s dead, and a lot of critters will use up that bird, use it to keep themselves going, until they die and turn into food for something else. This is what happens to just about all animals. But people, now, they try like hell to keep themselves from going back into the earth. They have coffins and vaults, and all sorts of things to keep that from happening.”
“Why do they do that?” I had never heard about any of this before, and found it intensely interesting.
“I guess because they figure they might need their bodies again, later. Some people think our bodies will get up again and join with our souls in Heaven.”
“Do you believe that, Michael?”
“No I don’t. I think our bodies come from the earth, and go back to the earth. I think that’s the way God wants it to be. Maybe he takes our souls back to himself. I don’t know about that. But you only have to be a gardener to see how life and death are parts of the same thing.”
Some of the piled-up leaves were still brightly coloured, red and yellow. Others had faded to a dull brown, and still others were nearly black. A rich odour of over-ripeness hung in the warm air, from plums that had fallen from a nearby tree and lay with juice oozing from their split skins. Wasps buzzed and crawled around them, feeding on the sweet stuff. Here was life in death, indeed.
Now, in the church in Bolton, years later, sitting on the hard wooden bench, with the voice of Father Duranti droning in my ear, I remembered the rotting leaves and rotting plums and Michael O’Connor telling me of the place of life and death. Where, I wondered, did Herbert West’s researches belong in this cycle? Why should I involve myself in his wild enterprise? Did it matter that I personally had no desire to vanquish death in the way he had described? For me there was something repugnant about the idea of a body that had been dead, however briefly, being forced into some grotesque semblance of life. Repugnant and unlikely too. I could more readily believe in the eternal life of the soul.
Shortly after my father killed himself, I had consulted a medium in an effort to communicate with his spirit. I thought if I could speak with him for only a few minutes I could ask him if he had found peace, and I could tell him I loved him, something I had not done for years. But the medium (Madame Zsa Zsa was the name she used), festooned in veils and scarves, painted eyes peering at me rapaciously, had filled me with distaste. How could this woman, with her false name and false accent, breach the mystery of death? Rather than insult the memory of my father, I abandoned the idea.
But now, perhaps, I would have an opportunity to speak with someone who had crossed the mystical barrier between life and death. Even to know that consciousness survived the process of dissolution would be a revelation indeed. Would such knowledge increase my faith, I wondered, or erode it further? The experiment, I thought, would be carried out on more than one subject.
The sermon ended and the measured ceremony of the Mass resumed. For the first time in years I prayed – for the souls of my parents, for Michael O’Connor, wherever he might be, for myself. But it never occurred to me to pray for Herbert West.
The bus was considerably fuller on the return trip to Arkham. This time, I had a seatmate – a tall old fellow, somewhat stooped in the shoulders.
“I like going to church,” he said, sitting down with a sigh. “Sometimes I go two or three times on a Sunday. Doesn’t matter which one – R.C., Baptist, Episcopalian – I go to all of ‘em. I suppose it comes of spending so much time in churches when I was working.” He held out a hand. “My name is Philip Howard, by the way.”
I looked more closely at my companion as I shook his hand. He was dressed in a somber black suit, old but well cared for. Something about it, and his rather formal manner, made me curious.
“What sort of work did you do, Mr. Howard?” I asked.
“I was in the undertaking trade, worked for West’s Funeral Home for thirty years. I know most of the folks in town, dead and alive, but I don’t believe I’ve seen you before.”
“I’ve lived in Arkham for less than a year, and I have not yet attended a funeral here. Were you a funeral director?”
“For my last ten years I was. Before that I did whatever needed doing, drove the hearse, built coffins and so forth.”
“Did you see much of Mr. West?”
“Which one?” He laughed a little. “I worked mostly for Mr. Joshua West and his brother Henry. They were real undertakers, now. When Hiram took over the funeral business was only a sideline. He hired managers to oversee it. Had better things to do himself, I guess.”
“Did Hiram West live in Arkham, then? I thought he was from Boston.”
“Right you are. Wests are from Boston. The connection to Arkham was the funeral homes. Joshua and Henry bought up all the homes in the smaller cities around here back in the early ‘80s. And the other connection was Mrs. Hiram. She was from Arkham and couldn’t bear to leave it, seemingly. Some folks figure that’s why she left him, but I think there must have been more to it than that. In ’94 or ’95, that was. Now it might be true she came back to Arkham, all right. Her people, the Derbys, have been here for generations, you see.”
“Left him!” I exclaimed. “But I was under the impression that she died many years ago.” I did a quick calculation. West had said that his mother had died when he was eight. He must be about twenty-five now, I reckoned. “At least fifteen.”
“Well, you heard wrong. It was fifteen years ago, all right, but she didn’t die. She left Hiram and the boys and probably came back to Arkham. She might still be living here, for all I know.”
I had suspected that West’s poignant tale of his mother’s death was not altogether true, and I could now understand why he might prefer to think of her as dead, but it seemed odd that he could live in the same not very large city as she and continue to deny her existence. Perhaps he had no idea that she might be in Arkham.
“There were only three sons, then?” I asked, remembering West’s mention of a twin brother who had died at the same time as his mother.
“Only the three, and the two older ones were in their teens when she left, so they probably didn’t feel it too much. But the little one, Herbert, he was only seven or eight, and I can imagine it would have hit him pretty hard. He had her looks, too, unlike his brothers, who take after Hiram, too bad for them.”
He laughed shortly. “That little Herbert, though, he was a tough one. Maybe her going didn’t do him that much harm after all, or maybe he just didn’t show it. Not much scared that boy. I remember him going along with his Grandpa Joshua when he took Mrs. Beazley around to show the country folks what a well-preserved lady she was.”
“Who was Mrs. Beazley?” I asked.
“She was a corpse! Yes indeed, before embalming became popular, undertakers had to advertise it somehow, to get people wanting to have it done to their dear departeds, you know. Someone hit on the idea of fitting up a body – one that would have gone to the potter’s field, of course – no sense in taking a chance on running into its relatives somewhere – and showing it around as a kind of sample. A picture’s worth a thousand words, and all that.
“So Wests got this poor woman, some lady of the evening, probably, and gave her the treatment, dressed her up nice and drove around all the little burgs back in the hills, there.” He waved a hand vaguely westwards. “Dunwich and Aylesbury and Dean’s Corners. Godforsaken little places, all of them. I don�
��t know how much business they drummed up there. One of our embalmers, George Price, a real joker, he named her Mrs. Beazley after his old aunt. Looked just like her, he said, but didn’t talk as much. Anyway, young Herbert, later on he worked in the trade, too. Did the embalming. That was before he went to be a doctor, of course.”
I did not trouble to inform the old fellow about my acquaintance with West. I was too occupied with digesting his bizarre tale. My impressions of West had led me to believe that he perfectly fit the type of the young dilettante son of the nouveau riche tycoon – privileged, a little dandified, but with something besides, an iconoclasm bordering on wildness.
But this! Mrs. Beazley, and long drives along narrow winding roads to primitive villages so his grandfather could hawk embalming to their benighted inhabitants. Perhaps this explained something of West’s apparent deviousness. Clearly, his had been no ordinary childhood.
By now we had reached the Arkham terminus. I said goodbye to Philip Howard, thanking him for his interesting stories.
“Not at all, young fellow. People tell me I run on too much, and maybe they’re right. It’s nice to find someone who hasn’t heard it all before. Good day to you!”
The next day, immediately after work, I went directly to West’s rooms, as we had agreed. West ushered me into a spacious room he used as a study. The desk was littered with books and papers. West himself appeared remote and distracted, not inclined to small talk.
“I have made up my mind,” I said. “I would be honoured to assist you with your experiments.”
“Would you, now?” he said, with what can be described only as a private smile, looking at something unguessable and distant in a corner of the room. I was disconcerted. Had I perhaps misunderstood him the other night, and was now being presumptuous?
After this uncomfortable moment he turned his remarkable eyes fully on me.
“I’m glad to hear that, Charles, ” he said, springing to his feet and holding out his hand. I got up and took it. We stood there for a moment, hands clasped, and I felt a most extraordinary elation rush through me. Then he said, “This calls for a toast.” He left the room briefly and returned with a bottle of whiskey. As we raised our glasses he said, “To our enterprise! Death be vanquished!”
After this he became businesslike.
“I want to make sure you know exactly what it is we will be doing,” he began. “Securing a suitable body is the most difficult problem. The obituaries are no good these days. People who put obituary notices in the newspapers generally get their deceased relatives embalmed. And even though embalming was one of the things that showed me how revivification might be accomplished, it’s entirely fatal to my process, which depends on the interaction of the introduced fluid with the natural blood. An embalmed body no longer has any natural blood. Bodies buried in the potter’s field are therefore superior for my purposes to the worthies in Christ Church Cemetery. A kind of social reversal, you might say.” He smiled.
“The thing about burials in the potter’s field is finding out about them in time. Obviously, we can’t hang about in the burial ground on the chance. I figure accident victims would be the best specimens, provided they’re not too mangled by whatever killed them.”
“Excuse me… Herbert,” I interrupted, using his first name, as he had used mine. “Where are we going to do the experiment?”
He looked annoyed. “Haven’t you been listening? The logical place would be one of the labs in the Med. School, but since logic doesn’t operate there, the only other possibility is here, in my rooms. Even that will be risky enough. We’ll have to get the apparatus in place with only the shortest notice, since I dare not set it up ahead of time and risk its existence being discovered.
“Another thing, Charles – the revivifying solution is quite unstable. I’m certain, based on my animal experiments, that it loses its effectiveness after a few hours. So you see, as soon as I hear of a suitable body, we must formulate the solution, set up the equipment, and transport the subject in short order. That’s why I need your help.”
“What will you want me to do, exactly?”
“Well, that depends on the precise circumstances. You’ll set up the apparatus, I think. I’ll show you how it works in a few minutes. I’ll cook the solution. But the trickiest thing will be getting the body into the house. Don’t imagine that we’ll carry it on a stretcher. That would be as sure a way as any to tell anyone who happens by that something unorthodox is going on. No, I’ve decided that the best approach would be for the two of us to act like gentlemen returning home from a jolly evening, holding up our even more inebriated companion. Think you’re equal to that, Charles?”
I was momentarily horrified. Of course I had realized that West’s experiments of necessity involved corpses, but in my naïveté I had not imagined that my role would require me to handle them in any intimate way. I had imagined myself standing at West’s side, handing him things and watching enthralled as he performed his scientific miracles. Suddenly I remembered what Philip Howard had told me about West and ‘Mrs. Beazley.’ I shuddered. What was I getting myself into?
But it was too late to back out. “I hope I can do it,” I said, as steadily as I could. “Do you have the equipment here? Perhaps you could show me how it works now.” I was determined to forge ahead, hoping that my misgivings did not show on my face.
“Not so fast, Charles. There’s one more thing I have to tell you. Then I’ll give you a minute to think about the whole business again before you really decide. I realize this must seem pretty drastic to someone who hasn’t had my experience.
“You must understand,” he said, looking at me seriously, “that I have no idea what a revivified body might do. Without a doubt, brain cells will have been lost during the interval of death. The brain chemistry may have changed too, in some subtle way. That’s why freshness is so important. We may find ourselves dealing with a quasi-vegetable idiot, or with a person who appears to be entirely normal, but with some loss of cognition. On the other hand, we may get violent reactions of the most extreme sort. I found this to be quite common in my animal experiments. After a while I routinely used restraints and kept a syringe full of a deadly alkaloid on hand to dispatch any subjects of the violent sort. This is a dangerous business,” he said slowly and emphatically. “Think about it for five minutes. If you decide you want out I’ll not blame you.”
He returned to his writing, completely ignoring me. I watched him as he made some notes, shuffled through papers, got up to take a book from a nearby shelf, consulted it, wrote some more. My mind was completely blank. For me it really was too late to back out, and had been so ever since I had made my declaration upon my arrival. But I let the five minutes elapse, just the same.
When the allotted time had passed he directed his gaze back to me and asked, “Well, Charles, are you in or out?”
“I’m in,” I said, relieved that the period of limbo was over.
“Good. Actually, I knew you would be. But I wanted to make sure it was a considered decision on your part. Now come with me and I’ll show you the apparatus.”
He led me to a small room at the back of the house, ostensibly used for storage. There was a large table by one wall, which could be moved to the centre of the room. Inside a crate was the apparatus for creating and administering the critical fluid.
“The idea is that everything can be dismantled and packed away quickly, should the need arise. That would be fine in case of a superficial search, by police or others. It would not, of course, be proof against a more systematic investigation, which is why I’m so anxious to achieve success quickly. Once I get some documented positive results, those fools at the Med. School will have to acknowledge the value of my work. Besides, after this summer I’ll be neck-deep in clinical work. Sixteen hour days won’t give me much time for this.”
Assembling the apparatus was not overly complicated, although I could see that care was needed to make certain that all the connections were properly m
ade and tightly secured. West spent less time showing me the laboratory equipment he would use for preparing the solution – balances, beakers, flasks, pipettes, a long glass cylinder he called a burette, and a host of other things. I found it all rather bewildering, but reflected that I would not, after all, be required to use it.
Once we had finished with these practical matters, West cooked us a supper, for it was growing late. He was as quick and neat-handed in the kitchen as among his test tubes and retorts. “I cook quite well, actually” he said. “It saves a lot of time, not to be forever running out to taverns and restaurants and getting distracted. This frittata, now, will have taken less than half an hour from start to finish. And that includes eating it.”
“Frittata?” I asked. “I thought that was an omelet.” It was very good but with flavourings new to me. I was no hand at cooking, which made me a ready victim of my landlady’s miserly meals.
“So it is, but an Italian one.”
“Where did you learn to cook Italian omelets, Herbert?”
“From an Italian lady. What did you think?” He gave me a look of amusement combined with something else which made me desist from further questioning. I had a sudden vision of West in a kitchen with a fascinating dark-haired woman. The process of digesting this idea as well as the meal left me rather bemused.
Before we parted, West stressed once more the need for prompt action should a suitable corpse become available. “I’ll send you a message,” he said. “Either at the Library or at your rooms. Come here immediately and be prepared for a long night.” He handed me some books. “I don’t expect you to become either a chemist or a physician’s assistant,” he said, “but it wouldn’t hurt you to get acquainted with some of the fundamentals of anatomy and laboratory work.”
That evening, I had a look through the anatomy book. I found it hard going, and the illustrations were rather loathsome. It occurred to me once more that West may not have found the best possible assistant in me. Ironically, Alma Halsey, with her scientific background and quick wit, would have been a more suitable choice. But I did not think she would be at all sympathetic to his cause, and her general dislike and suspicion of him would preclude such sympathy from developing.
I awoke with a jolt at three in the morning, a bizarre dream fuming its way through my waking brain. I had been frantically trying to connect West’s revivifying apparatus to a red-haired, painted-faced hag who could only have been the infamous Mrs. Beazley. All the while, West was impatiently tugging at my sleeve and saying, “Hurry up, Charles. Freshness is absolutely critical if you want to save her.”
The Friendship of Mortals Page 4