Chapter 19
One is the stone, one the medicine, one the vessel, one the method and one the disposition. Reitzenstein: “Alchemistische Lehrschriften”
When I awoke the next morning, I knew what I had to do. Despite an aching head and queasy stomach, I went to the Library, letting myself into the silent building with the key that was one of the few privileges of my rank. I went to the wing where the Quarrington Collection was housed. Off the main room was a small office for the use of researchers or librarians working with the material. Here, in a locked cabinet, was the thick file called Profiles and Predictions and the key to the codes by which the documents within it were identified, which I had bought from Humphrey Villard.
After discussing the matter with Dr. Armitage, I had restricted access to these documents, because of the nature of the information they contained about persons still living. Like the Necronomicon, they could be consulted only after approval by a librarian, but the criteria were different: for the present, only a person represented in the file or a member of his immediate family could see the material, and then only the file that pertained to that individual.
The names in the index were listed in alphabetical order. I turned to the last page and found West, Herbert F. It took me a few minutes to determine how the documents were arranged by their code numbers, but finally I found the one designated DX.37-31-59.
It was a fairly thick document, and I hesitated before looking at it. Why was I doing this? Because I wanted to know whether everything that had happened to me since I came to Arkham was governed by chance or something else. Because I wanted to find out the nature of the ‘resonant link’ that Quarrington had supposedly created between West and myself. Because I wanted to know what fate Quarrington had predicted for Herbert West.
The first page contained biographical and statistical information on subject DX.37-31-59. Date and place of birth and physical characteristics: Boston, November 7, 1886. Height: 5’6”. Weight: 137 lb. Hair colour: Blond. Eye colour: Grey. Yes, this was West, all right.
Much of the data, although interesting in a way, meant nothing to me. I learned that the subject had showed marked reactions to blue and green light, to the F# dominant chord, to pin-pricks on certain spots on the palms of his hands. If I had been a tailor I could have made a suit of clothes for him using the detailed measurements Quarrington had taken. But a lot of it struck me as meaningless mumbo-jumbo. Impatiently, I turned the pages. Here was a transcript of an interview. The writing was rapid but legible. The questions were marked, logically enough, Q., the replies by the subject, S. It was dated October 15, 1906. West would have been not quite twenty years old.
Q.: How would you characterize your relationship with your father?
S.: Until I was 15 I wanted to kill him. I made plans several times. Then it occurred to me that it would be a better revenge to follow my own road at his expense.
Q.: Why did you want to kill him?
S.: Because he mistreated my mother. For years after she left I thought he had murdered her.
Q.: Was this a reasonable belief?
S.: I think it was, yes. He is his own master. No one else sets his course for him. If he wanted her dead, he would kill her.
Q.: How did you feel about this moral code of your father’s?
S.: I hated it, but understood it too.
Q.: Explain, please.
S.: Laws are created by men. Those who are able to, by cleverness or strength, may set them aside.
Q.: What about your mother? What are your feelings for her?
S.: I don’t have any now. After I finished mourning her disappearance, I put her image away and tried to forget her. I nearly convinced myself that I was motherless, that I had created myself from things I found in my father’s house.
Q.: And your brothers?
S.: They are much older than I, and care for different things entirely. I deal with them only when I must. We have a working arrangement. But I think the younger of them hates me.
Q.: Why is that?
S.: He seems to blame me for our mother’s disappearance. I don’t know why that is.
Q.: Have you had any relations with women?
S.: Not really. I kissed a girl once, but thought better of it.
Q.: How do you deal with your sexual feelings?
S.: I try not to have any.
Q.: Why?
S.: Because I find them disturbing.
Q.: Have you had any sexual experiences at all?
S.: Yes.
Q.: Explain, please.
S.: I’d rather not.
Q.: Why not?
S.: I find this subject disturbing.
Q.: It is necessary. Tell me, when did the first of these experiences occur? How old were you?
S.: I was nine years old. And it was not by choice.
Q.: Nine? Who was the other person?
S.: Persons. There were two. One of them was my brother, the younger one. He was 14.
Q.: I see. And was this experience repeated?
S.: No. The next time I had a knife.
Q.: Did you tell your father?
S.: No. I knew he preferred not to know about my little troubles.
Q.: What are your feelings toward your brother now?
S.: Indifference. I cannot afford to hate him.
Q: And afterward? Were there any other experiences?
S.: Yes. Not many. I try to avoid such entanglements.
Q.: Why?
S.: I feel as though I am drowning. Or complete revulsion. There is no middle ground. I can’t explain. Please don’t ask me any more about this.
Q.: What is your greatest fear?
S.: Being locked up. Losing the power to act.
Q.: What is your greatest desire?
S.: To be a spy in the house of death.
Q.: Explain, please.
S.: I want to know exactly what happens when someone dies. So that someday, perhaps, I can reverse it.
There was more, much more. West’s interests and ideas on various topics, the places he had visited, his means of travel to these places, the significance of different numbers in his life. Eventually I stopped reading. I felt for him a great compassion. Behind the clinical questions and answers of the text, I could visualize the two of them, Quarrington, his blue eyes gleaming from under bushy eyebrows, scribbling down the answers given by the pale young man before him. I guessed how much it cost West to give some of these answers, how hard he drove himself to do it. ‘For once I neither embellished nor omitted,’ he had said to me, surely in reference to this very interview.
I turned to the last part of the document then, to Quarrington’s assessment and predictions. I reminded myself that West did not know what was written here. Quarrington described him as
…an unstable element with great potential for good or evil. To avoid the pain of his invisible wounds, he has created for himself a cold veneer that separates him from others. To discover his excellence it may be necessary to do him harm, perhaps destroy him.
The things revealed by his body are at variance with those shown by his mind. This is very bad. He will work at cross-purposes with himself and do great harm unless he is transformed and unified. He will die two deaths. I do not know yet whether actual or symbolic. Before this he will fumble in ignorance with the ultimate things.
The salvation of this man is in the hands of one who loves him despite the above. Without this he may go down into his darkness and become a creature of pure evil. But if he passes through the ordeals that await him with the help of his friend he will be transformed into that rare being – one with power in his hands who subjects himself to the greater Power. A resonant link is absolutely necessary to ensure his salvation.
I had read enough. My headache was worse, and I was beginning to feel resentful – toward Quarrington for speaking in hints and metaphors, toward West for dragging me into his troubles and complexities. All I wanted to do was go home, drink a quart of water, and sleep for t
he rest of the day.
At home, I opened the windows, closed the curtains and threw off my clothes. I filled a large glass with water, drank it, refilled and drank again. Just as I was about to fall into bed, there was a knock at my door. Cursing, I wrapped myself in a bathrobe and went to see who it was.
Andre Boudreau stood on my doorstep with his usual calm demeanour. He appeared to be dressed for a journey and carried a duffel bag.
“Hello Andre,” I said. “What brings you here?”
“Good morning, Mr. Milburn. Dr. West would like you to join him for supper this evening. Eight o’clock. And the business afterwards, he says.”
‘The business.’ This was the summons, then. He expected me to drop everything and come prepared for something requiring time, attention and nerve. Just now, I did not feel equal to such an enterprise and almost asked Andre to tell Dr. West to choose another day. But then I remembered his distress and my promise to help him.
“Thank you, Andre. I’ll be there. But it looks like you’re going away.”
“Yes, I go to Boston. An overnight trip. I return tomorrow afternoon. The Doctor, he asked me to take some papers there.” He indicated the bag he carried. “He has some troubles now, yes? And you will help him? You are his friend, I know.”
“Yes, he has troubles,” I said. “And I’ll help him, if I can.” This was one of the longer conversations I had had with Andre. My exchanges with him before this had consisted of greetings and expressions of appreciation for the services he rendered to me as his master’s guest. I studied him, wondering again about the strangeness I had always seen in him, but never understood. I decided now that part of it was his singularity of purpose. He never seemed to be in a hurry, nor to have any personal concerns. And yet, he never seemed dissatisfied either. “Are you happy working for Dr. West, Andre?” I asked.
“Yes. I work for him always. He gave me back my life.”
“Gave you back – ? Oh, I see. You were wounded in the War and he healed you.”
“Not just wounded. I was dead. He gave me back my life. Now I serve him always.” He smiled then, a smile that showed very white teeth and made his face come alive in a way I had not seen before.
“I see. Well, good luck on your journey, Andre. And thank you.”
When he had gone I sank down on my bed. How had I not guessed the truth before? Andre was one of West’s successful revivification subjects! The man I had just spoken with had been dead and had been restored to life by Herbert West. The fact that I had not realized this in five years was eloquent testimony to the effectiveness of the procedure in this case.
I slept for several hours. When I awoke it was early evening and time to prepare for the business at hand. Something about the formality with which Andre had spoken the invitation made me take more than usual care with my preparations. I washed thoroughly and put on clean linen and one of my better suits.
It was a soft golden evening. A haziness around the descending sun spoke of possible rain later on. West himself admitted me into the house on Boundary Street, since Andre was still away. He looked like a bridegroom, in a beautiful summer suit of some light-coloured fabric, with a vest and necktie in pale contrasting colours. His face was thinner, but his remarkable grey eyes were full of light.
“Welcome, Charles,” he said, formally shaking my hand. “Come into the parlour. It’s good of you to be so prompt, particularly since you are in a fragile state, I see.”
I mumbled something about overdoing it the night before, but I was encouraged by the ebullience of his greeting. Surely it meant that he had found a way out of his troubles. Perhaps Hurley was better or West had come up with a really devious plan.
The room looked emptier than I remembered it. The paintings by Dixon Taylor, the ebony clock and the silver candlesticks were no longer in their accustomed places. Some articles of furniture were also absent. The phrase ‘cleared for action’ came to mind. So he is leaving Arkham, I thought. That’s why he’s happy.
“Dinner first, then business,” said West, conducting me to the dining room. “Mrs. Fisk has quite outdone herself on our behalf. Unfortunately, she has had to go home early, so we must be content to dine a deux.”
The meal was indeed dainty and varied. My host served me himself, making sure that I tried a little of everything, and that my wine glass was replenished when necessary. The grace with which he did these tasks spoke of the pleasure he found in them. He himself ate little, but with evident enjoyment. Our conversation was leisurely, of matters without urgency. I was reminded of the first supper we had shared, long ago.
On West’s hand was the emerald ring his mother had given him. This was the first time I had seen it since her death, and it made me a little uneasy.
“I learned something from Andre this morning, when he came by with your invitation. He was one of your revivification subjects, out there in France, wasn’t he? One of the successful ones.”
“Yes, and it has certainly taken you long enough to figure it out,” he said, laughing a little. “I thought you realized it from the first, so didn’t bother explaining. What was it that finally tipped you off?”
I admitted that Andre himself had told me. “But how did it happen? Can you tell me more about that?”
“Of course. What harm can there be in it now? It was in August of 1917. There were some terrible battles that month – Lens and Hill 70. And that was before the real carnage of Passchendaele. When I first saw Andre he was still alive. He was waiting with some others for one of us to attend to him, but he died before anyone managed to do so. There was something about him… a great desire to live, unlike the resignation that so often appeared in men as near to death as he was. I hoped to return him to the life he had been so reluctant to leave, so I took the risk and revivified him. The trickiest part was dealing with his injuries before the new life ran out of him. I had more tools at my disposal by then, so I managed it. Then it came down to the old question of mental capacity. It was soon evident that he was a complete amnesiac. Not a scrap of memory remained to him of anything before his death.
“His Army records said his name was Andre Boudreau, from somewhere in New Brunswick. An acadien, he is. So I began by speaking to him in French. Eventually he regained the power of speech, and I found he retained the ability to learn. I pulled some strings then, and had him returned to a semblance of active service as my batman. The fellow I had before was keen to see action, so everyone was happy. I thought that the simple tasks I would require of Andre would be an excellent test of his abilities. And as you have seen, he has performed brilliantly these past five years. Between them, he and Mrs. Fisk have quite spoiled me.” He looked a little sad, as though a cloud passed before his sun.
“Do you pay him?” I asked.
“Of course I pay him! Do you imagine that I would take advantage of the fellow because of his situation? My transgressions are of a different sort. When the war ended, I made it clear to him that he was free to go home if he wished, but the concept had no meaning for him. So he chose to stay with me. He must have quite a good bank account by now. He should do well enough, even if I – More dessert, Charles? No? Well, in that case we may as well go to the study and get on with the business.”
In the study I had another surprise. The place had been tidied up. Gone were the heaps of papers, and the books were for once arranged neatly on the shelves. Looking more closely, I noticed that an attempt had been made to group them by subject matter.
West smiled. “It’s not up to your standards, I’m sure, but you have to give me credit for trying.”
“Very commendable,” I said. “But surely you won’t be able to find anything now?”
“Oh, believe me, that won’t be a problem. And now – ”
“Herbert,” I interrupted, “are you leaving Arkham? Is that why – ?”
“I suppose you could say that. Or perhaps Arkham is leaving me. I will explain everything in good time. But first let me fill up your glass.”
/> I was already feeling the effects of the wine I had drunk during the meal, but made no objection. West’s hand as he poured was quite steady and I noticed that he drank nothing himself.
“So this is the same plan you mentioned the other night? Hurley is no better, then?”
He shrugged. “It’s hard to say. He’s no worse, at any rate, and may improve in time. But that’s not really the issue any more. The plan is this: I’m going to disappear. With your help, Dr. Herbert West of Arkham will cease to exist. And under cover of his funeral I shall, with luck, leave to make myself anew elsewhere. I’ll be a clean slate. A tabula rasa.”
“Funeral? Oh, you mean you’re going to fake your own death. But surely that’s too – ” I was feeling somewhat muzzy-headed, and thought I might have misunderstood him.
“No. I’ll fake nothing. To put it simply, Charles, I am going to die. Tomorrow at dawn, or to be more precise, at seven a.m. You will deal with the authorities. Once they’re satisfied with the situation and I’m officially pronounced dead, you will revivify me. And you’ll arrange my funeral, whether I need it or not.”
I could only stare at him in horror. I looked at his face for an indication that he was making some sort of elaborate joke at my expense. There was none. Under the blitheness of his manner he was quite serious. “Herbert, that is utter madness. You can’t possibly mean to do it.”
“Yes, it’s mad, and yes, I intend to do it. The very madness of the thing is what will make it work. You see, once the machinery of death takes over – the death certificate, the obituaries, the funeral, all that – everyone will think they know exactly where I am, so no one will look for me anywhere else. Except you, but you’ll have your hands full for a few days.” He grinned like a child who has just pulled off a trick on an incredulous adult.
I had so many objections I didn’t know which one to voice first. “But Herbert, you could end up like… like George Hurley. Or worse.” Visions assailed me of his mercurial personality lost behind dull, clouded eyes and slack-jawed idiocy. “Remember, I was there when we did all those revivifications. All those poor wretches, struggling up from death only to lapse back into it, or looking at us with glassy eyes, or raving insanely. And what about Hocks and O’Brien? Do you really want to end up like that? What in your life could possibly be worse?”
“There’s always a risk. But most of those cases you remember were morgue denizens. If the procedure is carried out well within six hours after death the chances of success are much better. I am confident of that. Look at Andre. Oh yes, I don’t deny it, the whole thing is an enormous risk. But consider – if it succeeds I’ll be free of all that nonsense.” He waved a hand in the general direction of the campus. “I can begin anew, make myself all over again.”
“But surely you can do that without killing yourself first, by God! Why not just resign, sell up, say goodbye to Arkham and begin anew somewhere else? It doesn’t even have to be in this country – London, Toronto, Paris, anywhere.”
“It would follow me. Make no mistake, Charles. Once this kind of mud sticks to you it’s impossible to wash it off. No matter where I go as Herbert West, someone will always turn up with a shovel and do some digging. My life will never be my own, and I can’t tolerate that.”
“So change your name. You’d have to, anyway, if this crazy scheme of yours succeeded. So just do that, and skip the dying.”
“Too simple. As long as I’m known to be at large there’s always the chance someone will find it worthwhile to come after me. You don’t seem to realize how serious my situation is.”
“On the contrary, I’ve been thinking a lot about your situation, and I can’t see that anyone has anything to charge you with. There’s no evidence. Whatever you’ve done, I’m sure you haven’t left anything around that could be used against you.”
He smiled, a tight, hard smile. “You give me too much credit. I’ve been careful, but it’s impossible to hide everything. Over ten years or more, it’s inevitable that people will have seen or heard things. And on a few occasions, I’ve slipped up. That Aylesbury Pike business, for one. It’s only a matter of various individuals pooling their knowledge. Then the police will turn up on my doorstep, warrants in hand and carte blanche to search my house from attic to cellar. The very existence of my private laboratory and the incinerator would be enough to incriminate me, in some minds, anyway. Then there are other things… I have destroyed a good deal, these past weeks, but it’s impossible to do it all.”
“You give me the horrors, Herbert. Is there so much, then? More like Leavitt, I mean?”
For a second, weariness flitted over his face. “I promise you, I’ll tell you everything. Tonight. But first I must ask you to give me your word that you will carry out this plan as I have described it to you.”
“Describe it again. In detail. First of all, how are you going to die? Surely you don’t expect me to kill you?”
“No, Charles. I’ll take care of that part myself. Once I’m dead, you’ll leave here, making sure that no one sees you go. When Mrs. Fisk finds my body, she’ll notify you and the police. After they’ve done their bit and you have the certificate of death in hand, you will revivify me, and we’ll see what happens next.”
“So you’ve informed Mrs. Fisk of her role in all this,” I said. “When she finds you she’ll be putting on a performance, is that it?”
“Don’t be an idiot. Mrs. F. is an excellent housekeeper, but I had no intention of making her an accomplice. Or Andre. That’s why I sent him away. No, Mrs. Fisk will be entirely unprepared, which is why her performance will be quite natural and unforced. You’re the only one who will be called upon to do any acting.”
His lack of discernment amazed me. “Have you considered the effect on Mrs. Fisk, to come in to work and find her employer dead on the floor, when he was alive and well the night before?”
“No,” he said, looking surprised. “What effect?”
I threw up my hands. “Herbert, you really are the limit. Look, I think it had better be me that finds you. I told Armitage and one or two others that I have some business here in town before I leave for my holiday. The business will be with you. We’ll have had a pleasant evening here and will arrange to meet tomorrow morning, to discuss… investments. That’s it, you’ll be giving me advice on investments. When you don’t answer the door, I’ll call the police, because I’ll have no reason to expect you not to be here – ” I broke off in horror, realizing how readily I had fallen in with his crazy plan.
“Very good, Charles! You see, you’re a conspirator after all. Certainly, go ahead and spare the good Mrs. Fisk’s feelings, if that’s what you want. She usually arrives about half past nine, by the way. But I think you’re making too much of it. After all, I’m only her employer.”
“For the last five years,” I said. “And before the War, too. And what about Andre? He’ll come home only to be told that you’re dead. He’s devoted to you. It was written all over him when he talked to me this morning. And he knows you’re having troubles. He asked me if I was going to help you. And I will too, though I don’t know why. I’ve never known anyone so oblivious to the feelings of those who love him.”
Realizing what I had let slip, I got up from my chair and went over to the window to hide the fact that I was blushing. Outside, the evening was melting into night. The world beyond the window seemed infinitely remote, as though it was withdrawing from me. I thought: I will see and hear and think and do unimaginable things before I walk freely in those streets again.
I glanced at West. He was staring into space, looking as though someone had hit him. In a way, I supposed I had. “Love,” he said, “is an irrational emotion. But surely you’re misinterpreting the situation. Mrs. Fisk is a practical woman. I don’t think you would find her fainting over my corpse. As for Andre, he’s devoted, yes, but it’s only because of his dependence on me since his return to life. It’s the devotion of a good dog, nothing more.”
“I could argue with
you on both those points,” I said. “But I won’t. Because you’re missing something obvious here, aren’t you? Someone, rather. Me.”
“You? But I’m telling you everything. You’re a privileged creature.”
“Exactly. I’ve been privileged to be your friend, all these years. Over that time it was inevitable that I would develop some feeling for you. Friendship, yes, but more than that. And now you ask me to help you kill yourself. Think about that before we continue.”
He was silent for a moment. Then, “That’s why I’m asking this of you,” he said. “You are the only person in the world of whom I can ask this. Without you it would be only suicide. But you can restore my life to me – no, even better, you can give me an entirely new life.”
I remembered then, reluctantly, the words I had read just that morning. Quarrington’s words: The salvation of this man is in the hands of one who loves him. Now I knew. Now I understood. If he was a bridegroom, his chosen bride was death. And I, it appeared, had no choice at all.
“All right,” I said, leaving the window and returning to my chair. “I think I understand why it has to be me. But what I don’t understand is why you have to do it at all. Tell me that part again.”
He poured into my glass the last of the wine, his hand trembling ever so slightly. I picked up the glass and watched the light glow ruby red inside it.
“Everything has its price,” West said, “and sometimes it’s necessary to pay before the bill falls due, because by then it will be too late. That time, for me, is now. Don’t imagine that I haven’t been tempted to wait, on the unlikely chance that things might work out by themselves, but I know that once in the clutches of the law, one’s choices become very limited.
“When I was sixteen or so, in Boston, I attended several trials – associates of my father’s. Their names and the crimes they were charged with aren’t important. After that, I resolved never to become enmeshed in the machinery of justice. It wasn’t that I objected to justice in the abstract, but to her servants. She may be blind and impartial, but they certainly are not. It wasn’t even the corruption that disillusioned me, but the way in which a man charged with a crime becomes the property of the state. Even if he is found innocent in the end, the mark of the shackle remains on him forever. That’s something I will risk the shadow of death to escape.”
“But don’t you believe that a man should be accountable for his deeds?” I fell easily into my old role of devil’s advocate.
“Yes, but not to smug officials who visibly enjoy their petty power over the accused. Not to corrupt judges who hand out punishments with hands that are unclean. Think of it this way, if you like – I’ll just skip a few steps and put my self – my entire self – at the disposal of what you call God. Cut out the middleman, you could say.”
“So you see it as a kind of trial by ordeal?” I was intrigued by this, not only the idea itself, but the fact that West had suggested it. “I think you’re becoming a Romantic, Herbert.”
“Perhaps I am. But there are other reasons. I couldn’t tolerate imprisonment. The firing squad, yes, even the noose. Hanged, drawn and quartered, I don’t care. But not incarceration. I’d rather take my chances with your friend Thanatos.”
“I hardly think it will come to that, do you? Investigations, maybe a trial, but in the end – ”
“Wait until you’ve heard everything I’m going to tell you, then ask yourself that question again. A few days ago, I went to see Hocks again, actually see him, there at Sefton, in his cell. They kept him in solitary confinement all these years, you know. Twelve years in a room eight feet by ten, without a window. That was my doing, I admit it now. If I hadn’t meddled with him, he would have been peacefully dead all this time, dead and rotten. Instead, he was… a horror. He looks… bleached, like something that’s been living in a cave. His hair is white and his skin… dead white. But his eyes were the same.” He shook his head, then rested his elbows on his knees and studied the floor.
“Why did you do that? Go to see him? I thought you hated going there.”
“I did, and do. It’s a prison. I suppose I thought it was time I followed up on that particular experiment. Better late than never.” He smiled, or rather moved his lips in a spasm that vaguely resembled a smile. “After viewing the results, I took the only logical course of action. I bribed one of the warders to let him escape.”
“What? You are responsible for Hocks’s escape? Why, Herbert? He’s dangerous! You know what he did that other time – those terrible murders.” I jumped to my feet. “We can’t, we have to – ”
“Relax, Charles,” West said, with something of his old manner. “Hocks isn’t the man he was then, any more than I am. He’ll do no more murders, except mine, if I let him. I’m certain he’s lurking nearby, probably waiting his chance in the shrubbery. Have you heard of any other sightings? I assure you, there will be none. The good people of Arkham may rest easily.”
I decided not to argue the point and let West resume his explanation.
“Then there are my brothers. I suspect they’re planning a surprise for me as well, a fatal surprise. Over the years, I found it necessary to work out a number of quid pro quos with them, but a few months ago I told them things had changed and I couldn’t guarantee my end of the deal any more. This made them anxious, because all they have on me is misuse of dead bodies and ‘unprofessional conduct,’ while I have information about their doings that could lead to serious entanglements with the police.
“Once they find out I’m under investigation myself, they’ll have even more reason to hasten my demise. Why? Because it’s likely that some prosecutor will think he can capture two Wests for the price of one, by negotiating something with me. That’s how Lady Justice really works. Whatever plans Hiram and Jeremy have in mind for me, revivification will not be an option afterward. Their enemies tend to make their exits in ways involving dynamite, fire or corrosive substances.”
“Well, but if a prosecutor wants to negotiate with you, why not? Surely that would be better than – ?”
“And here I thought you were a man of principle! Well, I suppose I can have no pretensions to honour now, but they are my brothers, after all. Their mother was my mother. And besides, to enter into those negotiations would make me as much a property of the state as being charged and tried myself. It’s not whom you dance with that counts, but the fact that you’re at the ball.
“The other thing is one you know about already. Ever since my mother turned up, I’ve wondered about my heredity. This fear was confirmed in retrospect by things that happened in France, before I ever knew that she was a madwoman. It’s completely illogical (perhaps I am becoming a Romantic, for which I must surely blame you, Charles), but I see this… experiment as a way to escape the legacy of my parents – madness and murder, or simply madness. It’ll be a kind of reverse birth, and a test, like you said. If I can come through it reasonably intact, mentally and physically, I’ll be a different person.
“It’s the ultimate experiment, isn’t it? All these years I have presumed to drag others back from death. I think it’s only right that I take that journey myself now. There’s only the one chance, of course, but think of the possibilities!”
His face lit up with genuine enthusiasm. Almost I found myself swept along with him. It was true that none of our subjects had known what was being done to them. West would be going willingly and with his eyes open. But no, it was still absurd.
“Aren’t you afraid of death?” I realized with amazement that I had never asked him this question before.
“No. Truly, I’m not. It’s dying one fears, not death. The method I’ll use is completely painless. I’ll pass from life to the unknowingness of death in a matter of minutes.”
“But if it’s forever? If the revivification doesn’t work, for whatever reason?”
“Then I’ll never know, will I? No, I’m not afraid.”
He didn’t look at me as he said this. His glance slid over me and fell
to the carpet.
“But your work! It’s been so important to you. Now it’ll remain unfinished, unless you – ”
“My work here is finished, in any case. My future as Herbert West contains only lawsuits, inquiries, investigations, lawyers, trials, sudden violent death or a long imprisonment. I’ve already heard that the Massachusetts Medical Association is preparing to suspend me until investigations have been completed. No, that life is finished, and I reject the other options open to me. That leaves only one road, a dark one, but it’s the one I choose.”
Jumping to his feet, he began to pace around the room in his old manner. “That’s it, you see! This is what I choose. This is my choice. The other way I become only flotsam on someone else’s river.”
He stopped before me, and asked, “Well, what’s your answer? Will you help me once more, for the last time?” His tone was light but I thought it was a forced lightness, and his face was set in anxious lines I had never seen before.
I was beginning to see that his state of mind was far more complex than I had imagined. This was more than simple despair at recent reversals. What I saw before me had taken his whole lifetime to develop. No longer did I believe that I could bully or argue him out of his desperate scheme. But still without understanding, I tried.
“What if I say no? What will you do then?”
“The same, probably. I have no desire to live under the terms I am being offered. So I think I would do anyway what I have resolved to do. Except that without you there will be no returning.”
I did not reply immediately. Were his words mere histrionics? I did not think so. Deluded he might be, but he was sincere. If I turned my back on him now, he would surely die. And I, who had made such an issue of my friendship for him, would be proved a liar. Whether by heredity, temperament or inclination, or perhaps only by mischance, he was alone as I could not even begin to imagine. He was Outside, nearly completely so. He had only one tenuous link to the ordinary world. That link was me. He had only me.
“Yes, Herbert,” I said, “I’ll help you. And maybe not for the last time.”
He looked at me without speaking. Then, “Thank you, Charles. I am enormously in your debt.”
He sat down again, facing me, and said, “That’s why I’m telling you all this. Because I need to settle my account. I’m willing to pay the price for what I’ve done, but someone has to know what it is I’m paying for. You’re that someone.” He smiled once more, the smile that had captivated me from the first. “Are you ready to hear the confession of Herbert West?”
“Yes, I’m ready.” But I was afraid.
He took a deep breath. “All right. Well, you already know about Leavitt.”
“Yes, Leavitt,” I said. “What were you thinking when you stuck that needle into him?”
“All I could see was the opportunity he represented. I desperately needed good experimental subjects and there were none available. Then he came along, a stranger, far from home and pretty much unlooked-for here. I asked him in and made some pretext to leave the hall for a minute while I got the drug. I didn’t let myself think. I came back and hit him with it.”
“Was he the only one you murdered?”
“No. Clapham-Lee…” He paused. “Charles, Brigadier-General Sir Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee, D.S.O. was a greedy opportunist.”
“And that justified killing him?”
“No, of course not, but I didn’t know him at all when I told him about my research.”
“You told him about revivification?”
“No, only about the tissue-regenerating substance. You see, when I met him in 1914 he was one of the foremost surgeons in England, and he seemed to welcome progressive ideas. I needed a congenial colleague with whom to discuss my new work. Someone who understood the technical points. So in a moment of enthusiasm, I told him about it and invited him to collaborate with me. This was shortly before the War began. When it did, we were both keen to go because of the possibilities for furthering our research, as much as anything else. And we did. Or I did.
“Clapham-Lee played me like a fish, handing out privileges in exchange for data. That’s how I got my laboratory, there at Etaples, and some equipment and other things. But in 1917 he revealed his true motives. He saw the whole thing as an opportunity for profit – clinics that would cater to wealthy people who wanted their faces altered, for whatever reason. He wanted to establish them immediately after the War ended. To him it was only a business opportunity, not scientific research at all! He thought he was flattering me by asking me to be a partner in this venture, although I suspect he was planning to get me out of the picture as soon as he could. He and my father would have gotten along beautifully.
“Finally he had everything but the details, the actual formula for the stuff. I was pretty sure he’d been trying to work it out in secret, but without success. So he gave me an ultimatum: either I reveal everything to him or he would suspend my special privileges and bring the whole weight of Army rules and regulations down on my head. This came at a bad moment for me, and so for him too. I decided to excise his arrogance. One night I agreed to meet with him in my laboratory, on the pretext of negotiating terms. I killed him there and revivified him later. Much later. He was alive, but only in the physical sense. The body functioned but the mind was gone. He was a complete amnesiac, like Andre but worse, because he had lost the ability to learn. I made a new face for him and when the incisions had healed sufficiently, I let him loose. He was quite the little mystery until they shipped him off to England.”
“Wait a minute, Herbert,” I said. “You took this man’s life, then gave it back, but stripped him of his mind, his memories, his links to his family, friends, even himself, and let him go into the world with nothing? Surely that was excessive?”
He sighed. “Yes, it was excessive. And it’s coming home to me. Hobson told me just last week that Edward Clapham-Lee expects to be here soon, bringing with him an ‘associate,’ a casualty of the War who is instrumental in his search for his lost father. Now I have no doubt that this individual is Sir Eric himself. Whether his son has figured that out, I don’t know. Perhaps Clapham-Lee left some written documents naming me. Perhaps he has even managed to remember something and regained the power of speech, unlikely though it seems. I imagine his son hopes that the sight of me will prompt a return of memory in this ‘associate’ of his, who will then make significant revelations. Little does he imagine how significant. I have no idea whether this would work and don’t intend to find out.
“After Leavitt, I thought I would be doing the world a favour, taking myself and my murderous tendencies to a place where killing was permitted, even encouraged. But I was wrong.
“The War… Time passed so quickly then. The great battles, Ypres, the Somme, Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele – that’s when I really lived. The times in between for me were full of meaningless routine and vices without pleasure. I lived for the bloody times, when men were lined up twelve deep in the triage area, with trainloads arriving every hour. I worked like a butcher at my trade, in reverse you might say, except for the amputations, of course. When I’d done what I could for the living, there remained the dead. Some I restored to true life, as I have told you. But the others… Sometimes I created unique monstrosities for my own amusement – all short-lived, fortunately. I shot any that showed signs of persistence.”
He looked at me, and the contrast between his clear grey eyes and the horror of his words made me shudder. I remembered how at the prizefight, he had been the only man unmoved by the brutal spectacle. He had recalled me to myself when I had allowed the frenzy to overwhelm me. Was it the War that had changed him or something in himself?
He thought for a moment, looking down at his hands. “I was almost relieved when Clapham-Lee delivered his ultimatum and gave me a reason to stop. Even so, I couldn’t resist taking my revenge on him.
“That was the worst of it. What do you think of your old friend now, Charles?”
“That was
the worst? But what about that strange wandering creature on the Aylesbury Road?” I had not forgotten the mutilations Sarah had described.
“That was like the corpses from the morgue you and I worked on before the War. A mindless thing. I was surprised that it managed to escape.”
“How did that happen?”
“There was a major misfortune. You’ll laugh – the incinerator broke down. I discovered that just as I was preparing to dispatch the creature when it had served its purpose. I didn’t want to keep it on the premises, alive or dead. So I decided to take it out to Hangman’s Hill, finish it off and bury it. But it got away.”
“But the… the mutilations that you did on it. What were they for? Torture?”
“No. That’s something I’ve never done. They weren’t mutilations, either; it was practice for surgery. If people weren’t so squeamish about these things, some human bodies could have quite useful careers after death. And the anti-vivisectionists might be appeased too, but I doubt it. No, they’d probably form a Society for the Protection of Revivified Entities or something of the sort.
“But that’s nothing new, of course. The public can display an astonishing degree of irrationality, especially under the influence of the popular press. Take Robert Knox, for example.”
“Who was he?”
“A physician in Edinburgh, Scotland. About a hundred years ago. You may recognize him if I said that he was the best customer of Messrs. Burke and Hare. No? They were murderers, Charles. Every medical student is told their story, why I’m not sure. A cautionary tale, perhaps. Some think it exemplifies the adventurous beginnings of the profession. To me it says only that there are always men willing to sell and others who are prepared to buy. But Dr. Knox, now, he’s a little more interesting.
“He was an anatomist at a time when dissection of corpses was considered by the ignorant public to be an extreme violation. Some thought that it would interfere with the process by which body and soul would be reunited at the Last Judgment, so there were severe restrictions placed on the kinds of bodies that could be used for scientific purposes – those of criminals, mostly. I suppose it was thought that their souls were doomed anyway, so it didn’t matter if they couldn’t find their bodies again. Demand far exceeded supply, of course, so the vacuum was filled in ways other than legal ones.
“Burke and Hare murdered sixteen people, mostly by suffocation, and delivered the corpses to Knox, who paid well and asked no questions. Eventually they were caught and Hare was persuaded to testify against Burke in return for his freedom. Burke was convicted and hanged. Ironically, his corpse was turned over to the anatomists for dissection. A Professor Alexander Monroe was the lucky recipient. Hare went free. Knox, on the other hand, was neither charged nor tried, except by the press. They hounded him relentlessly, despite his claim that he didn’t know that the corpses he bought were the products of murder.
“He was an old Army surgeon and showed considerable resilience in the face of the mob. He formed a committee to make an impartial inquiry into his conduct, and it cleared him of legal responsibility, but even that didn’t turn public opinion. Knox was shunned. His colleagues didn’t come to his aid because he hadn’t gone out of his way to curry favour with them and was considered arrogant. Now who does that remind you of?” he asked, with a smile. “And he didn’t do any murders himself, only bought the products of murder. He died a poor man and possibly a broken one, in London.
“I don’t imagine that there’s much difference in the public mind between Edinburgh a century ago and Arkham today, when it comes to these things. No matter that many are now enjoying health and freedom from pain as a direct result of my work with revivified corpses. That wanderer on the Aylesbury Pike, about whom you’ve been so concerned, contributed directly to the prolonging of the life of a worthy woman, a wife and mother who was stricken with cancer of the breast. Removal of those organs was the only possible solution, and I accomplished the procedure with minimal disfigurement by working out my techniques on that unfortunate creature.” He stopped speaking, his face a little flushed.
“And you’re absolutely convinced that these creatures were mindless?”
“Absolutely. It would have been impossible to use them as I did otherwise.”
“Could they talk?”
“No, of course not. No more than a stone can talk.”
“There was at least one who could. I know, because I heard it.”
“Oh? When was that?” He looked startled.
“I came here and looked around while you were in New York, operating on Eleonora Desanges. Those keys you gave me back in 1914, remember? I didn’t have one for the laboratory annexe, of course, but I heard someone in there, groaning and calling out to God. Only once, though.”
He sighed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was afraid to. You were angry enough at my investigations as it was.”
“You’re right, I was – then. I know better now.”
“One final question – how many were there in all, of these creatures?”
“Eleven.”
“So. You killed Leavitt on impulse and Clapham-Lee for revenge. In France you created and killed things you call monstrosities for your own pleasure. You left that wretched groaning thing alone in your cellar. And you revivified ten other corpses to make creatures you believed to be mindless so you could carve them up for practice.”
“Yes, that sums it up very neatly. What price love now, Charles?” His face was still and empty. I felt sick.
“Didn’t you… Don’t you feel any… regret, remorse? Is that why – ?”
“You forget, Charles, that I was present when these deeds were done. I saw no pain or suffering as a result of my actions. It has never been my desire to cause suffering.”
“But Clapham-Lee… He was your friend, wasn’t he? Or a colleague at least. And whoever that was in your cellar – I heard despair in his voice.”
He stared at me, eyes burning coldly in his white face, which suddenly looked ten years older. “Despair. I know what that is now. Isn’t that enough for you, Judge Milburn? What’s your verdict?”
I stood up and placed myself before him.
“You realize, Herbert West, that you’re in my power now. I could choose to denounce you to the law. I could watch you kill yourself and go away, leaving you dead. Or I could go away right now, leaving you alone to deal with your troubles. You’ve made me your judge, jury and executioner. And I can play that last role by doing nothing at all.”
“Exactly. But whatever you decide, for me there are only two possibilities. Death, or death and revivification. The second choice is yours alone.”
I remembered once more the March day I had first met him – the springing vitality, the excitement he radiated, the suggestion that he moved about wrapped in his own special atmosphere. He had captured me that day, and if I had made attempts during the following twelve years to free myself from this enthrallment, my efforts had never been very serious. For me, a world without Herbert West was a diminished world. Even now.
But how could that be? He was a self-confessed murderer, a cold-hearted exploiter of helpless creatures, a liar and a deceiver. Surely the world would be better without him? For all I knew, his present desire for death was to be welcomed and encouraged by all right-thinking people. If I revivified him I would be responsible for inflicting him on the world again. Indeed, I already bore that responsibility, ever since the death of Robert Leavitt. But there were factors at work that had nothing to do with me.
Feeling restless and cramped, I went to the window. Outside, instead of the darkness of a summer night, was a strange blue twilight. The familiar trees and nearby houses were gone, as though shrouded in mist. Directly under the window stood a man, a thin grey-clad figure. His hollow eyes stared up at me out of a white face. Suddenly, I knew him. John Hocks. He was not alone. Behind him was an inchoate mass of heads, shifting and bobbing, appearing and disappearing. There were dozens of them.
“Herbert, come here! Look!”
West came over. “Yes, it’s Hocks. I’ve seen him standing there like that the past three nights. He just stands and stares, but he’s usually gone by morning. Well, his wait will soon be over.”
“But… those others, who are they?” Having watched them, I realized that they shifted as a single mass, a miasma of ghosts. The mist around them made it difficult to discern details, but I thought I recognized some of them. There was Kid O’Brien, his broken nose and bloody face making him stand out from the rest for a moment. Another might have been Robert Leavitt, and still others reminded me of faces I had seen lying still in death or grimacing in renewed agonies. More than a few were monstrosities – beings with feet where hands should have been, with multiple arms or a plague of extra ears. One figure wearing a military uniform was headless, and another, similarly clad, bore a too-large head on a small, wiry body.
“What others?” West said. “There’s no one else out there, only Hocks. Come on, it’s getting late and we have a lot to do.” He drew the curtains and steered me away from the window.
So he could not see them. Their message, it seemed, was for me alone. I thought it would be more than my life was worth to try to leave the house on Boundary Street before I had engaged with my appointed task.
“All right,” I said. “You’d better tell me exactly what you want me to do.”
As the night turned toward dawn, West showed me how to carry out his desperate plan. “Timing is crucial,” he said. “All the official business must be finished before you can revivify me, and that has to be done as soon as practicable after my death. That’s why I’ll administer the drug at precisely seven in the morning. Worthies such as the medical examiner do not begin to stir until after eight, so you’ll have enough time to go home, change your clothes and put on a performance of strolling out to call on your friend Dr. West, to get his opinion on investment opportunities.”
These details reminded me again of the absurdity of his scheme. “Herbert, think about what could go wrong! What if the medical examiner doesn’t come until it’s too late?”
“Then you’ll telephone Billington or one of the others I’ve told you about and get him to sign the death certificate. Don’t forget, you’ll be distressed at the death of a friend. You’ll have a good excuse to be irrational and persistent. Make the most of it. Now let’s go down to the lab.”
As we descended the stairs to the main floor, rain-washed air wafted through an open window on the landing, cool and refreshing on my hot face. It provoked in me an intense nostalgia for ordinary things – rain and sun, sleeping and waking, work and conversation, friendship and love. I almost said to him, “Herbert, that’s enough of this nonsense. Let’s go back upstairs and have another drink. You can tell me what you’re really going to do and then I can go home.” But then I remembered John Hocks and the mob of phantoms, and reluctantly put away this naïve idea.
In the laboratory, everything was ready. The apparatus was set up and on a bench nearby stood a flask of the familiar violet-coloured liquid. West picked it up and held it to the light, making the iridescence sparkle and shift.
“Here, you might say, is the essence of Herbert West,” he said, smiling. “It’s possible to create a formula unique to an individual by adding substances extracted from the living organism. Obviously, this was impossible in cases where the subjects were dead before they ever came into my hands. One day it may be possible to reconstruct an individual from such a substance alone. A wonderful thought, isn’t it?”
He reviewed the procedures. They were still familiar to me, despite the years that had passed. Just as I was beginning to think I knew what I was doing, a thought struck me. “Herbert! The funeral – who’ll be buried, if not you? If you’re alive again, I mean?”
He laughed. “I thought you’d never ask. I’ll introduce him to you now.”
He unlocked the door of the annexe and motioned me inside. On a table lay the body of a man, dressed formally in a navy blue suit, with a red necktie and polished shoes. He looked like West, startlingly so – blond hair, clear-cut features, high cheekbones. But these eyes were closed forever. These lips would never smile.
“Who is he?” I whispered.
“His real name doesn’t matter. Call him Francis West, or Francesco – my troublesome twin brother. He’ll stand in for me – or lie in, rather – if all goes well.”
“But where did he come from?”
“Really, Charles, I should think by this time you could work it out for yourself. He was a member of a gang, shot in some brawl. It wasn’t the bullet that killed him, but loss of blood. I saw the body at one of Hiram’s establishments some time ago. He looked rather like me, and I thought it might be an interesting exercise to perfect the resemblance. It might be handy to have a double, even a dead one. He is, of course, embalmed. It will be your task to haul him upstairs so Hiram’s men can pick him up. Of course, if I stay dead it will be burial for me and the incinerator for this one. Or vice versa, I don’t really care.”
“Let me understand this, Herbert. This fellow was dead. You brought him here and revivified him. Then you surgically altered his face to make him look like you.”
“Exactly. Look, I had to give him new hair too. His own, alas, was brown, and I thought a wig would be a rather cheap device. It turned out rather well, didn’t it?” He looked immensely pleased with himself, a craftsman admiring his own good work.
“So he was alive for some time?” There were only the faintest of scars to be seen, and only when I looked closely.
“A couple of weeks. And don’t worry yourself about his sufferings. There were none. When the time came I dispatched him very kindly. Just as I will dispatch myself.”
West removed his spectacles and placed them on the face of his double, making the resemblance between them nearly perfect. “You see, he’ll do admirably,” he said. He picked up the glasses and handed them to me. “I don’t need these any more, but they must be found near my body, or it will look suspicious.”
He looked at his watch. “It’s time. Oh, before I forget – I want you to have this.” He held out the emerald ring. Before I could say anything, he grasped my right hand and slid the thing onto my finger. “I think you’d better wear it when you do the revivification,” he said. “Don’t ask me why. Don’t ask me anything now. It’s too late.”
He went to a cupboard and took out a small bottle containing a clear fluid, then to a drawer, from which he removed a hypodermic syringe. Then he left the room, moving quickly and purposefully. Panic rose in me as I followed him up the stairs. I found it difficult to breathe.
“Herbert, wait! Surely you don’t have to do this. Surely there’s some other way.”
He half-turned toward me. “Surely I do. After all you’ve heard you must know that I cannot do otherwise.” The bridegroom was ready; the bride awaited him impatiently.
We went into his bedroom, full of morning light, filtered through the thin white curtains. It was the beginning of a beautiful summer day and Herbert West was preparing to kill himself.
He set the bottle and syringe on the chest of drawers and removed his jacket, hanging it carefully on the back of the chair. He rolled up the left sleeve of his shirt. Then he picked up the syringe and drew it full of the drug from the bottle, carefully adjusting the amount.
“This will do the job in about a minute,” he said. He put the deadly thing on the bedside table, next to the spectacles I had placed there already. He came over to me and held out his hands. “Charles, you’ve been a good friend to me, and for that I thank you, regardless of the outcome of this, our last adventure.” He smiled at me with such kindness that something broke within me, some jagged thing that had pressed on my heart since I had heard his terrible confession.
Standing near him as I was I could see that he was afraid. His left eyelid twitched and there was a faint dew of sweat on his upper lip, on which a light stubble of moustache was visible. I pres
sed his hands. “Herbert, please don’t do this.”
“I have to.” Abruptly, he pulled his hands from mine and lay down on the bed. He picked up the syringe with his right hand and turned his left arm so that the inner part, where the veins showed blue through the fair skin, was toward him. He placed the needle against the skin and pushed it into the vein. His lips moved without sound, then set in a thin line as he clenched his jaw. He pressed the plunger and shot the poison into his body.
For a little time, nothing happened. Then he said, faintly, “Charles, your hand…” I took his hand, and he gripped it hard. His eyes were fixed on mine. “Charles, if I’m… impaired when I come back, if it’s too late and I’m a hopeless… kill me. Promise me that!”
“I promise,” I murmured, hardly thinking of the implications.
His eyes widened, the pupils enlarging, and grew unfocussed. His hand became limp in mine. I placed my palm over his heart and felt it beating, yet ever more faintly, then not at all. He was dead.
Despair washed over me in a black wave. I felt myself falling and falling, was forced to my knees. I laid my head on his chest and wept.
The Friendship of Mortals Page 31