by Jerry
“Brought my car with me so I can drive you around to see those specialists, and wind up your business,” he remarked.
“You’re taking me for granted,” wanly replied the Professor, “but I’ll go through with this thing.”
With feeble steps Professor Beardsley walked to the car, turning as he entered it, to take a last look at the shabby exterior of the cheap rooming house that had been his home for several years.
After the specialists had been called upon, they proceeded to a bank where Professor Beardsley received fifty thousand dollars, and wrote his will.
“I think it the best not to see my daughter,” said Professor Beardsley in reply to a question from Dr. Leeson. “I might get squeamish and not fulfil my end of the bargain. She is well taken care of by a kind-hearted woman, whom I paid, whenever I could, for this service.”
Late in the afternoon of that day, they drove out to Dr. Leeson’s place, which was situated in a quiet, secluded spot far back from the main highway.
“You’re too fagged to be shown around today,” declared Dr. Leeson. “I’ll take you to your room, and give you something, so you can get a little rest.”
Professor Beardsley drank the draught prepared for him, and sank into a stupor-like sleep. The morning sun was shining through his bedroom window when he awoke. Dressing slowly, he then stepped out of the room, and found Dr. Leeson pacing up and down the corridor.
“I’ll show you about the building,” said Dr. Leeson, taking the Professor’s arm, “and explain anything you wish to know.”
On their way, they met several serious and studious-looking men.
“My assistants,” Dr. Leeson informed the Professor. “Every one of them heart and soul with me in this work.”
Finally, they stopped in front of a solid-looking door.
“The inner shrine,” softly laughed Dr. Leeson, opening the door, and pointing to the center of the room.
Professor Beardsley walked to where Dr. Leeson pointed—and then stood rigid. The live head of an ape lay strapped to a board—with no sign of a body!
On closer examination, the Professor saw that the head ended in the stump of the neck over which skin had been grafted. Several short tubes extended from the neck to an apparatus that supplied the head with life-sustaining fluid.
“This,” explained Dr. Leeson, lightly touching with a finger a small pump which was working with regular, exact strokes, “is the heart. That,” indicating a boxlike affair, “is the filter or lungs, and also the stomach of my artificial blood circulating system.
“The used blood leaves the head, passes through the filter, where it is purified, nutrition added, the right temperature given, and then is ready to be pumped to the head again.
“The whole thing is run by electricity, generated by my own power plant.
“As you may have noticed, there is an auxiliary circulating system here. Two of my assistants are watching here continually. In case of a breakdown, it would hardly take more than a second to start the blood flowing back to the head.”
“Isn’t there danger of a bursting blood vessel?” ventured Professor Beardsley.
“Hardly. The volume of blood needed by a head at each stroke, and the number of strokes to the minute are determined beforehand.”
“Won’t the blood corrode the insides of the pump, filter, or tubes, and in this manner carry foreign substances to the head which might prove harmful?”
“Pump, filter, and tubes have a special lining which won’t corrode, and is so tough that it takes a great amount of friction to wear it off; what does wear off is a tonic to the blood instead of a poison.”
Professor Beardsley suddenly felt nauseated. The head of the ape, that Thing strapped to the board, was a sample of what was to become of him.
And Leeson jokingly called this chamber of horror the inner shrine! The man was mad, inhuman. He was a man or a friend no longer, simply a tool of science to whom a human being, or animal, was valuable only as an object for his probing knife.
WITH tottering steps, the Professor began to walk away.
“What do you think of my work?” asked Dr. Leeson, as he followed the Professor.
“Diabolical!”
Dr. Leeson glanced at him covertly.
“I’m going to keep my word,” Professor Beardsley whispered hoarsely, as he caught the glance and stiffened. “You shall have your pound of flesh. What I saw in there kind of upset me. When do you want to begin on me? I’m ready now.”
“Well,” replied Dr. Leeson after a pause, “the sooner the better. Your body doesn’t have to be built up for this operation, and you’re liable to die unexpectedly. Shall we say this evening, at six o’clock?”
“Satisfactory with me. It means money for my daughter, and besides, I always wanted to achieve fame, wanted to be first in something, but I have failed. As fate has left me only this choice I shall take it. If my head lives, my name will gain some notoriety at least.” At the request of Dr. Leeson, the Professor prepared a written statement, witnessed by several of the assistants, to the effect that he willingly placed his live body at the disposal of Dr. Leeson.
With the resignation of a condemned man, Professor Beardsley waited for the hour without fear or apprehension.
At six o’clock he was taken to the operating room, where he shook hands with Dr. Leeson, and calmly watched the paraphernalia being arranged.
“Begin!” said Professor Beardsley quietly, after he had been secured to the operating table.
Dr. Leeson and his assistants worked as rapidly as possible. At last the grisly task was accomplished. Artificial human blood was being pumped to the living head of Professor Beardsley, while the dead, headless body was removed!
For a number of days the Head was in a stupor, seemingly from shock. But the wound healed rapidly, and the brain apparently began to function. The Head appeared to notice the anxious faces hovering about it. And when some words were spoken to the Head, it signaled with its eyelids as agreed upon.
“The Head hears—understands!” vibrantly declared Dr. Leeson.
But on the following day Dr. Leeson did not come to see the Head as usual. Another day passed, and then the Head was apprised of the fact that Dr. Leeson had been struck by an automobile and killed while on a trip to the city.
In the days that followed, strange faces came into the room where the Head was placed. It was stared at and questioned. The police, so the Head was informed, had found a memorandum upon Dr. Leeson’s body after he was killed, giving a full account of the case. The police had promptly investigated.
The assistants were arrested one at a time and released on bonds, for the authorities realized that no one else could take care of the Head, if the assistants were thrown into jail.
The newspapers avidly printed every item that could be scraped up about the bizarre affair.
The prosecuting attorney was plainly perplexed as to the charge on which the assistants should be tried. Murder was out of the question, for it was a fact that the Head was alive and its mind was normal. The assistants were finally brought to trial on the charge of mayhem.[*]
But the assistants secured the best legal talent in the country. The three specialists testified as to Professor Beardsley’s health. The signed statement of Professor Beardsley, the canceled check for fifty thousand dollars, and the headless body—preserved no doubt by Dr. Leeson for just such an emergency—were offered as evidence.
The result was that the jury disagreed, and the two trials that followed ended in the same manner.
Not only in the courtroom, but all over the country the battle raged. Lawyers, doctors, ministers, and scientists talked and wrote learnedly from one standpoint or the other. One side demanded that the Head’s life should be put to an end for humane reasons, the other side argued that this would be the same as murder because the brain really made the man.
The Head heard of all the different aspects of the wrangle. Its eyes held a mute appeal for death, an appeal that
no one—now that Dr. Leeson was dead-dared to grant. The Head kept on living, and the authorities were satisfied to let the case lie dormant.
DOCTOR LEESON had willed his entire fortune to his assistants. His formula for artificial blood, which he had entrusted to his assistants, they guarded with jealous care.
The years came and went. The assistants grew bald-headed and gray—and died. New, picked men took their place and guarded the Head from death. It was carefully massaged and washed every day, the hair and beard cut when grown top long.
Centuries passed. Great wars were fought and the country beaten in them. The Head noticed that the progress of science was stopped.
The demeanor and character of those taking care of the Head changed. They formed themselves into a secret clique, and were called priests. The government became a hierarchy, and only these priests had any knowledge of electricity or kindred subjects. The laboratory became a shrine to which the people made pilgrimages.
The common people—the Head learned—were gulled into the belief that it was a Godhead sent from on high to instruct and rule through the medium of the self-proclaimed priests. So low was the intelligence of the masses fallen, that they paid fabulous sums for the privilege of gazing on the miraculous Head.
On state occasions the Head was ostensibly interviewed as an oracle as to what ought to be done. The Head’s lips having writhed into a sneer of disgust, the priests interpreted the expression to their advantage—and profit.
Involved in another war, the country was invaded.
Great crowds implored the leering Head for deliverance from the foe.
But the enemy swept up to the temple gates—and entered. The priests fought bravely. The last to die was the high priest, whose blood, as he fell, spattered over the Head.
A dark-skinned invader strode up to the Head, and addressing it with a jeering epithet raised a club to strike.
A look of utter content came over the Head’s features as the blow that meant oblivion descended!
THE END.
[*] A term in law; the maiming of a person by depriving him of the use of any of his members in fighting or in a contest.
1929
THE MONGOLIANS’ RAY
Volney G. Mathison
HERE is a capital scientifiction story that would have done O. Henry honor. It is one of these rare surprise stones that comes along once in a great while. For good science, excellent fiction, suspense and adventure, it ranges high in the list of scientifiction stories.
We know you will enjoy it!
WHEN Samuel Jones heard all the racket in the corridor outside of his office, he thought that one of the janitors must have started playing bounce-ball with a couple of ash-cans. Then his door opened, quite suddenly, and in clanked a visitor who was clad from head to foot in massive shining steel armor.
Now, since Samuel Jones, ex-deep-sea wireless-operator and a lot of other things, had become accustomed to being encamped in a mahogany-finished sheet-metal pigeonhole up on the thirty-ninth floor of a New York City office-structure, he was not to be jarred by anything; and if the building were to have capsized with him, he would probably have brushed the broken tiles off his coat-sleeve with a debonair yawn, bought a newspaper, and ridden home in the subway, and engaged in reading about the latest scandal in Hollywood.
Nevertheless, he was startled when this towering visitor, encased in polished steel armor, came into his office, clanking like a steam-shovel. The mysterious caller was completely shielded, from helmet to sollerets, flexible steel shoes, in gleaming metal. Even the gauntlets on his wrists were made of finely-woven chain-mail, and when he raised the trap-door in his helmet, with a bang, his face remained hidden behind a silvery-colored gauze screen. In his right hand, he carried a bulging brown leather brief-case.
Espying this weird-looking monster, Samuel Jones’ short-skirted young secretary let out a squeak, and so stiffened in her chair with fright, that she looked like a pretty silk-stockinged artist’s model posing in a tightly-wrapped red silk pillow cover.
“How do ya do, sir?”
Samuel Jones greeted the gleaming apparition, in an urbane and New York-like manner, at the same time pressing a button that rang an alarm in three private detective agencies, and then cautiously pulling open a desk-drawer that conveniently housed a big, worn-looking 5-caliber six-shooter with a long, blued-steel barrel. It was a gun that he had used for sprinkling lead on ornery trouble-hunters, when he had been building a string of wireless-telegraph stations in Alaska.
“You are Mr. Jones?” inquired the armored mystery, in a voice that seemed to carry something of the hollow roll of a bass drum.
“That’s me,” replied the occupant of the sheet-metal pigeonhole. “Mr. S.P. Jones to my barber, Sam Jones to my bootlegger, an’ that skunk of a Jones to th’ crooks that I publish show-up stories about in th’ Mazerka
Magazine”
“It is in reference to this Mazerka Magazine that I have called,” announced the visitor, in a voice that sounded cryptic.
“Oh, yes, won’tcha sit down?” said Samuel Jones, pulling his desk drawer open about a foot, and wondering if lead-nosed bullets could get through this phantom’s shining steel breast-plate.
About this time, the door of the office bulged open, revealing a corridor jammed with spectators. As Samuel Jones afterwards remarked, when New Yorkers act that way, it may be said to be the cow’s fingernails.
AS he warily got up and shut the door, his visitor sat down in a chair, with a bump like a colliding box-car full of plowshares, and chipped off a lot of varnish with his forged steel tail-piece.
“Sir, I have read that in connection with this Mazerka Magazine, a late billionaire bath-tub maker, has left you a bequest of $25,000 a year, to be expended, at your discretion, in exposing all sorts of pseudo-scientific frauds, especially those within the realms of chemistry and electricity; for instance, spurious spirit-photographs, electronic-reaction quackeries, and fifteen-cent radio vacuum-tubes.”
“That’s th’ correct dope,” replied Samuel Jones, coldly. He closed his desk-drawer and pushed the “all’s-well” signal to the three detective agencies; while his semi-skirted private secretary came to life and began clicking her typewriter again. As Samuel Jones afterwards expressed it, both he and his stenographer could already see the nigger in the steel-pile. The Mazerka Magazine got about fifty-seven varieties of “touches” a day, each one aiming at that $25,000.
“I,” said the armored mystery, “have come to bring to your attention a thing of vastly greater moment than exposes of electromedical sharks and gold-brick kings. Sir, your life is, at this instant, in deadly peril!”
“Huh!” ejaculated Samuel Jones; and he hastily jerked open his desk-drawer arsenal again, about two feet.
“Yes! And not only your life, but the life of every real American in this country. This nation, sir, faces at this instant a secret, a sinister, a terrible peril. We are about to be irrigated with torrents of human blood! Mr. Tones, we are in the hands of the yellow powers of Asia!”
“Oh, it’s th’ Asiatics, eh,” observed Samuel Jones, slumping back in his chair, with a yawn. “What’s th’ matter with them scrappin’ Chinks over there, now?”
“This is not a jest!” returned the armored mystery, in his powerful voice, which reminded his hearer of a military band playing an impressive march. “The yellow powers of Asia, sir, have developed a deadly radio ray, with which any human being living anywhere on the earth can be instantly hypnotized. There is, at this moment, a wall-eyed Tartar sitting at a board of instruments in Mongolia, who holds the destiny of the earth under his little finger.”
“Bah, that’s a lot of bunk!” declared Samuel Jones, austerely.
“Sir, listen!” exclaimed the steel-encased visitor, in a voice like a beaten drum. “I have devoted my life to the study of electrons and their phenomena. In copartnership with an aged, but keen, German scientist, Dr. Von der Vogel, I have a secret laboratory over in the New J
ersey hills, above the Hudson. Here, in the course of researches, I have discovered that the human mind radiates continuously a series of electronic impulses, or high-frequency waves. These waves not only can be detected and intensified, with suitable instruments, but they can actually be re-projected with such tremendous and exactly directed power, that a trained operator can force his own mind upon any person at any distance, and instantly control him. The operator of the hypnotic ray, Mr. Jones, can virtually enter one’s body, and cause terrible things to happen. He can even put his victim to death!”
There was a silence.
Samuel Jones, case-hardened digger-up of scientific frauds for exposure in the mighty Mazerka Magazine, sat staring, blankly, at his shining visitor.
“The moment I made this ghastly discovery,” continued the armored mystery, in his great, rolling voice, “my mental activity must have been registered by the pick-up instruments of the yellow powers; for they at once resolved upon destroying me, by this very method of radio-hypnosis. I immediately grew ill and sank unconscious.
“Thanks, however, to the presence of mind of my colleague, Dr. Von der Vogel, I escaped death. He, understanding that I was being assassinated with radio rays, which are screened by metals, caught me up and threw me into the iron bath-tub of our residence, above our laboratory; then he ripped a sheet of corrugated iron off the laboratory roof and covered me over with it; thereby shutting off the deadly and invisible electrical beams focussed upon me.
“My rescuer was then himself attacked by the radioassassins; and we existed thereafter only under great pain and peril, until we succeeded in procuring suits of heavy polished steel armor, which we are compelled to wear everywhere, to shield ourselves from the powerful beams, that are continuously focussed upon us. We have found it impossible to screen ourselves from the tremendous force of the Mongolians’ ray with any thinner metal than this; and we never remove our armor, except when we are within the shelter of our laboratory and our sleeping-room, which are both shielded with heavy metal plates.