Scientific Romance

by Brian Stableford

  “I suppose,” said the nurse, “that he will have to recollect things whatever you do.”

  “You think so, do you? Very well—very well. I will ask you what you think in a week or two. Give him a week or two, and you shall see a new light in those fishy eyes; you shall find such a boy as you never expected. Look at the shape of his head. There is intellect in the brow, resolution in the chin, tenacity in the jaw, the power of ruling in the nose. The boy, nurse, is born for courage and for success.”

  “Poor lad!” said the nurse hopelessly. “He doesn’t look like it, just at present. To be sure, I have never seen such an idiot, yet with such a head.”

  “Now,” said the Professor, outside the room, “I have shown you what I am doing. Forget, if you can, my secret. Let me be the first to divulge it, as soon as I am satisfied with my results. If you yourself,” he looked at me with the wistfulness of one who wants to perform another skilful operation, “have anything on your mind—any little murder, robbery of trust money, forgery, betrayal of innocence, lost opportunities, chances thrown away—don’t hesitate to come to me. Immediate relief I can promise, at least.”

  At that period of my life Memory had few reproaches. I thanked him, and went away pondering on his strange experience.

  This talk took place in the month of June and the year 1884. After the summer holiday, in October, I called again upon the Professor. His housekeeper received me. Her master, she said, was gone. There had been death in the house. The old gentleman who wrote such beautiful verses had died, making a truly edifying end; and the lady whom the master called Isabel was also dead—gone to rejoin her children, she said; and then the master went away, taking with him his private secretary and his ward. I asked about the latter. He had come through his illness bravely, and now there wasn’t a livelier young gentleman anywhere.

  *

  Ten years passed before I saw the Professor again. When a man goes abroad and stays there for a few years, he drops out of the groove, and his place is filled up. Most of the old set were married, and marriages separate the company of those who start together. I had quite forgotten the Professor’s secret; if I ever thought of it at all, it was as part of his general crankiness. I met him at a metropolitan station; he greeted me warmly as if we had parted the day before. I reminded him that it was ten years since we had last met. Then I remembered the occasion. “And how,” I asked, “has the great Experiment on the Memory Cell succeeded?”

  “There’s my train,” he replied, abruptly. “Meet me tomorrow morning, at ten, at the entrance of the High Courts of Justice, and you shall see.”

  We sat in the gallery of a Court, whether of Queen’s Bench or Chancery, I know not; nor does it matter. Down below, the Court was filling up rapidly. The barristers sat in a row; below them the solicitors; at the side stood the clerks with bags; the jury waited to be called; the witnesses already trembled in their seats. Presently the judge appeared; the barristers rose, and the business of the day began.

  “He’s among them,” murmured the Professor. “He is Junior in a case set down for hearing today. There he is, talking with the solicitor, I suppose. That’s my ward.”

  Truly a handsome young man, tall and brave of aspect.

  “Does he look as if a dreadful past weighed him down?” the Professor went on. “Not a bit. He’s a Fellow of his college, first class in classics and in law, he has been called six months, and he has already made a beginning. Ten years since I showed you the case, and in all that time not a glimmer—mind! not a glimmer—of the truth has reached his brain.”

  “And now will you give your discovery to the world?”

  “Now, I believe, I may.” He heaved a deep sigh. “One is not worthy—no one is worthy—of such honor as will be mine.”

  The case began. It was one of a disputed will. Fifteen years ago, as our Junior opened the history, there was a profligate youth who had a considerable fortune, which he was spending, after the manner of his kind, among sharps and drabs. This young man, while yet the bulk of his fortune remained, fell sick unto death, and was, in fact, expected to die. While he was at the worst, in the middle of the night, and when the end was looked for every moment, the man with whom he mostly consorted, a very notorious person who passed by the name of “The Colonel,” or Colonel Tracy, called upon the landlord of the house in order to witness himself the signing of the sick man’s will. Next day, however, contrary to expectation, the patient began to mend, and in a short time he was taken away by his friends; he mended his morals as well as his health, and returned no more to his former companions, but lived soberly until his death, which had happened quite recently. And then an unexpected will was produced. It bequeathed the whole of the testator’s property absolutely to a certain woman whose character, like that of the man known as “The Colonel,” was of the worst kind possible. No later will could be found. Investigations showed that the circumstances attending the drawing up and the signing and the witnessing of the will were highly suspicious, and this action was brought in order to set it aside.

  The case was one of those in which the story came out quite plain and clear. The young drunkard; the man who encouraged him, egged him on, and plundered him; the sudden illness; the crafty attempt to secure the dying man’s fortune—all this was easy to understand. But there was the signature, strong and unmistakable; there were two witnesses to the signature. Undue influence is not an easy thing to establish. And plain forgery, in such a case, may be suspected, but cannot well be proved.

  For reasons which you will understand immediately, I do not know how the case ended. I believe they generally compromise such cases.

  So far as I assisted at the hearing, they called four witnesses. The first of these was the lady to whom the estate had been devised. She was quite a common person, about forty years of age, dressed with some smartness. As to her own part in the business, there was nothing that she desired to conceal. Colonel Tracy gave her the will, telling her that the young fellow hadn’t died after all, but was fetched away by his friends, which was a piece of terrible bad luck; that she must keep the will, because the young Juggins was sure to drink himself to death before long, and it might be useful. She had kept the will, therefore; she found out also where the young man lived and used secretly to watch him; when, after fifteen years, he died, she went to a lawyer and gave him the will. She was never, so to speak, a friend of the deceased, but she had seen him in the Colonel’s company. The Colonel was a sporting man. She knew very well that the Colonel was sharping the young man; she did not know why the estate was left to her. The Colonel told her about it when he gave her the paper. If the thing had come off, probably the Colonel would have had most of the money, because at that period the Colonel could have had everything that belonged to her, so noble an opinion had she formed of him.

  The lady’s evidence, of which this is only a portion, revealed an interesting glimpse of life where there are no foolish restraints of honor or self-respect.

  When she retired, the medical man who had attended the young gentleman was called. He said that as appeared in his notebook, the patient was apparently dropping into a comatose condition on the evening in question; that he himself expected to learn that he had died in the night; that he did not think it likely, from the patient’s condition, both in the evening and the morning, that he could collect his thoughts sufficiently to make a will. He would not, however, say that it was impossible.

  The third witness was the landlord of the house. He said that he remembered the incident perfectly; he was called up in the dead of night; the Colonel placed the pen in the sick man’s hand; to the best of his recollection the man signed his name; could not say if the Colonel guided his fingers; then he and the Colonel witnessed the will.

  The fourth witness was called by the name of Herbert Shelley. His appearance caused some interest, because he wore the garb of a convict.

  At this point the Professor began to show signs of great emotion. He started; he changed color; hi
s hands trembled; he gazed hard at the window; he looked anxiously at his ward—signs at which I vaguely wondered.

  The man was tall, and had a look of distinction even in that grisly uniform. His features were sharp and clear: a pointed chin; thin, firm lips, keen eyes, and the nose of the soldier. He showed neither shame nor bravado as he stood up before all; he might have been standing on the hearthrug of a club, so easy and self-possessed was his bearing.

  Our Junior conducted the examination, armed with his papers.

  “You were tried and sentenced,” he began, “under the name, I believe, of Herbert Shelley?”

  “I was using that name at the time,” he replied calmly. “I was sentenced, if the statement will save you a question, for obtaining money under false pretences.”

  “Quite so. At an earlier period—fifteen years ago—you called yourself sometimes Colonel Tracy.”

  “Herbert Tracy, I called myself. My friends called me Colonel.”

  “I did not know that name,” murmured the Professor. “It is the man. It is the man.”

  The witness then proceeded to narrate the circumstances of the will. The man thought he was dying; he requested witness to draw his will; witness found a form of Will in Letts’s Diary, and copied it out; he asked the testator to whom he left his estate; testator replied to Susan Cheriton; witness inserted the name; called up the landlord, and the testator signed. Next day he began to get better; a few days afterwards his friends took him away; then witness gave the girl the will, told her what a near thing it had been, and advised her to keep the paper. That was all he knew of the matter. Why had the testator bequeathed his whole estate to the girl? Witness did not know; it was not a time for asking questions. Was naturally pleased at the choice, as the lady’s friend.

  “You have passed under other names, I believe?”

  “Under many names. I have lived by my wits. The profession necessitates a change of names.”

  “The trouble to which you referred was connected with a bogus company, was it not?”

  “It was. I had fifteen months’ imprisonment for it.”

  “You have been a betting-man, a card-sharper, a billiard-player, a writer of begging letters?”

  “I live by my wits,” he repeated. “That means that I use my wits.”

  “Quite so, Quite so. You were Mr. Herbert Shelley, alias Colonel Tracy, alias other things. You were once, even, a gentleman, I believe?”

  The man winced—but only for a moment.

  “I was,” he replied.

  “And you held the rank of captain in a regiment of the line? You sent in your papers by request of the colonel on account of a charge of cheating at cards.”

  “There was such a charge. I resigned my commission and my clubs.”

  “You were married to a lady of fortune, whose estate you squandered?”

  “Say, rather, enjoyed, I enjoyed it very much as long as it lasted.”

  “What was your name at the time?”

  “My name was Edward Algernon Stevedore.”

  Then a most extraordinary thing happened. Counsel suddenly started, stared at the witness, and then—I understand it now, though at the moment I wondered—a look of recognition or recollection flashed in his eyes. He dropped his papers; he clutched at the desk before him. His face became livid; horror, shame, loathing, terror—as I now understand the effect of those emotions—appeared in swift succession before him; the people, staring, thought he was seized with violent pains. He swayed this way and that, and spoke in a changed, husky voice.

  “You are the notorious Edward Algernon Stevedore,” he said slowly. “You were expelled from the Army for cheating at cards, you have become a common rogue and swindler, you drove your wife mad with your villainies, you sold your son for a five-pound note, and you are there—and I. . . .” he fell forward in a fit.

  “It is his own father,” said the Professor, “and his Memory has come back to him.”

  He rushed down the stairs and met the people in the corridor carrying out the unfortunate Junior, still unconscious.

  They carried him to King’s College Hospital at the back of the Courts. Here he presently recovered consciousness; but he looked dazed and miserable when the Professor put him into a conveyance and carried him away.

  The incident was noted in the evening papers and on the bills. Sudden Illness of a Barrister in Court. No one knew, and no one guessed, the cause. In the evening, thinking on this strange affair, I remembered that the last words spoken by the young man in Court were the very words used by his guardian ten years before, when he showed me the boy and told me something of his history. He had succeeded, at that time, in destroying his boy’s Memory. Were the first, new impressions on that white sheet which had contained the memories of fourteen years—those plain and unmistakable words?

  The Professor, a few days afterwards, called upon me. He was much dejected. “I have had a most terrible time,” he told me. “I have been loaded with reproaches. The boy has been driven nearly mad with shame and loathing; he threatened suicide; he said he could never return to his work. I told him all. He heard it and asked for more—seemed as if he wanted to pile up the disgrace.”

  “Well?”

  “Nobody knows the truth, except you and me. Nobody suspects it; nobody can ever find it out. My ward doesn’t know it either. He has now gone back to chambers.”

  “He accepts his lot?”

  “Such a lot can never be accepted. No, sir. I have removed a patch or two from his Memory. That is all. His recollection of the Court ends with the first part of that abominable villain’s evidence; he thinks he was seized with a fainting fit; all that followed, including his shame and misery, has been expunged. He has since, by my advice, consulted a physician, who says—ah!—yes—that it was overwork. He knows nothing; and I hope will have no recurrence of his late attack.

  “Meantime, I think I shall not divulge my discovery until I am better satisfied. I want to make such a recurrence of the past impossible. Give me ten years more.”

  THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH

  JACK LONDON

  Jack London (1876–1916) was enormously successful as a writer of popular fiction in the first decade of the twentieth century, and established a worldwide reputation, using his popularity to promote his idiosyncratic but fervent socialist ideas, notably in the futuristic dystopian novel The Iron Heel (1908) and the revolutionary melodrama “Goliah” (1908). His short scientific romances include the classic novella “The Scarlet Plague” (1912) and “The Red One” (1918), an adventure story featuring a crashed alien spaceship. The latter was published posthumously, following his suicide.

  “The Shadow and the Flash,” first published in the June 1903 issue of The Bookman and reprinted in the collection Moon-Face and Other Stories (1906), is an ironic account of invention driven by obsession, reminiscent of H. G. Wells in its narrative strategy, and probably inspired by his example. It is one of the central texts of American scientific romance.

  When I look back, I realize what a peculiar friendship it was. First, there was Lloyd Inwood, tall, slender, and finely knit, nervous and dark. And then Paul Tichlorne, tall, slender, and finely knit, nervous and blond. Each was the replica of the other in everything except color. Lloyd’s eyes were black; Paul’s were blue. Under stress of excitement, the blood coursed olive in the face of Lloyd, crimson in the face of Paul. But outside this matter of coloring they were as alike as two peas. Both were high-strung, prone to excessive tension and endurance, and they lived at concert pitch.

  But there was a trio involved in this remarkable friendship, and the third was short, and fat and chunky, and lazy, and, loath to say, it was I. Paul and Lloyd seemed born to rivalry with each other, and I to be peacemaker between them. We grew up together, the three of us, and full often have I received the angry blows each intended for the other. They were always competing, striving to outdo each other, and when entered upon some such struggle there was no limit either to their endeavors or pas
sions.

  This intense spirit of rivalry obtained in their studies and their games. If Paul memorized one canto of “Marmion,” Lloyd memorized two cantos, Paul came back with three, and Lloyd again with four, till each knew the whole poem by heart. I remember an incident that occurred at the swimming hole—an incident tragically significant of the life-struggle between them. The boys had a game of diving to the bottom of a ten-foot pool and holding on by submerged roots to see who could stay under the longest. Paul and Lloyd allowed themselves to be bantered into making the descent together. When I saw their faces, set and determined, disappear in the water as they sank swiftly down, I felt a foreboding of something dreadful. The moments sped, the ripples died away, the face of the pool grew placid and untroubled, and neither black nor golden head broke the surface in quest of air. We above grew anxious. The longest record of the longest-winded boy had been exceeded, and still there was no sign. Air bubbles trickled slowly upward, showing that the breath had been expelled from their lungs, and after that the bubbles ceased to trickle upward. Each second became interminable, and, unable longer to endure the suspense, I plunged into the water.

  I found them down at the bottom, clutching tight to the roots, their heads not a foot apart, their eyes wide open, each glaring fixedly at the other. They were suffering frightful torment, writhing and twisting in the pangs of voluntary suffocation; for neither would let go and acknowledge himself beaten. I tried to break Paul’s hold on the root, but he resisted me fiercely. Then I lost my breath and came to the surface, badly scared. I quickly explained the situation, and half a dozen of us went down and by main strength tore them loose. By the time we got them out, both were unconscious, and it was only after much barrel-rolling and rubbing and pounding that they finally came to their senses. They would have drowned there, had no one rescued them.