“But, Krenwicz,” put in Eastwood, “how are we going to expect to see the various black tribes of Africa with their flat noses and kinky hair mix with, say, the blonde races of Saxony with their golden hair and blue eyes; or who thinks he will see a flat, squat Malay of Asia with his enormously high cheek-bones and almond eyes, mated harmoniously as well as biologically with a delicate English or American girl? Granting that all else furthering a mixing of the races is accomplished?”
“That,” said Krenwicz, “will be accomplished in the physiological laboratory instead of the shop or the printed glossaries of the etymologist. Remember that no occult causes lie back of the negro’s hair being kinky or his skin being black. That spiralling hair of his is but a hair with an oval cross-section, while the cross-section of a white man’s hair is a circle. Remember that pigmentation is after all only skin deep, a distribution merely between the derma and the epidermis of a simple organic matter known as mellanin, and containing almost invariably sulphur. Nothing mystic about that, I think you will concede. And we know now that the endocrinologist, with his new science of the ductless glands, is opening up possibilities for very radical changes in the human body, both physical as well as psychological. By the little weapon known as the hormone, or the proper combination of hormones, man may ultimately become pigmented or depigmented within a few days, his hair may change its cross-section between two visits to the tonsorial artist — in other words, as fast as Nature allows it to emerge from his scalp, and he may thus become straight-haired instead of kinky-haired. Need a white girl of America or England feel compunctions against marrying with a de-negroised native of Africa, educated in an African university, speaking her language, familiar with her city, possessing straight hair — yellow, if you wish it — with body slim or muscular as is desired, with aquiline nose, normal lips — and last, but not least, courteous deportment?”
McCaigh, the American, laughed a hard, mirthless laugh. “You issue a radical theory, Krenwicz. There is a bit of the Southerner in my heredity, however. I find myself unable to conceive of a de-negroised nigger as being a white man, no matter how many physical attributes he may have snatched from the white man; or moreover of a Chink whose yellow colour has been taken out of his face and been transferred to his hair; figuratively speaking, as being a white man. I am not medically read up as you are, nor have I hobnobbed with so many great surgeons as Eastwood over there.”
“It took,” warned Eastwood wearily, in Krenwicz’s direction, “many billions of years, Krenwicz, for the Pithecanthropus man to evolve into the Piltdown man, thence into the Neanderthal, and further many more millions of years to become the Cro-Magnon. And Cro-Magnon man, with those countless eras between them, resembles more nearly the Pithecanthropus than does Negro resemble Chinese, or Chinese resemble Caucasian.”
“It does not matter,” said the Russian kindly. “A white family — let us say a white Welsh family — living in the year 1927 gave birth to one of those medical anomalies, a Mongolian idiot, with slant eyes, high cheek-bones, and all the other characteristics of the Mongol. Now if we accept the theory that the Mongolic, Ethiopic and Caucasie races descended from definitely differentiated Simian precursors of our present differentiated species of large apes, there has transpired backwards in the period of nine short months a complete evolution — or de-evolution — over trillions of years to the original ancestor of even these Simian precursors, and thence down some more trillions of years along another evolutionary branch altogether. Or, if this be a little too fantastic for you, then at the very least a backwards evolution of some thousands of years has taken place to that time when the Mongols invaded and settled in Wales. Now take that Mongolian idiot, treat him with endocrines for his mental and psychological deficiencies — particularly thyroid, thymus, suprarenal and pituitary gland extracts — and you have to all intents and purposes a speaking, thinking Chinaman out of white parents. Where are your billions of years?”
But no answer came forth. Conversation seemed suddenly to have ebbed — and ebbed ominously. As for Shanahan, who in the meantime had sat stupidly staring at the propounders of these scientific questions, Shanahan long used to death hysterics, to the breaking down of strong men at the last moment, the Irishman evidently decided to press on with that entertaining game which had thus far made his unpleasant watch so simple and easy. He glanced at the clock. It was now after four in the morning. In the square window of the death cell, however, the velvety black sky still showed its scintillating star points. Morning, chronologically speaking, was still in the offing. He glanced toward Eastwood. “An’ now, Misther Eastwood, won’t yeze tell me your story? You fellies is certainly entertainin’ a poor prison guard as he’s never been entertained before.”
“Yes,” said Eastwood, as a man speaks who is far away in mind and emotion, “so we are; so we are.” He paused. “McCaigh admits he plots his stories, and Krenwicz here even puts his rationalisations into a sort of system or mathematical law. I shall endeavour to entertain you all with a story developed by my own technique — a story which shall evolve such plot as it may have out of an idea, instead of gathering up ideas by its own structure.” He paused. He poured himself out a stiff drink from the decanter. He lighted a cigarette with fingers that now showed the faintest sign of a tremble, then he dropped into a chair and leaned back in the rays of the prison lamp.
“I shall not attempt to lay my story in that dubious millennium when the ductless glands shall have accomplished so much — for they never may — but will lay it now, when our skilful surgeons do much that Krenwicz expects from the powers of the hormone; these days, nearly ten years after the Great War, I shall ask you to step with me into a little room fitted up with scarcely more than an iron bed, a little room in the heart of London, where you will meet Eustice Annesly — who, thanks to a bit of our modern scientific surgical knowledge, faces a dilemma unlike that any other man ever faced before. I shall term my little tale ‘The Strange Adventure of the Missing Link.’” With which curious introduction Eastwood, in his quiet, soothing voice, began the narration of
THE STRANGE ADVENTURE OF THE MISSING LINK
CHAPTER XLV
IN WHICH ONE MR. EUSTICE ANNESLY MAKES A BEWILDERING DISCOVERY
A LONG shuddering sign broke from Eustice Annesly’s lips. Out of a welter of pain, searing knife-edged agonies, his tortured mind slowly reasserted its sway. It was as if he were just wakened from some ghastly nightmare in which every conceivable torment had joined to lacerate nerve and tissue, and leave his aching body raw and quivering with intolerable anguish — a nightmare of physical horrors giving way gradually to a foggy torpor broken by white-robed silent figures who came, ministered to him, and departed, with every departure leaving him a blissful interval of comfort and forgetfulness. Of late these healing respites had lengthened, the tormenting pangs had been allayed, and the black fog which bound his brain had paled to a thick white mist in whose enveloping folds his eyes served only to reveal a blank wall of opaque light.
With an effort Annesly roused his sluggish body. His hands groped for the bedclothes and threw them aside as he rose with an unwieldy movement and stood uncertainly erect at the bedside. Lifting his hand he tore the gauzy bandage from his eyes and blinked at the unfamiliar room. Around him he saw white distempered walls, a wheeled table whose glass-covered top was laden with a gleaming array of instruments and medicine phials, a large white wardrobe with full-length mirror door.
But what he saw reflected in the mirror sent a thrill of horror, of revulsion, of fear, sweeping over him, a thrill of such staggering intensity that a cry of surprise slipped involuntarily from him.
For, staring at Eustice Annesly from the polished surface of the glass, was a huge, shaggy, monkey-like creature, with squat body and long, hairy arms that reached far below its knees. Its enormous cranium, sloping as it did into a pair of shoulders twice as broad as those of a human being, its total lack of any forehead, its tightly drawn-back lips from which protr
uded four sharp, yellow teeth, its little, close-set eyes, its deep nostrils, its hairy paunch — all filled him with such fear for his safety that he reached out toward the wall to keep from falling. And, as he did so, the creature behind him performed the same action. So he spun quickly around and looked at the back of him.
But, with the exception of himself, the room was quite empty. And as he stood there, trembling and shivering in every fibre at the strange illusion that he had just seen, the door of the room opened quietly and a white-capped nurse thrust her head in the opening. For only the briefest second, however, did she remain there, staring. Her lower jaw dropped open. Her face blanched as white as her cap. Then, as Eustice Annesley stepped toward her with the intention of learning what peculiar illness could have caused him to see such an apparition or hallucination in the mirror, the nurse disappeared like a flash. A second later he heard her feet pattering wildly down the corridor. And now he knew that he was in London, for her terror-stricken scream was followed by words with the suggestion of a Cockney accent:
“Gawd ‘elp us — the monk is loose!”
The monk! Very odd, reflected Eustice Annesly, that Eustice Annesly, electrical engineer of the Lots Road generating station for the Underground Electric Railways, graduate of the Imperial College of Science and Technology, should be referred to by such a term. But, on the other hand, what was the reason for that reflection in the mirror? Again he turned bewilderedly to it, and for the second time beheld that hideous squat body with its little, beady, malevolent eyes. Oh, it was all too — too incomprehensible, he told himself uneasily.
But as he stood in that one spot debating with himself as to whether he should go down the corridor and seek someone who could throw some light on the nature of his illness, the door of the room was flung violently open and three stalwart young men — evidently janitors or porters, since two of them carried mops — burst into the room and threw themselves ferociously upon him. Only for a bare second did he stand motionless. Then, seeing that the intentions of the newcomers toward him were nothing less than hostile, he fought back with all the energy at his command.
And Eustice Annesly was surprised at his own strength. Twice he struck out with his right arm. Each time his blow sent a victim hurtling clear across the room. Then he caught himself sinking his teeth in the arm of the third fellow. But, just as he found himself, strangely, getting the better of the whole three, one of them circled quietly behind him, and a second later two hands were gripping his throat like a vice, and his breath — his precious breath — was cut completely off. Rapidly his struggles grew weaker and weaker. The room got darker and darker. And the last thing he remembered was a dizzy blur in which two of his opponents were clutching his kicking legs. Then his knowledge of things external passed away in a swirling blackness.
When he opened his eyes for the second time he saw that he was in the same room, empty as before; the same walls, the same simple, enamelled bed were visible. But to his consternation he found himself unable to move. By dint of twisting his neck round he discovered that he was held fast by four great thick, leather straps which ran tightly across his body and terminated in shining metal clasps at the sides of the bed.
What a strange, strange hallucination it all was, he told himself miserably — for hallucination it surely must be! Why in the name of all that was logical should Eustice Annesly, electrical engineer for the Lots Road generating Station, be clad in a tightly-buttoned monkey skin and struggling with three strangers? It seemed more like a dream — a horrible nightmare. But then, as he kicked impatiently at the coverlid with a leg that was partly free, he realised with a pang that the illusion was returning: that leg was muscular and hairy, and the toes were long and more prehensile even than fingers.
When, in the name of heaven, he wondered, would someone come and explain how this error of vision — or perhaps of belief — had entered into his prosaic existence? Was it possible, he reflected, by running hastily, over the recent events of his life, to arrive at some sort of an explanation of this dumbfounding situation? And acting on his self-suggested idea, he struggled back in the dim recesses of memory, desperately trying to find where and when the thread of consciousness had been snapped off.
CHAPTER XLVI
WHEN THE THREAD PARTED
HE was Eustice Annesly. That much was certain. He had been employed in the engineering department of the huge generating station which supplied the Underground Electric Railways. That, too, was a fact beyond doubt. He had lived at Scarborough House, a private hostel in Guildford Street, W.C.1. That was plainly rememberable. And if he had lived in a hostel, he must have been a bachelor. Suddenly a girl’s face flashed across his memory — a face which embraced that unusual combination, yellow-gold hair and brown eyes. And the eyes of tender and yet unfathomable brown were those of Sybil Mainwaring!
With this much fixed in mind, everything else seemed to come back with a rush. With a wave of disappointment and pain, he found himself recalling the last night he had seen her — the night when he had called at her home in Tavistock Square and told her that to him she represented all that was worth having in life. And then, then — ah! — that was the cause of the pain, for her answer had told him that he was too late.
“Eustice, dear boy,” she had said, “I’m truly, truly sorry that you’ve cared for me in the way that you say you have. We have found ourselves to be the same in tastes, likes and dislikes, education — and what-not else. But, dear boy, I don’t love you in the way I should to marry you — because — because — the real one has come into my life — and it is too late.”
“Too late!” he had ejaculated, while a feeling of bitterness had gripped him fast. “Too late? Someone else has asked you already, Sybil? You care for him? You’ve promised him?”
She had nodded slowly. “Yes, Eustice. You will be surprised when I tell you. I met him first at the Claridge ball in Grosvenor Square. It — it was love at first sight. He is — ” She had paused, radiantly beautiful at that moment. “He is of the nobility, Eustice. He — he is Geoffrey — Lord Olford.”
Lord Geoffrey Olford! Perhaps, then, Eustice Annesly reflected bitterly, that was the cause of his being where he was, for the mental shock he had received when he learned that the girl whom he loved with all his heart and soul was to marry into the nobility, was staggering, to say the least. Geoffrey — Lord Olford! True, he did not personally know the man — nor had he even ever seen him. But he had heard and read of the Eleventh Earl of Olford a great many times. Young and handsome the earl was said to be, a man democratic to the highest degree, a man who was to be seen about London either driving his own car or else walking afoot from his town house to his offices in Leaden-hall Street, a man who, though democratic, was yet a member of London’s most fashionable clubs, sportsman, and last but not least, the possessor of a fortune inherited from his father, the old earl, of over a million pounds sterling. There had remained no alternative but to bear the blow stoically, for one thing was certain: he knew Sybil Mainwaring too well to believe that she had been influenced in any way by either Geoffrey Lord Olford’s title, or even Geoffrey Lord Olford’s fortune of a million pounds. She loved the young nobleman — and that fact alone must shatter any hopes on the part of Eustice Annesley.
He caught himself up with a start from this sentimental mind-roving. This would never bring to light the peculiar causes that had led up to his being where he was — and encased in this monkey-skin garment. And so, then, what had followed his departure from Sybil Mainwaring’s home in Tavistock Square? He thought hard for a moment and then remembered. A sleepless night, a night of tossing until dawn, a night of misery and soul anguish. And the same thing the next night. And the night following. And then over and over for several more nights — until he found himself becoming haggard and worn from loss of sleep and continual brooding.
Here he paused in his reflections. He had gone insane in that week of mental torture after he learned that Sybil was to become Lady Olford
? If so — and it seemed reasonable — then this room was the private room of a workhouse observation ward — or even a lunatic asylum — instead of a room in a hospital. And, furthermore, the queer hallucination of shaggy body and hairy limbs was explained.
But he must find out more definitely than that. He had no remembrance of any court trial for alleged insanity. In fact, he had not reached the break in consciousness yet. So what had happened after that week of brooding and insomnia, that week when he had even thrown over his berth with the electric company that fed the tubes, with a half thought of going out to the colonies? He strained his mind on this point, for he realised that it was important. Had he gone to Australia — to Canada? No, he held no recollection of boarding a passenger liner, at least at this juncture. But suddenly it flashed upon him: Scarnum’s American Circus! That was it! The hoardings of London had been plastered with lithographs announcing that Scarnum’s American Circus and Collection of International Freaks would open at the big new Aldwych Hippodrome, just off the Strand, the week of April 3rd. April 3rd, then, was a date to use as a starting-point. And he — he — yes, of course — that was it exactly — he had decided to take in Scarnum’s show on the opening night in a desperate attempt to get his mind off the loss on which it was dwelling so fixedly; to forget the one fact that was slowly undermining his happiness and spoiling his life.
And so, on the night of April 3rd, he had found himself among the crowds threading their way back and forth between the platforms of Scarnum’s side-show of freaks, distracted to some extent from his own woes. In turn he had viewed the American curiosities know as the rubber-skinned man and the tattooed woman; and then — then — the petrified mermaid, the albino negro, the glass eater, the three-legged man. And then — what? Ah — he had stopped in front of a stout cage which bore a sign reading:
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