by Cave, Hugh
At first glance it was like a great bowl of metal—a disc-like affair, showing a tubular apparatus, with the convex side facing the far wall. From the base of it ran a tangle of wires extending to a vat of black liquid. At the edge of the workbench the wires ran through a heavy switch, worked by both button and lever, to make and break the circuit; and above the whole thing, enveloping the "machine" in a flood of red glow, hung that fantastic lamp.
"Pretty, is it not?" said my companion quietly. "The acid, Hale, is a combination of rare chemicals. It is the only imperfect element of the experiment, but until I have put it to the test, I cannot correct it. If this test fails, I shall separate that vat of liquid into its component parts, connecting each part to the main circuit with an individual wire. The metal disc, of course, is made of copper—and is merely used to hurl the concentrated light directly upon the victim's head."
I was still staring at his death machine when he went to the door of the room and closed it. As he returned to my side he pointed casually to the red lamp above me.
"The red light," he said, "is point number two. I use it because—" He glanced at the ape-thing before us, which had now become strangely quiet—"I should hate to face that thing in the dark. But I fear that the glow of it will interfere with the death ray. If it fails, I shall conduct my second experiment in total darkness."
He moved away from me. Like an automaton I followed his movements, watching him as he approached the horrible thing which was to be his victim. Deliberately he strode toward the snarling face, holding himself cautiously out of reach of those hairy claws. As I stared at him, I could not repress a feeling of sheer admiration for a man who possessed such fearless courage. At my right, half-hidden by the twist of the wall, I could see the iron cage in which Brand had kept the demon. And from that cage, with his own hands, he had dragged the monster forth—had battled with him, subdued him, and chained him into position for the experiment. There was no other solution. No third person had been in this room of mystery, for my host guarded his secrets with almost insane jealousy. Alone, he had overpowered this thing which was the physical equal of three strong men! What demon courage was this!
He faced it now, examining it, evidently, to be sure that the creature had not shifted from that marked section of the wall. Once, as the beast lunged toward him with open fangs, he spoke to it with a sudden rasping command. An expression of fear crossed the gorilla's face. The snarl died in its throat, and it shrank back against the wall, glaring into the scientist's face with narrowed eyes.
A suggestion of a smile hung on Brand's lips as he turned away. For an instant he hesitated, glancing rapidly about the room in a final survey. Then, stepping to the end of the bench, he bent over that great metal disc.
"When I throw the switch, Hale," he said, "you will see a slow light—a green, sulphurous glow—emanating from the center. It will concentrate on the head of the patient. If it is successful, the gorilla will die. He will die, you understand, and his body will hang in the chains—cold. There will be no circulation, no function of the heart, no sign of life. But when he dies, his mind will remain alive through the influence of—that." He pointed to the vat of black chemical at his feet. "And when this switch is turned again, the body will regain its power of living. You follow me?"
I glanced down at the vat of acid.
"What is this chemical?" I replied. "What is it formed of—what combinations?"
He smiled very slowly. For a long while he looked directly at me; then, with a dull laugh he reached for the black switch-handle.
"You are amusing, Hale," he answered. "Are you ready?"
He did not wait for my reply. I saw him lean forward, his eyes intent on the gorilla-thing that stood against the wall. His fingers closed over the switch. With a sudden wrench he jerked it down.
And then—God help me!—I am still half-mad when I make an attempt to remember—a mighty crash of white light flooded the room. Whirling, slashing in its intensity, it shot in a livid cone, straight toward that rigid form against the wall. Every feature of the gorilla's writhing countenance was thrown into hideous detail. A great snarl of fear, of horror, of rage, twisted over the monster's lips. A maddened growl of hate came through the twisted jaws. There was a sound of a chain breaking!
I saw Brand leap back—saw the look on his face. He was afraid—afraid of the nightmare into which he had precipitated himself. The machine before him had gone mad. Each separate wire of that confused tangle writhed over the floor, seething crimson fire. The great metal disc glowed white-hot. The entire chamber of horror had become a hell of choking white smoke.
And then, as I stumbled back to the door, a sound of splintered wood burst through the din. I saw a mighty black shape lunging across the floor toward me. A great hairy hand swept me aside.
As I fell back, choking for breath, I saw the door of the room wrenched open. For a single instant a shaggy, snarling thing was silhouetted against the outer darkness—and then the sill was empty.
Across the room, not more than ten paces from me, Brand was groping forward. As he reached my side, a bitter laugh broke through his lips, and he stood motionless, staring at me.
"I have failed," he said sullenly. "Failed—horribly. It means another experiment."
His cold words, coming as they did with a slight shrug of his heavy shoulders, drove me away from him. Then, as if a hand had suddenly gripped me, the terror of that unholy room overwhelmed me. I rushed to the door. In fear, absolute fear, I descended the stairs. The lower door slammed shut behind me, hurled to by the draught from the upper corridor. I stumbled on, through the rain, until I reached the smooth surface of the roadway—and there, at the edge of a great pool of water, I saw the impression of a naked foot—a huge, ape-like thing that gleamed up at me from the street.
A moment later I had reached the flickering glare of an arc-lamp, leaving behind that horrible house forever—as I hoped.
But no! The very next evening, returning to my study from a short dinner engagement, I found his tiny visiting card, marked with the same death's head, under my door, begging me to visit him again that night.
As the memory of the previous encounter returned to me, I was half of a mind to ignore Brand's summons and keep to the safety of my own conventional study, where a pipe and tobacco awaited me. But the spirit of adventure, and the insatiable power of curiosity, are never quite dead. As I stood looking down at his card with something of a shudder, the tiny death's head engraved on the corner of the page grinned up at me in mockery. Once again I was to be drawn into this madman's net of mystery! I knew, before I had taken a dozen steps, that I should not return until I had found either death or disappointment.
I walked slowly, and it was quite late when I reached the open end of After Street, where a single street-lamp, bearing the name of the lane, sputtered overhead. There was no other light. After I had advanced beyond the lone circle of illumination, the darkness before me was unbroken. The time, I judged, was about eleven o'clock. Not a glow of light appeared in any of the ghost-like houses on either side of the street.
Not a sound, save the echo of my own steps on the stone, penetrated the unholy silence that seemed to hold the old house in its grip.
I let the knocker fall with a heavy clatter, relieved by the sudden burst of sound that reverberated through the inner halls. Then, as I stood there with one hand on the door, I heard the scuff of slow footsteps, and the door was pulled slowly out of my reach.
Before me stood Brand. "Come in, Hale," he said eagerly. "You've had my card."
It was not a question, and I ventured no answer. Quietly, I closed the door and followed him down the gloomy passage. Ahead of us, at the bottom of a wide stairway, burned a single flickering gas-jet.
We were alone in the house—unless Brand had some other horrible creature in captivity. The loneliness and unbroken silence of the place were depressing. Had the man been a bit more generous with his light, or even spoken to me as we paced in silence to
the foot of the long stairs—but no, he led the way like some cowled monk of the Inquisition, and the sound of his shuffling steps merely served to accentuate the stillness of our surroundings.
In this manner I followed him up the circular ramp to the landing above, where he turned to me with a muttered warning:
"It is dark up here. Be careful."
And then he was gone again, with me groping behind him. Here, in the upper recesses of the house, the darkness was even more impenetrable. No sign of illumination was visible. The windows themselves were closed tight and masked with drawn curtains, which, in order to hold back the light, had been painted dead black!
But my observations were short lived, for I was suddenly aware that Brand stood by a closed door waiting for me. I stepped to his side in the darkness. His hand fell heavily on my arm.
"I must caution you, Hale—when you enter this room, you will find it in complete darkness. You must make no attempt to provide light. A single match flame would destroy everything."
He drew the door open slowly, allowing me to enter. Behind me, as I stood just over the sill, waiting for him to direct me, I heard the door click shut. Then, once again, my companion's hand clutched my arm and dragged me forward.
It is a certain fact that a man's eyes, after being in the dark for a certain time, accustom themselves to the surroundings and actually see through the gloom. I had been in Brand's experiment room hardly more than a few moments before I was able, with an effort, to distinguish things that lay about me. I saw the long low table stretching along the entire rear wall of the room—a table covered with test tube racks and distillation apparatus, with acid jars and broken glass—in short, with a motley collection of nondescript scientific apparatus. The opposite wall of the room was unbroken, except for the door by which we had entered. The two side walls were completely covered with black draperies, intended, I presume, to absorb any light that might have found entrance.
I recount this merely to establish the setting of what is to come. In itself it is of little importance, for the apparatus over which Brand was working feverishly lay not at the sides of the room, but in the direct center of the floor. I could make out the form of an upright table, about three feet square, containing that same metallic disc. The familiar profusion of wires extended from its base—this time to a row of huge glass jars (filled with the same unknown combinations of acids) which lay on the floor beneath the table. The disc itself was directed precisely toward a second stand—a long, narrow structure, built almost exactly on the model of a hospital operating table.
It was to this table that Brand summoned me. I moved toward him with slow steps, hardly ready to put myself at the mercy of those fiendish hands. But I had come thus far in the adventure; to retreat now would be to show myself a coward.
"We are ready tonight," he said suddenly, "for a human test. Don't shrink, Hale. I am to be the victim; not you."
I stared at him steadily. This time I did not flinch as he pointed to his machine.
"You will notice that the acid has been decomposed and separated," he said. "That was one of the reasons for our failure last night. The red light, too, did not help."
His words brought a strange thought to my mind. I looked up abruptly and stepped toward him.
"The gorilla," I said. "What happened to him?"
Brand laughed softly. Was it my imagination that the laugh was forced—that it contained a suggestion of fear?
"The beast was captured last night," he told me. "About half a mile from here." Brand glanced at me quietly, as if waiting for the effect of his words upon me. "But it escaped again. I have called the police twice. No sign of it has been reported."
"Possibly," I began, intending to say that the gorilla might have sought the open country, but Brand interrupted in the same soft voice of carelessness.
"Possibly," he said, "the thing is returning—for vengeance. I should not be surprised."
He laughed harshly. Then, almost savagely, he pulled me forward to the metallic thing on the table.
"Hale, I am going to show you this time, without failure, how science can control life! I'm going to show you how to keep the mind alive—to keep it alive through every stage of death, so that you can die and be conscious of every stage of the process."
I did not laugh; did not answer. This time, the utter triumph of his words convinced me that he had perfected the horrible device through which he could do just as he claimed. He would play with me first, probably, as he had played with me the night before. And then—
But this time he thrust aside all preliminaries. His eagerness to go on with the test had overcome that fiendish tendency to toy with his victim. He dragged me suddenly to the gleaming disc before him and pointed to it maliciously.
"When I turn this double switch—" His fingers fumbled with a tiny black switch and a button at the rim of the table—almost a replica of the one I had seen before—"this room will be flooded with light," he cried. "Where it comes from, you need not know. I will tell you this much: the acids in those jars are chemicals which you will find nowhere in the realm of ordinary science. They are combinations of fluids which have taken years to perfect. They were nearly ready last night. Tonight they are perfected. When this switch is thrown, the charge from those acids surges through a wiring system into the coil of this disc. You will see a light—not a white light, as you saw before, but a yellow glare, very much like the glow of common phosphorus. It will center—mark this!—on the table here, directly on the head of the man who lies there. You understand me, Hale?"
I nodded. In the dark I could see his eyes burn with a strange glitter as he released my arm and stepped to the operating table. Without a glance in my direction he set himself in position, lying on the surface of the table, with his head and shoulders in a direct line with the metal disc that glowered down on him. Then, on a sudden impulse, he turned his head to shout a warning to me.
"Remember, Hale, for God's sake remember—if a single ray of false light enters this room while that switch is thrown, no power on earth could ever bring my body back to life. I should die a horrible death. They would bury me, with my mind alive to every stage of burial. There would be no way—no way for me to tell them that I live; and I should be alive for eternity, in the grave. Remember, if those acids are destroyed while I lie here, my mind will never die."
"You mean," I said, "that if the door of this room should open—"
"If the door of this room should open," he replied savagely, "the faintest light from the windows of the outer corridor would make a seething hell out of the table you are standing beside. It would be like the other time, only in this case the experiment is complete—and the horror of it would be complete."
I nodded again, to show him that I understood the danger. For the first time, I understood in full why this mysterious place lay in utter darkness.
"When you have thrown the switch, Hale," he said, "make a mental record of everything you see. And when you have thrown it, step back from the table, out of the light. You can do nothing more. The set is arranged so that the coils, reaching a certain heat, break the circuit. The light will fade out of its own accord once that circuit is broken, and a moment later I shall be the ordinary man of science, returned from the grave."
He looked at me quietly. I saw a spark of the old indifference to conventionality—the old triumph—return to his eyes.
"I am ready," he said. "Don't bungle it."
My hands crept toward the switch and button. Crept, I say, because I was groping blindly for them, with my eyes fastened immovably on Brand's face. My left hand closed over the black handle, while my right forefinger sought the button. With a sudden move I pushed the switch and pressed the button.
For the space of ten seconds, no visible change took place in the darkness of the room. I could still see the black hangings, the long table of materials, the closed door—could still see the inert form of my companion, stretched at full length on the stand. Nothing else was
visible.
And then, with a strange slowness of motion, a dull yellow glow filled the room. Brighter and brighter it grew, increasing with tremendous speed, flooding every detail of the room into grotesque reality. I could see color, brilliance, in the dullest of common objects—could see an unholy, supernatural quality of light over the entire room.
The metallic disc at my side was a cone of glowing silver. The tangle of wires was a livid, crawling thing. The jars of acid beneath the table seemed alive.
I stepped forward with a sharp intake of breath. In the next instant I had forgotten the room, forgotten my surroundings, forgotten everything except the twisted face of the man before me. His head lay in the very center of that whirling chaos of light. Every line of it was thrown into frightful detail. I saw the mouth twist apart in a half-suppressed groan. I saw the eyes open in a stare of strange, far-away recognition.
I bent over him in horror.
"Speak to me!" I cried. "Speak to me! Tell me how to shut this mad thing off!"
Not a movement stirred his body. With a heavy twitch of dead muscles his eyes flickered shut. His lips closed silently. A great tremor shook him, and he lay rigid.
I groped backwards, struggling to throw off the fear that had seized me. My fingers clawed at the switch, clawed at it in madness. No power of human hand could have lifted it.
With a great sob I staggered across the room. In a moment I should have reached the door, flung it open. In a moment I should have fled from that place of torment and never returned. But the moment did not come. I did not reach the barrier.
I heard a dull thud, as the switch was hurled back. Instantly the hellish glow subsided. As I turned, bewildered, I saw only a dull phosphorescent illumination that hovered about the central table; and that, as I returned toward it, slowly faded into darkness.
Once again I bent over the prostrate form of my companion. My eyes, thrown suddenly from utter brilliance to a realm of gloom, were half-blinded. I could see nothing.