by Philip Wylie
She stood in the laboratory.
William Carpenter’s laboratory at Sinkak had cost more than a quarter of a million dollars. The Mortland house was large. He had thrown the three front rooms down stairs and two upstairs rooms into one immense chamber. All windows had been sealed with the field stone of which the building was constructed and the walls had been tiled in white. The lighting was artificial and indirect; there was a power ventilating system. The single entrance, from the hall at the end of the kitchen, was blocked by a steel door which could be opened from the inside by a knob, from the outside only by a key and which slammed shut automatically.
The laboratory was equipped as a machine shop; it was also furnished for every conceivable type of work in chemistry, biology, physics, metallurgy and surgery. Besides the usual equipment of chemicals in rows of bottles and small steel drawers that reached to the ceiling and could be procured only by climbing a ladder, besides chests of gleaming instruments, racks of distorted glassware, retorts, burners, an immense hood, microscopes, an operating table, a slab table, a sink, beakers, bell jars, specimen cases, electrical appliances, he had an X-ray machine, a centrifuge, a cadmium-light photographing microscope, a bakelite board covered with switches and another thick with the faces of meters and measuring instruments, an electric furnace, cameras, a spectroscope, a short-wave radio transmitter and a half dozen apparati and engines of his own devising. There was a steel staircase leading from the floor to a small library which ranged along a balcony.
The effect of this complicated organization, lighted from behind a frieze that circumscribed the room, would have been dazzling even to the most accomplished scientist. To a novice it was stupefying. It was impossible for Daryl to grasp its infinity of detail. Her startled eyes merely traveled over the mass, caught the color of the chemicals, the silver flash of chromium steel, the glare of white tile and formed from the machinery and apparatus a geometrical scheme which might have stood as a painter’s abstract of the soul of science.
If William Carpenter shared with more common men any feeling of attachment to material things, any pride of positive possession and creation, that motion of the mind or that warmth of the soul must have been bound up in his laboratory. He allowed Daryl a long interval for staring.
Then he asked her what she thought of it.
“I never dreamed anything so amazing existed in the whole world.”
His answer was typical of him. “It doesn’t—anywhere else.”
Her face was flushed. Once again she misinterpreted facts. To her it seemed that any man capable of contriving so magnificent a chamber must have portentous and splendid purposes.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
Carpenter stared at her and then looked again at his laboratory. Finally he chuckled. “Is it? I never thought of it in the light of beauty.”
“You could paint it.”
“Perhaps. It’s merely an extension of my five senses—to me: better eyes, better arms, longer and more clever fingers, keener ears, a sharper nose and tongue—just a way of analyzing material more accurately and handling it more skillfully than can be done with the human tools.”
This time she hesitated over his words. “I never had an idea like that.”
“You should. It’s obvious. Science is only an extension of man’s faculties. Well—to work. You will be the char woman, the secretary and the bell boy of this room. Sometimes I will want to work alone. Your amusement in such cases will depend on yourself. There are certain things you probably know not to do. Don’t spill anything on yourself. Always wear a rubber apron and gloves—I’ll get some that fit. Don’t open any bottles or lift up any bell jars. Don’t handle any substances, in fact. We will have three solutions for washing apparatus and I’ll indicate what goes into what. Don’t dust the switch board—you’d be electrocuted—I have a power line direct to Paterson with a high voltage current. Never interrupt me when I’m at work. I’ll show you what to do first.”
When Daryl had been in the Carpenter house for three days, she felt completely justified in the attitude she had taken toward the scientist. It seemed to her that he was a man completely devoted to his work—whatever his work might be. He had been neither kind nor unkind. His diligence and his impersonality were beneficial to her rather than detrimental. It salved the recent unhappy chapters in her life to work hard and to think of nothing.
She was part of a schedule, a routine, a process. She made a few mistakes in the laboratory but, fortunately, none of them was serious. She had been very much frightened at the first accident—the breaking of a receptacle which she had been given to clean. When the glass shattered on the smooth floor she knew instantly that Carpenter must possess somewhere within him a terrible anger. She had not admitted that previously.
His only words on the occasion, however, were “Too bad—but we can replace it.”
Following that, her personality opened a little. On the second day she had voluntarily helped Mrs. Treadle with the cooking. Carpenter had sent her from the laboratory, saying that he wished privacy.
She made a dessert and when it was served she said, “Do you like the pudding?”
“Like it?”
“Yes. I made it.”
“Oh.” He paused. “Why—yes. It’s good.” He stared at her then with his curious, bland eyes, until she looked down at her plate. The episode embarrassed her a little. It convinced her more deeply that he gave no heed to anything except his experiments.
She thought and behaved as would any similar person in the identical situation. Carpenter had been kind to her—a sort of negative kindness but it was nonetheless welcome. Hence she defended him against common repute—calling the local attitude ignorance and superstition.
The weather remained clear and cold. Carpenter found that she could drive a car and her daily duty was expanded to include taking Mrs. Treadle to the store every afternoon. One day she had walked through the woods as far as the river.
The forest was one of second growth and it encircled the house. Snow lay in patches on the ground. There were boggy places frozen to iron hardness. The river banks were mucky and black. There was dirty ice on its edges like grease in a pot left overnight. The water was dark and somber. Over the treetops she could see the curves of the amusement park. The whole effect was depressing. She could imagine the river in the summer; it would have a rank, evil smell; people who came from the city—shop girls and their sweethearts—would paddle unwieldy canoes upon it and pretend that the things around them were the substance of such romance as they knew only in the movies.
When she returned from that walk she looked at the house for a long time and understood why the inhabitants of Sinkak regarded it with distrust. The stone walls rose smooth to the roof in front and half way along the two sides. That gave it a dismal appearance—the look of a fort or a prison. From the chimney which was used as the hood outlet there came a wraith of purplish smoke. Anyone seeing the house and knowing nothing of its purpose would be sure to regard it with suspicion, to imbue it with dark performances.
It was on the fourth day that she happened to find the stone. She was cleaning the laboratory. She reached a certain closet which had been locked. Now, however, it was open. She looked inside to see if her services were needed there. On its single shelf was an ordinary stone. The shelf was dusty. She picked up the stone to clean beneath it—and dropped it as if it were hot.
It had the weight and shape of rock. Yet there was something smeared over it—something thick, tangible, pulpy. Looking at it more closely, she could see nothing. Again she touched it and again she felt the substance. Whatever it was, it was transparent—as if the stone had been coated with glass so that one could see the stone inside and not the glass. But it did not feel like glass. She was wearing her gloves. The unconscious curiosity provoked by the phenomenon led her to take the stone out so that she could look at it more closely. It was the size of a very large potato. Holding it toward the light, she found that her fi
ngers were separated from the visible surface by a distance of almost an inch.
And at that instant, in the voice of thunder, Carpenter spoke from behind her.
“What are you doing!”
The stone slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor. He rushed to her side and picked it up. So different had his tone been from anything she had heard that she almost expected him to strike her.
He hurried to a drop light, held the object under it, and turned it over and over. His narrow mouth was sucked in. His gaze was concentrated. After a careful inspection, he walked to the closet, put back the stone, locked the door. Then he turned to her. His eyes had become feverish and his voice was thicker than usual.
“You found that, eh?”
Daryl could scarcely speak. “I saw the closet was unlocked and I was going to dust. I took the stone out—and——”
“Yes?” There was a breathlessness in his tone now.
“I guess I got curious and wanted to look at it closely.”
“Why?”
“Because—because I felt something on it that I couldn’t see!”
Carpenter flung both his hands above his head. “Hallelujah! She felt something she couldn’t see. Praise the Lord! Ha!” He strode back and forth in a frenzy and then spun toward her again. “What did it feel like?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think!”
Her fear only increased. “I—I can’t think. I’m sorry. Did I do something very wrong?”
“Sit down!” he bellowed at her. He drew two stools from the slab table into the middle of the room. She climbed onto one of them tremulously. His actions were energetic, violent. She believed that he had lost his reason. There was nothing to do but to obey him. She sat on the stool and he perched himself on the other—leaning forward and pointing with his grotesquely long forefinger.
“I’ll tell you now the most remarkable story in the world. You must never repeat it—on pain of death.”
She interrupted him. “Perhaps it would be better——”
“Be still! Listen! You are the first living being to hear this. All this”—his arm, flailing in a circle, took in the laboratory—“is but the means to that stone—and what will follow. Now, my dear child—do not be alarmed. We embark on the road of pure science. Why am I here? What am I doing? I will answer those questions.
“First—why am I here?” An expression of black anger contorted his features for a moment. He leaped to his feet and pointed dramatically at himself. “Look at me! Look! Have you ever seen any human being so ill favored? I am a monster. I am a gigantic caricature of a man. I am Ichabod Crane multiplied by a thousand. I am a war of endocrine glands—too much pituitary—too much adrenaline. A freak. The gods gave me the most preposterous body they have ever designed. Into it out of malicious irony they flung the mind of a Pasteur, an Einstein, a Rosoff. Ha!
“From the day I was born—fourteens pounds of gangling joints—every one I have encountered has laughed at me behind his face. The world has hated me. Women have turned from me. Men have sought to bring my ruin. I have endured every persecution that society, smug in a flabbier and impotent flesh, can contrive.
“In school I tried to play games—and they laughed. In college it was the same. No fraternity would have William Carpenter, the human anomaly. Only in the dim recesses of laboratories and libraries could I find a retreat from this grinning anathema. Medical societies and clubs were closed to me. I inherited my father’s money and went into business. My mind can do all things. Three men watched me grow in power. They foresaw me as an equal. They feared the prospect—to associate with me as they would be compelled to do—would make them ridiculous. When the time came, with a double-dealing to which I was by then accustomed, they shattered my fortune. I picked up the remnants. I came here. I returned to science.
“Why? Not to find a cure for cancer. Not to discover another planet. But to prepare myself for a new life. Power has always been denied me. My compensation will come—and it will not be the power of wealth—wholly—not power over a few thousand employees—it will be power over leaders—then power over a nation—and at the last power over the world.”
His very earnestness shed light upon a past that he did not take time to describe in detail. Daryl could imagine the struggle that had been his—the tragedy—and its reason. Her original fear fled. In its place came sympathy—a renewal of her first feeling—and then a faint alarm as she tried to guess the course he contemplated.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But I don’t believe you are so—so—”
Carpenter roared at her. “Didn’t I see your eyes when they fell upon me the first time? A beautiful woman. And a beast. You recoiled. Ah—I’ve gotten to know that spectacle. Very well. I will remove myself from my body!!!!!” He bent toward her and lowered his voice as he spoke.
“What!” she echoed.
“I will take away my body. I will divorce it from me. And then—and then—like a spirit—but as able as a man—I will go about the business I have so long intended.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You felt the fungus.”
“Fungus?”
“On that stone.”
“Oh!”
He came even closer to her and his voice was a soft, insinuating whisper. His arms dangled. Only his eyes were lambent with life. “That was fungus. A fungus that grows on stone—in the dark. It was alive and healthy. But it was invisible.” She could barely hear the last word. Her heart was pounding. She could not budge from the fascination that held her.
“Invisible!” This time he shouted. “Invisible even as I will become!”
“You!”
“I! I have made a growing plant invisible. Step by step I shall study and build up the process until I can apply it to myself. There will come a day when this ugly carcass of mine will vanish into thin air and then, like God himself, I shall go out into the world and work my way. Taking what I require, listening to everything secret and private, conferences, discussions, plots—knowing all—omnipresent, and hence omnipotent. I’ll build my kingdom by my knowledge. I’ll use it ruthlessly—to blackmail, to command. And after that I’ll shape the world to my own plan. When I die—in some spot where no one will find the tangible, unseeable remains of me—the world will be ten thousand times a better place—against its will—and I will have done that.”
His dramatic moment ended. He drew a mighty breath and then addressed her calmly. “That’s today’s lesson. You can see the reasons I have for keeping my purpose secret. Now—go back to your dusting and forget. I may be a long time on the trail of this experiment. Perhaps years. That fungus is the guarantee of ultimate success. Above all—try not to fear me. I——”
The telephone rang. He picked it up and said “Yes” three times at intervals. Then he hung up the receiver.
“It’s Baxter—that assistant I told you about. At the station. Could you meet him? I’ve let this distillation sit too long already.”
“Certainly.”
Daryl turned the knob on the metal door. When it slammed behind her, she felt that it had closed in a mad man. She was as pale as paper. Mrs. Treadle noticed it as she went through the kitchen.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She made three attempts before she could pronounce the word.
CHAPTER 2
THE ARRIVAL OF BAXTER
Bromwell Baxter stood on the platform of the railroad station at Sinkak within a few feet of the place where Daryl had first looked upon that village. He was very nearly as arresting a person as Carpenter for reasons diametrically opposite. Carpenter was prodigious and poorly balanced. Baxter, while not small, was little above medium height. Yet to him might easily be applied those characteristic adjectives reserved for the romantic figure. His eyes were dark and meditative while his mouth and chin were thrust forward in an avid search for perplexing adventure. His hair was black and tightly curled so that it seemed never to be ruffled from an
evenly parted homogeneity. His muscles were those of a sportsman and barely escaped a gymnastic bulge at the shoulders.
If he had been born a hundred years earlier he would have been a famed and cat-like duelist who gathered roses from every balcony. He would have been the most questing knight of Arthur’s court, the boldest of Caesar’s legion captains, he would have forged into Persia side by side with Alexander.
Instead, coming in the twentieth century where man’s high premiums are often put on a paunch, a good golf game, and a staggering bank account, where man’s highest premiums are put upon triumphs of the mind, and where there is no need for agility in personal defense, he had accepted widely separated challenges one after the other. One ancient Eastern University remembered him as a quarterback whose drawled signals and lightning-like gestures had swept through two irresistible seasons. Certain of his escapades were legend among the companies of a regiment that had gone to France in 1918. Every scientific library in the country could produce a score of his printed monographs, the most celebrated of which were “Optical Properties of Protoplasm” and “Some Protein Phenomena.”
He had an income which permitted the indulgence of his more practical fancies. He had social connections which enabled him to add to that increment for any effort or experiment he deemed worthy of enactment. Baxter had made a secret assault on Everest in 1923 which very nearly succeeded and came more near to costing his life. He had spent ten months in Arizona trying to send a rocket to the moon and would have gone in one himself if his attempts had not revealed certain conditions in space which precluded the idea for the time being.
Dowagers with marriageable daughters had, of course, clung tenaciously to his wake. Baxter disliked the idea of marriage; he felt that any woman he had met would be an impediment to his esoteric endeavors. Particularly he disliked everything that was forced upon him either as an opportunity or a duty. His philosophy of life was succinct: every man lived a little while and then died; while he lived, he was exposed to numerous amusing and interesting conditions; an individual should consider it his sacred business to profit by those exposures; dull life was identical to death. He realized that he was fortunate since he was equipped financially, physically and mentally to do as he liked; he had no intention of stunting that good fortune.