“The Malignant Entity has escaped,” he said. “No one in this house—in this community, even— is safe until it is captured or killed.”
“You don’t mean to tell me that little thing we were chasing around the room could kill anybody,” said the chief.
“I am not so sure that it could kill any one now that it has been reduced to the size of a golf ball, although the cytoplasm surrounding the nucleus evidently has the power of quickly dissolving and assimilating living tissues. Its growth, apparently, is only limited by the amount of food it can find.”
“Maybe we’d better get the women out of the house,” said the chief.
“The sooner, the better. I suggest also that you surround the place with men armed with shotguns. If that thing gets out and starts to grow I shudder to think of what may happen. Children will not be safe outside their own homes, and perhaps not even within them. Adults will be attacked as soon as the creature has attained sufficient size, and there is always the possibility that it may have the power to reproduce its kind. Organisms of this kind, as a rule, multiply with exceeding rapidity. Think of a thousand or perhaps a million such monsters roaming through the land. It is almost impossible to kill them because of the power we have just witnessed, of leaving the body, no matter how large it has grown, taking with it only enough cytoplasm to protect the nucleus and make a new start.”
We were all gasping from the fumes that came out of the tank, and glad to get out of the laboratory.
When all were assembled in the living room the chief phoned headquarters for men and shotguns while Dr. Dorp and I explained what we had found to Miss Townsend.
After we had described our adventure in detail, the doctor said:
“It seems strange that your father left no records of his experiments with the monster.”
“I feel quite sure that he left a record of some sort, though I have never seen it,” replied Miss Townsend.
“Have you any idea where it is?”
“Perhaps in his safe in the study.”
“I do not remember seeing a safe in the study.” “Naturally. It is hidden. Come and I will show you where it is.”
We followed her into the study and she swung back one of the bookcases which was hung on concealed hinges, revealing a small wall safe,
“Would you mind opening it for us?” asked the doctor.
She turned the dial to number twelve, then pulled the lever. It did not move. She seemed surprised, set the dial more carefully and tried again with the same result.
“It’s no use, I guess,” she said. “The last number of the combination is twelve. He usually turned it back to one and then it was only necessary to turn it to twelve to open it. He must have locked it last night.”
“Don’t you know the combination?”
“No. Father was the only one who knew that.” “I wonder if you would object to our blowing the safe,” he asked.
“Not if it will be of any assistance to you.”
Chief McGraw, who had just finished calling headquarters, came into the room.
“Think you can get us a safe-cracker tonight, Chief?” asked the doctor.
“Get you most anything you want. What’s in the safe?”
“We believe it contains some valuable information regarding the thing we were chasing a while ago.” “I'll get a man out here right away,” said McGraw, going once more to the phone.
Officer Burke escorted Miss Townsend, Mrs. Harms and the two servants to the Harms home, where they were to spend the night.
Shortly afterward there arrived twenty policemen armed with shotguns and carrying several dozen bulls-eye lanterns. They brought extra weapons which were distributed to all of us who remained in the house, the chief, the doctor, the four policemen and myself. Burke was to remain on guard next door.
A ring of lanterns was placed around the house and the twenty armed men were posted at intervals between them. We then divided our forces as follows: One policeman was placed on guard in the laboratory. Chief McGraw with another policeman patrolled the upper rooms and halls. The doctor and one policeman remained on the first floor and I, accompanied by a strapping young fellow named Black, who had recently been admitted to the force, did sentry duty in the basement.
Theorizing
THE Townsend basement was divided into three rooms, each lighted rather dimly by the yellow rays from an incandescent globe suspended on a short drop-cord. The furnace room and coal bins were situated at the rear end. The middle compartment contained a miscellaneous assortment of boxes, barrels, garden tools, household tools, canned fruits, empty fruit jars, bottles, and what not. The front room was used as a laundry.
Officer Black and I searched each room thoroughly, using a flash light in the dark corners and moving everything that wasn’t fastened to the floor or walls. Several mice jumped out from behind boxes and barrels, but we saw no sign of the creature we were hunting.
We were peering behind the furnace when several loud squeaks came to us from the middle room.
With shotgun held in readiness, I moved stealthily toward the point from which the sound came. There, in the center of the floor almost under the yellow electric light bulb, I saw the fast disappearing body of a mouse under a mass of plasmic jelly.
My first impulse was to shoot, but on second thought, I decided to attempt to capture the thing alive if possible. Instructing Black to hold his weapon in readiness in case I failed, I unscrewed the lid from a large empty fruit jar and walked softly toward the center of the floor. I expected the thing to spring away, but to my surprise it lay almost motionless on the body of its victim. I could see streaks of bright red flowing through the jelly-like mass as blood of the mouse was drawn up for assimilation.
I clapped the mouth of the jar over the creature and still it made no effort to escape. Then, sliding a fire shovel which Black brought me, under the thing and its victim, I turned the jar right side up. It fell to the bottom of the receptacle, still clinging to the now formless mass that had once been a mouse and making no effort to escape. I put the lid in place and screwed it down tight.
“Now try to get away, you devil!” I cried, shaking the jar exultantly.
I almost dropped it a moment later as a muffled explosion jarred the building. Then I remembered Chief McGraw’s safe-cracker, and hurried upstairs.
When I reached the living-room, Dr. Dorp was emerging from the study in a cloud of plaster dust. In his hand was a thick, loose-leaf book.
“I have the professor’s diary,” he called excitedly.
“Don’t get fussed over such trifles,” I replied. “Look what I’ve got. Caught it alive, too.”
I put the jar on the table and he squinted at it for a moment. The blood-bloated monstrosity had separated its shapeless hulk from the whitened bones of its victim and was sluggishly crawling up the side of the glass.
“You caught it, sure enough,” he said. “I only hope it hasn’t any little sons or daughters about.”
“I’ll keep the house under guard for a couple of days,” said Chief McGraw, who had come down to learn the result of the cracksman’s labors. “If there are any more of these things around they ought to show themselves by that time.”
The doctor drew a chair up to the table and eagerly scanned the pages of the diary while we watched the antics of the thing in the jar. It kept getting lighter colored all the time, and more lively. By the time the cytoplasm had become transparent it was racing around, contorting its body into all kinds of shapes—flat, oval, and round. At times it put forth pseudopods, sometimes elongating them until it resembled a small cuttle fish.
“September twenty-third was the night Immune Benny died wasn’t it, Chief?” asked the doctor.
“Right. Why?”
“Then this diary tallies with Miss Townsend’s testimony. Here is the professor’s entry.
“ ‘September 23, Nearly Midnight.
“ ‘Eureka! I have succeeded. I placed a tiny drop of syntheplasm on the slide tonight as 1 have
done a thousand times before, and covered it with a weak, sterile solution of gelatine.
“ 'I watched it steadily for a half hour but nothing happened until, suddenly, I noticed a tiny black spot forming in its center. I am positive there were no animalcules either in the syntheplasm or the solution, yet no sooner had the black spot become readily distinguishable than my speck of syntheplasm began moving about as if searching for food. Evidently it cannot subsist on gelatine.
“ 'I next introduced a rhizopod into the solution. -My animal slightly resembles it, but is larger and gets about much faster. I wanted to compare the two but the rhizopod was quickly devoured; Now I know what to feed it.’ ”
“It is growing late so I will not read all the details to you,” continued the doctor. “Suffice to say that the professor discovered his synthetically created creature would feed on nothing but living creatures. He fed it so many microscopic animals the second day that it grew to a size visible to the naked eye. Then he fed it gnats, mosquitos, flies, beetles, and finally mice, when it became so large he was forced to transfer it from the small porcelain dish in which he kept it, to a much larger one.
“The thing grew at a prodigious rate of speed. Its growth seemed only limited by the amount of living creatures it was permitted to devour-. At length he was compelled to keep it in the glass-lined tank which he had been using for the culture of infusoria. Its victims were thrown into the tank alive and were quickly killed by the monster. He noticed that it was sluggish while assimilating its food, but moved with cat-like quickness when hungry. Though it had no eyes it seemed to sense the approach of food in some way and, toward the last, stretched forth pseudopods and snatched the animals from his hands.
“Yesterday the professor led two mastiffs into the room. Hardly had he closed the door of the laboratory before the monster was out of the tank.
It killed and devoured the two big dogs in less than a half hour—then crawled back sluggishly into the tank to digest its meal. Thus ends the written record of the professor’s adventures with the Malignant Entity. His whitened bones on the floor of the laboratory are mute testimony of what occurred.”
There was a moment of awed silence when the doctor finished his narrative. His eyes fell on the struggling thing in the glass jar.
“What are you going to do with it?” I asked.
“Come,” he said, taking up the jar and starting for the basement. “I will show you.”
The chief and I followed him down the basement stairs and into the furnace room. He opened the fire-door and tossed the jar on the glowing coals.
The thing raced about spasmodically for a moment in the intense heat, then fell huddled in the bottom of the jar. Suddenly, as if inflated from beneath, it puffed upward and outward, almost filling the receptacle in a shape that resembled a human head. I thought this only a figment of my imagination at first — blinked — and yet a second time. The face of a man stared back at me from behind the curved glass, eyes glowing with malevolent hatred, and lips drawn back in a snarl that revealed crooked, yellow fangs. For a moment only the vision held. The next instant the jar was empty of all save a tiny pile of white, flaky ash and the bones of the mouse.
Dr. Dorp shut the door suddenly and noisily.
“That face,” I exclaimed. “Did you see it also?”
“A queer distortion of the gas-inflated protoplasm,” he replied.
Chief McGraw seemed greatly perturbed. He drew a long black cigar from his pocket, lighted it and puffed nervously for a moment.
“Distortion, hell,” he muttered. "It-was a perfect double for the face of Ammune Benny!”
The End
Dr. Dorp 01 The Malignant Entity Page 3