Life Everlasting and Other Tales of Science, Fantasy, and Horror

by David Henry Keller

  "BE AT THE MAIN GATE PENNSYLVANIA MANOR AT MIDNIGHT JULY NINTH. COME ALONE AND UNARMED. TAINE."

  "I thought the boy was a fool, but he has flushed the game," exclaimed the Chief. "Though there is a chance that this may be a decoy. Taine may be a prisoner, and they may want to take me next. In a way, it is a fool telegram, sent by a fool. Guess I better go. But there is no use of going without protection."

  The night of the ninth, he dismissed the taxi a quarter of a mile from the main gate of the Manor, and walked the rest of the way. There was a full moon, and it was really a very beautiful night. Even the unpoetical Chief felt the influence of the evening. At the gate he paused, and thought what a fool he was to stay in the full moonlight, but he had no reason to be afraid. Taine was there, just on the other side of the gate. They shook hands through the bars.

  "Hullo, Chief! Good of you to come. Would not have blamed you if you had not, but it is going to pay you. You will be surprised, Chief. Have to see it to believe it. Let me unlock the gate."

  "What is it, Taine?" asked the anxious Chief.

  "Now, don't allow yourself to get nervous. If anyone gets that way, I will be the one. I just love to get all shaky and trembly now and then, teeth chatter and hair up on end and all that. Come on in. Even July is cold up here in the mountains."

  He led the way into the library. A little table was in the middle of the large room, and two little splint bottom chairs stood on either side of the table. The rest of the room, except just over the table, was filled with black shadows. The Chief exclaimed:

  "This is a whale of a room, Taine!"

  "It ought to be. First it was a ballroom, then it housed one of the largest libraries in the world, and now it is the laboratory for one of the greatest scientific experiments ever pulled off in the history of the human race."

  Taine took out an electric flashlight and swept it around the large room.

  "See those glass jars?" he asked. "What do you suppose is in them? Well, you would not guess, but I guess we will find out tomorrow. I am going to put you to bed behind that screen. You will be safe there. Keep quiet. At nine tomorrow, the experiment will begin, and you can watch it; but don't get excited and come out too soon. That is why I asked you not to bring a gun. If you shoot, you might hurt somebody, and what I want is a full statement from the man, made in your presence."

  "What man?"

  "The man we want to arrest."

  "And you are going to leave me here?"

  "I am; and I do not want you to move till nine. Then you can very quietly look through the crack and see what is going on. But don't shoot. No matter what happens, don't shoot."

  "But you asked me not to come armed!"

  "I know, but I do not think you followed my advice. You keep your gun, but don't use it. Watch me."

  "Why don't you tell me more about it, Taine?"

  "You would not believe me, Chief. Besides, I have to go through this on my own."

  And that was all the satisfaction the San Francisco man would give. He fixed the Chief on a comfortable cot, and left him there behind the screen.

  It was hard for him to do, but he kept his promise to Taine and did not look out through the crack in the screen till nine the next morning. And what he saw gave him occasion for many anxious thoughts.

  In the center of the library was a large table of white marble, with thousands of little black points sticking out of it. Directly in front of the table, a middle-aged man sat, facing directly toward the screen sheltering the Chief. The detective could see his face distinctly, but he could not identify him. On one side of him, also facing the screen, sat a Chinese in flowing Oriental costume. At one end of the table was a mahogany box. At the other end was something covered up with a white sheet.

  "And now," said the one man, "the time has come for the final experiment. I have asked you to be here, Wing Loo, because it is your right. Without your wonderful help, I could not have gone ahead. My knowledge of electricity would have been useless without your knowledge of brain surgery.

  "This entire experiment was started by a statement of an eminent psychologist which said that nothing is ever lost in the realm of knowledge, that everything once appreciated by a human brain is retained by that brain till the organism is destroyed. That declaration made me think.

  "For years I have worried over two things: The shortness of human life and my inability to learn all there was to be known. Think of it! One person, working as fast as he can, would yet be unable, in the scope of a lifetime, to learn all there is to know. I learned a little about electricity, but realized that I was pitifully ignorant about ten thousand other forms of knowledge. And I could only live just so long—and then I had to die.

  "Then an idea came to me. From that came other ideas, like little bubbles springing from a central one; but I realized the hopelessness of the idea till I heard of you, Wing Loo, and of your wonderful surgery."

  "I am glad that your servant could participate in your greatness."

  "Yes, your surgery and ability to keep parts of the body alive were the necessary additions to my plan, and here is what I did. I engaged five hundred readers. They were each to read fifteen hundred books. Their books were to be carefully selected. One was to read biology and another chemistry and so on throughout all the various parts of human endeavor to solve the mysteries of life. And the books that each read were to be carefully indexed, both by subject and by reader. Each man had a number, though he did not know it, and each read every day a book. The three librarians kept up with their work.

  "I brought the books here by the hundreds of thousands, and as they were read I had them burned. They were no longer necessary in my experiment because they had become engraved on the convolutions of the brains of the five hundred readers.

  "All the time I was working on the electro-dynamic part of the experiment. I had to have fine wire run from each of five hundred glass vessels. These five hundred wires finally came together and then separated again and became attached to the selective black posts you see in front of you. I have other apparatus, intensifiers, and radios, all ending finally in that little radio you see at the other side of the table.

  "Now, suppose I want to know all there is to know about toadstools? I want in a few minutes and without any delay to hear a thousand word synopsis of the knowledge of the world on toadstools. I spell out the word on this little typewriter in the middle of the table. Then I go up and down among the thousands of little black points you see there, each of which has a name, and I press those I am interested in, as Food, Toxicology, Botany, Geography, General Interest, and a few others.

  "Now I am all ready. I have asked my machine for what I want. I swing this lever and that starts the delivery of the information which I am asking for. I sit here in my chair, and listen to a thousand word essay on the toadstool. If I want to, I can take a subject like Anthropology and listen to it for several days. I can take one poem, such as Dante's Inferno, and have it recited to me. In fact, I can get anything I ask for, and all I have to do is to know sufficiently about it to ask the question, and press the necessary points. All the information in that entire library is mine; all I have to do is to operate this machine. I do not have to read a single hook, yet, I have the knowledge gained by five hundred men, working nearly five years each."

  "How wonderful that I could help you in all this!"

  "Your surgery made it possible. You took the brains from the five hundred readers and three librarians, and, through your skill, you have made it possible for those brains to remain alive and functioning for many years. You placed them in the five hundred glass jars and arranged for the pumping of the fluid to keep them alive. The men are dead, but their acquired wisdom lives on; and I am the beneficiary. I am now the most learned man in the world.

  "And I did all this—we did all this, without interference. No one has any idea of what we were doing."

  "You are wrong," replied the Chinaman. "There was a man by the name of Taine. He suspected s
omething, but he did not know what. He came here once too often. Early this morning, I caught him. His brain will give me great pleasure. It is not often that I dissect the brain of a perfect fool. Here he is, a little doped, but very much alive."

  And at this point, he pulled off the sheet and there sat Taine, pitifully small, dazed, drugged, and tied to the chair with a rope. The American started to laugh.

  "That is the best part of the experiment, Wing Loo. At least, it is the most ludicrous part. You are right. Better add him to the collection. Now suppose we start with the testing of the experiment?"

  "There is one thing you forgot. How about my million and the Empress' black pearls?"

  "I have them here. One hundred of them. Take them now if you wish to. Please do not delay me. See, I spell out education. Now I touch the following black points, Australia, Statistics, Finance, History. And now I swing the lever and the information comes through the radio."

  He rapidly went through the various steps. In a clear tone came the words:

  "Now is the time for all good men and true to come to the aid of their party."

  "That is very interesting! And is that the combined wisdom of five hundred and three brains?"

  "It's that damn detective!" yelled the infuriated scientist. "I am going to kill him! You can do as you wish with his brains."

  "No you are not!" shouted a voice. "Hands up! I have the drop on both of you. Sit down, and don't make any false moves, and keep those hands up."

  The Chief of the Secret Service came across the space between the screen and the table. There was no doubt that he meant business.

  "Thought you were going to kill one of the force, did you?" he sneered. "May be a fool, but he is a detective just the same, and we stick by each other. I will untie you, Taine, just as soon as I put the bracelets on these murderers. Hell! Five hundred and three good men gone! These fellows must be crazy."

  He put the handcuffs on the scientist first, and then turned to the Chinaman.

  "You are next, Wing Loo. Put your hands out, and don't try any monkey business."

  "Don't you know me, Chief?" sighed the Oriental.

  "Yes. I know you for a killer."

  "Why, Chief! After all I did for you. Giving you a nice cot to sleep in, and letting you arrest the greatest scientist of the age, Charles Jefferson; and then you want to put the cuffs on me."

  "Who the devil are you, anyway?" thundered the irate, yet puzzled, detective.

  "I am Taine of San Francisco."

  "Then who is that there, roped to the chair?"

  "That is Wing Loo. I suppose he is the greatest brain surgeon in the world, but he has had so much luminal for the last three months that his mind is not working right. He has been all in a dream for many days. Had to keep him that way to control him."

  "So he is the man who killed all those people?"

  "No. He is the man who was going to. He never killed one of them."

  Charles Jefferson had been following the conversation eagerly. He could stand no more.

  "You are a liar!" he yelled. "How about those five hundred and three brains in those glass jars? How about the five hundred dead readers?"

  "Those brains over there in the jars are just wax brains," answered Taine. "I was sure that you would not know the difference. You really are a child, in spite of all your learning. You and the Chinaman did not kill a single person, and I am not sure that you have broken a single law; though, of course, you did not give the readers what you promised."

  "Just wax brains?" moaned Jefferson. "Oh! My beautiful experiment and my lost years!"

  "Don't you worry. You can go to a library and read some books of your own."

  "I cannot wait, Taine," pleaded the Chief. "Please tell me what you did and how."

  "It won't take long. I was out in San Francisco with my family. Yes, there is a family now. Wife has a baby, a little girl, and we are all very happy over it. One day, I read in the paper about the great Chinese surgeon, Wing Loo, and his coming to America; but none knew what for. I had a hunch that I would like to find out. A man like that does not travel around just for fun. It was easier when I found he was traveling alone. I met him, drugged him with luminal, and the rest was easy. He had letters, giving the directions for an appointment with Jefferson. At that time, I did not know who Jefferson was, but I thought we ought to keep the appointment. So, I changed into a doctor, and brought Wing Loo with me as a very dangerous epileptic who had to be kept in twilight sleep all the time. I put him in a private New York hospital; and I took his clothes, and met Jefferson in Philadelphia.

  "After that, I stayed in New York, and as the young readers came after their pay, I gave them a song and dance—told them they had been working for an insane man, but that if we could collect anything for them, we would. In the meantime, they should be thankful that he had not killed them. I told them all to keep still if they wanted ever to collect the money due them, and for a good many, I found jobs. In the meantime, I ordered five hundred and three brains made out of wax, purchased some glass jars and some fake pumping apparatus, and brought it up here. Jefferson paid all my expenses, including two good shows a week, though he did not know it. The tickets were in the wax brains, only he could not see them. He was not interested much in the brains, even let me attach the wire ends to the middle of the cerebrums. I do not think, to give the devil his due, that he was very enthusiastic over the idea of murder, but he just had to do it to finish his experiment. I pitied him in a way, so I put a portable phonograph in the radio so he could have his first cerebral message.

  "When everything was ready, I sent for you, Chief. I told Jefferson that we could go ahead at nine the morning of the tenth of July. Then I made a special trip to New York, and rescued the Chinese from the hospital. He has had a rough time of it, Chief. He has lost in weight, and it has been hard on him. If I were you, I would put him on a ship, and let him go back to China. He is a good man, only over-enthusiastic. I brought him up here and dressed him in my clothes, and painted his face a little so he would look like me. I thought you would like a real confession, and I knew it would make Jefferson mad to think that a detective had been on his trail. So, there are your two babies, and you can do anything you like with them. As far as I am concerned, I am through with the mystery of The Cerebral Library. You can clean up the trash. I am on my way back to wife and baby."

  "But how about your pay, man?" asked the almost dazed Chief.

  "I have these black pearls. They are worth a king's ransom. I earned them honestly, and I know that Jefferson will not mind my taking them; and you can send me a check, if you want to. I don't have much use for the money; but—well, I am married, and Mildred understands what to do with it. Goodbye. Take care of my friends.

  "I am sure that I am leaving them both in very good hands."

  A PIECE OF LINOLEUM

  IT WAS a plain case of suicide. The Coroner absolutely refused to consider any other verdict.

  And Mrs. Harker had the profound sympathy of her neighbors.

  "I cannot explain it at all," she whispered to two of her friends. "Just why John had to do a thing like that, when we were so happy, is beyond me.

  "It would have been different if I had not been a kind, loving wife to him. I was more than a wife: I was a helpmate. Take this house, for example. Do you suppose for one moment that it would belong to us, and every cent paid on the mortgage, if John Harker had been left to do it? Not in a hundred years. The first few weeks we were married, and I had found he was stopping at the station to buy flowers for the house on his way home, I knew what my duty was as a loving wife, and I lost no time doing it. From that time on, I handled the pay check. Of course, I gave him some spending money every week, and saw to it that he had his evening paper after supper, but I would not let him buy the paper on his way home, because he always mussed it so on the train, and it was never fit to put on the shelves afterward. But when I gave it to him after supper and spoke to him now and then about wrinkling it,
it hardly got mussed at all.

  "If we had had children, I would not have been able to take such good care of the house and furniture, but before we were married, the doctor told me I was delicate and better off without the responsibilities of maternity. He was so sweet about it when he said I could look on my future husband as my baby. Of course, it was hard for John to understand, so many men do not have the feminine viewpoint, but he finally submitted to the inevitable, though he always failed to understand why I decorated his bedroom in pink.

  "Being alone all day gave me lots of time for sewing, and in a few years I was making all my own clothes and most of John's. He used to ask me to buy his shirts, told me I was too busy to spend time on them, but I told him I just loved to do things like that for him, and that he was all the baby I had; so, bye and bye, he stopped talking about it.

  "I studied his health. Even sent to Washington for special books on invalid feeding, and if, in the twenty years of our sweet married life, John ever ate a spoonful of anything that was not pure and wholesome and fit for a man of his weight and digestive peculiarities, he must have bought it at a restaurant—he never ate it at his own table.

  "I was always careful about his health. Every morning it was always the same thing. I'd remind him of his umbrella, be sure he had on his rubbers, and the right weight of underwear. If it was clear in the morning and damp at night, I would meet his car with a raincoat and overshoes. Nothing was too much trouble for me.

  "And I kept a clean house for him. That is not so easy to do with a man in it. What he did not know, I taught him patiently, just as you would a little child. It took over two years to train him to come in the back door, take off his shoes in the woodshed, and put on his carpet-slippers before he came into the house. But patience and love and repetition finally helped him to form the habit.

  "We had lovely carpets, beautiful things that would last three generations if properly cared for; and when I found out how careless he was, I put squares of linoleum around where he was in the habit of sitting. When his friends came in and he would forget himself and ask them to smoke, I would always run and put a piece of linoleum under them so the ashes would not get on the floor. I was delicate and nervous after I was thirty. The dear doctor thought it was the change of life working on me, so I suggested that John save me by washing the supper dishes every night; but, do you know, he was so careless that I had to put several pieces of linoleum where he was working or he would get drops of soapy water on the beautiful waxed floor?