Part 1

Chapter 14,182 wordsPublic domain

WELSH RAREBIT TALES.

Welsh Rarebit Tales

HARLE OREN CUMMINS

_Illustrated by_

_R. EMMETT OWEN_

_Cover and Decorations by BIRD_

THE MUTUAL BOOK COMPANY BOSTON, MASS.

Plimpton Press PRINTERS AND BINDERS NORWOOD, MASS.

To my Mother

The author wishes to express his thanks to S. S. McClure & Co., F. A. Munsey, The Shortstory Publishing Company, and others, for their courtesy in allowing him book rights on the following tales.

PREFACE.

A preface is the place where an author usually apologizes to the public for what he is about to inflict. Such being the case, I hasten to state that I am only jointly responsible for this aggregation of tales, which resemble, more than anything else, the creations of a disordered brain.

The origin of the Welsh Rarebit Tales was as follows: A certain literary club, of which I am a member, is accustomed to hold semi-occasional meetings at some of the uptown hotels. At the close of the dinner each of the fifteen members is permitted to read to the others what he considers his most acute spasm since the previous meeting. The good and bad points of the manuscript are then discussed, and we believe that much mutual benefit is thereby derived.

Having run short of first-class plots, the club at a recent meeting decided to try a gastro-literary experiment. Knowing the effect upon the digestive and cerebral organs of indulging in concentrated food before retiring, we each and every one partook, just before adjourning, of the following combination:--

1 Large Portion Welsh Rarebit, 1 Broiled Live Lobster, 2 Pieces Home Made Mince Pie, 1 Portion Cucumber Salad.

At the second meeting of the club (the next meeting, by the way, had to be postponed on account of illness of fourteen of the members) the accompanying tales were related.

Partly as a warning to injudicious diners, we decided to publish the result of our experiment, hoping that all who read this book, and see the nightmares which were produced, will be warned never to try a similar feat (or eat).

By unanimous sentence of the other fourteen members, and as a punishment for having been the originator of the scheme, mine was chosen as the unlucky name under which the Tales should appear.

H. O. C.

BOSTON, MASS., FEB. 10, ’02.

CONTENTS

PAGE

1. THE MAN WHO MADE A MAN 3

2. IN THE LOWER PASSAGE 13

3. THE FOOL AND HIS JOKE 23

4. THE MAN AND THE BEAST 31

5. AT THE END OF THE ROAD 45

6. THE SPACE ANNIHILATOR 51

7. A QUESTION OF HONOR 73

8. THE WINE OF PANTINELLI 81

9. THE STRANGEST FREAK 91

10. THE FALSE PROPHET 103

11. A STUDY IN PSYCHOLOGY 115

12. THE PAINTED LADY AND THE BOY 127

13. THE PALACE OF SIN 139

14. THE MAN WHO WAS NOT AFRAID 153

15. THE STORY THE DOCTOR TOLD 163

ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

“There, creeping out of the darkness, was that hideous thing” _Frontispiece._

“He lifted the sheet and I started back with a strange mixture of awe and horror” 8

“The Wild Man ran to the bars of the cage and shook them furiously” 35

“And, raising the glass to his lips, he drained it” 86

“He turned the reflector so that the rays fell on the pallid, upturned face” 121

“The next day I was surprised by a visit from the young man” 167

THE MAN WHO MADE A MAN

THE MAN WHO MADE A MAN.[1]

When Professor Aloysius Holbrok resigned his chair as head of the department of Synthetic Chemistry in one of the famous American colleges his friends wondered; for they well knew that his greatest pleasure in life lay in original investigations. When two weeks later the papers stated that the learned chemist had been taken to the Rathborn Asylum for the Insane, wonder changed to inordinate curiosity.

Although nothing definite was published in the papers, there were hints of strange things which had taken place in the private laboratory on Brimmer Street; and before long a story was current that, as a result of dabbling in the mysteries of psychology, a man had been killed while undergoing one of Professor Holbrok’s experiments.

It is to clear up this mystery and to refute the charges of murder that I, who served for ten years as his assistant, am about to write this account, which, to the best of my knowledge and belief, contains the facts of the case.

I had noticed for the year previous that Professor Holbrok was much preoccupied; but I knew that he was working over some new experiment. Many times when I came to his door at five o’clock to clean up as usual for the next day, I found a notice pinned on the door telling me that he was in the midst of important work and would not need me again that day. I thought nothing about it at the time; for when he was experimenting with Dr. Bicknell, performing operations with hypnotism instead of anæsthetics, there were weeks at a time when I was not allowed even a glimpse of the inside of the laboratories. One day, however, as I came in to report, the professor called me aside and told me that he wanted to have a talk with me.

“You know, Frederick,” he began, “that I have been working and experimenting for a long time on a new problem, and I have not told you or anyone else the object of my toil. But now I have come to a point where I must take some one into my confidence. I need an assistant; and I know of no one I can trust more than you, who have been with me now nearly a dozen years.”

I was naturally flattered.

“Frederick,” he continued, rising and placing his hand on my shoulder, “this experiment is the greatest one of my life. I am going to do what has never been done in the history of the world, except by God himself,--I am going to _make a man_!”

I did not realize at first what he meant. I was startled, not only by his wild statement, but also by the intense tone in which he had spoken.

“You do not understand,” he said; “but let me explain. You know enough chemistry to realize that everything--water, air, food, all things which we use in every-day life--are merely combinations of certain simple elements. As you have seen me, by means of an electric current, decompose a jar of pure water into its two component parts,--two molecules of hydrogen to every molecule of oxygen,--so you can bring these same elements together in the gaseous state; and if the correct proportions are observed, when an electric spark or flame is brought into contact with the mixture, you will obtain again the liquid water. This is only a simple case; but the chemical laws which govern it hold equally well for every known substance found in nature. There are only about seventy-five known elements, and of these less than thirty compose the majority of the things found in every-day life.

“During the last six months I have been working with these elements, making different substances. I have taken a piece of wood, decomposed it with acids, analyzed it quantitatively and qualitatively, finding the proportions in which its elements were combined. Then I have taken similar elements, brought them together in the same proportions, and I have produced a piece of wood so natural you would have sworn it grew upon a tree.

“I have been analyzing and then making again every common thing which you see in nature, but I was only practicing. I have had an end in view. Finally, I took a human body which I obtained from Dr. Bicknell, at the medical college; and I analyzed the flesh, the bones, the blood, in short, every part of it. What did I find? Of that body, weighing 165 pounds, 106 pounds was nothing but water, pure water, such as you may draw at the tap over yonder. And the blood which in the man’s life had gone coursing through his veins, bringing nourishment to every part--what was that? Nothing but a serum filled with little cellular red corpuscles, which, in their turn, were only combinations of carbon, oxygen, sulphur, and a few other simple elements.

“I have taken the sternum bone from a dead man’s chest, analyzed it, then brought together similar elements, placed them in a mould, and I have produced a bone which was just as real as the one with which I started. There were only two things in nature which I could not reproduce. One was starch, that substance whose analysis has defied chemists of all ages; the other was flesh. Though I have analyzed bits of it carefully, when I have brought together again those elementary parts flesh would not form.

“Chemists all over the world have been able to resolve the flesh into proteids, the awesome proteids, as they are called. They form the principal solids of the muscular, nervous, and granular tissues, the serum of the blood and of lymph. But no man on earth except myself has ever been able to create a proteid. They have missed the whole secret because they have been working at ordinary temperatures. Just as the drop of water will not form from its two gases at 4,500 degrees Fah., nor at its own lower explosion temperature, unless the spark be added, so will protoplasm not form except under certain electric and thermal conditions.

“For the last two months I have been working on these lines alone, varying my temperatures from the extreme cold produced by liquid air, to the intense heat of the compound blowpipe; and I have been repaid. A fortnight ago I discovered how it was that I had erred, and since then I have succeeded in everything I have tried. I have formed the proteids, the fats, and the carbohydrates which go to make up protoplasm; and with these for my solid foundations, I have made every minute and complicated organ of the body. I have done more than that--I have put these component parts together, and now behold what I have made.”

He lifted a sheet, which was thrown over a heap of something on the table, and I started back with a strange mixture of awe and horror; for, stretched out on that marble slab, lay a naked body, which, if it had never been a man, living and breathing, as I lived and breathed, then I would have sworn I dreamed.

The thoughts which began to come into my mind probably showed in my face, for the professor said: “You doubt? You think that I have lost my reason, and this thing is some man I have killed. Well, I do not blame you. A year ago I myself would have scoffed at the very idea of creating such a man. But you shall see, you shall be convinced, for in the next part of the experiment I must have your help. I will show you how I have made this man, or I will make another before your eyes. Then you and I, we will go further; we will do what no one but God has ever done before--we will make that inert mass _a living man_.”

The horror of the thing began to leave me, for I was fascinated by what he said, and I began to feel the same spirit with which he was inspired.

He took me into his private laboratory, and before my eyes, with only the contents of a few re-agent bottles, a blowpipe, and an electric battery, he made a mass of human flesh. I will not give you the formula, neither will I tell you in detail how it was done. God forbid that any other man should see what I saw afterward.

“Now, all that remains is the final experiment, and that with your help I propose making to-night,” said the Professor. “What we have to do is as much of a riddle to me as it is to you. It is purely and simply an experiment. I am going to pass through that lifeless clay the same current of electricity which, if sent through a living man, would produce death. Of course, with a man who had died from the giving out of some vital function I could not hope to succeed, but the organs of this man which I have made are in a perfectly healthy condition. It is my hope, therefore, that the current which would destroy a living man will bring this thing to life.”

We bore that naked body, not a corpse, and yet so terribly like, into the electric laboratory, and laid it on a slab of slate. Just at the base of its brain we scraped a little bare spot not larger than a pea, and, as I live, a drop of blood oozed out. On the right wrist, just over the pulse, we made another abrasion, and to these spots we brought the positive and negative wires from off the mains of the street current outside.

I held the two bare uninsulated bits of copper close to the flesh, Professor Holbrok switched into circuit 2,000 volts of electricity, and then before our starting eyes that thing which was only a mass of chemical compounds _became a man_.

A convulsive twitching brought the body almost into a sitting position, then the mouth opened and there burst forth from the lips a groan.

I have been in the midst of battles, and I have seen men dying all around me, torn to ribbons by shot and shell, and I have not flinched; but when I tore the wires from that writhing, groaning shape, and saw its chest begin to heave with spasmodic breathing, I fainted.

When I came to myself I was lying half across the slab of slate, and the room was filled with a sickening stench, an odor of burning flesh. I looked for the writhing form which I had last seen on the table; but those wires, with their deadly current, which I tried to tear away as I fainted, must have been directed back by a Higher Hand, for there remained on the slab only a charred and cinder-like mass.

And the man who had made a man could not explain, for he was crawling about on the floor, counting the nails in the boards and laughing wildly.

IN THE LOWER PASSAGE.

We were sitting on the deck of the “Empress of India,” homeward bound for Southampton. I was returning on a six months’ leave from hospital duty in Calcutta, and the Colonel was retiring from his post in the northern provinces, where he had served with credit for over fifteen years. He had resigned suddenly a month before. His resignation had been refused, whereupon he immediately gave up everything to his second in command, and took the next steamer home, for a year’s stay, according to the belief of the home government, but with a private resolution never to return.

I knew that he had had some terrible experience in which his dearest friend, Lieutenant Arthur Stebbins, had been killed; but beyond that I was as ignorant as the home government which had refused to sanction his resignation. That night, however, as we sat on deck, and felt the lingering tremor of the giant screw which was driving us back to home and civilization, something prompted the Colonel to confide in me.

“I was not acting in my official capacity when Arthur Stebbins and I went up into the Junga district,” the Colonel said in answer to a chance remark of mine, “it was simply and solely to visit the haunted city of Mubapur. You have been in India for two years, and you may have heard some of the strange tales in regard to the place; but as nearly every little out-of-the-way province in India has its peculiar tale of hidden wealth or strange craft, you have probably paid no attention to the stories of Mubapur.

“I had heard the natives, when they thought no one was listening, speak of the lost tribe of Jadacks, which had once lived up among the Ora Mountains. It seems that they were not like other natives, but a white people almost giant in size, and their chief city was Mubapur. But years ago, some say ten, others fifty, and still others a hundred, for these natives have no idea of time, a great plague came upon the white tribe, and it was smitten from the land.

“They believed that the gods had in some way been offended, and that this people were annihilated in punishment. Anyway, we could not get one of our coolie boys within two miles of the place after nightfall; and they told strange stories of immense white creatures which flitted about the place, and of moanings and wailings which could be heard on still nights when the wind was from Mubapur.

“Stebbins and I were on a shooting expedition in the Junga district when he, remembering the wild tales he had heard, proposed that we turn aside, and make the two days’ trip to the haunted city. As time was of no particular account just then, I agreed; and after leaving our coolie bearers two miles from the town, for they refused all bribes and ignored all threats to go farther, we entered the deserted and grass-grown streets of Mubapur. It was near dark when we arrived; and we decided to put up for the night in a little temple, the roof of which still defied the action of the wind and rain, and which offered us a comfortable retreat.

“As I was building a fire just outside the entrance preparatory to getting supper, I heard Stebbins call, and hurrying in, found him standing behind the chief altar of the place, and gazing down a steep stairway which apparently led into the bowels of the earth. He put up his hand as I entered, and whispered, ‘Listen; do you hear anything?’

“I held my breath listening, and from somewhere down in the damp depths below I heard a strange sound floating upwards. It might have been a chant such as the hill men sing on the eve of battle; or it might have been only the wind soughing through underground passages, but anyway it was weird enough in its effect on both of us, so that we hurried out to the fire and busied ourselves getting supper. It is strange how differently the tales we had heard seemed in that ruined temple with night coming on, from what they had in the bright daylight in the market place at Calcutta.

“We slept very close together that night just inside the entrance to the temple, and all through the watches I fancied I heard that solemn dirge rising and falling in the stillness of the night. Once I awoke to find Stebbins talking softly, and I heard him mutter something about a great white beast; but when I looked at him his eyes were shut, and he was sleeping soundly.

“The next morning after breakfast I asked him the question for which I knew he was waiting,--should we descend the narrow stairway into the passage? He was anxious to make the attempt; and after getting ready some torches and looking carefully to our guns, we started down the slippery stairway.

“The steps ended abruptly, and we found ourselves in a long, narrow passage. What struck me at once as peculiar as we proceeded were some little cavities in the floor at regular intervals, such as might have been made by a person walking continuously, as a prisoner walks in his cell. But the stride was nearly twice that of an ordinary man. After walking about fifty paces we came to another stairway leading to a still lower passage, and just as we were about to descend we heard a noise as of something running swiftly below us. I looked at Stebbins to see if he had seen anything, for he was nearer to the head of the stairway than I; but there was only a white, determined look on his face.

“‘Come on, Colonel,’ he called, and led the way down the stairs. At the farther end of this passage we came to a square opening into a kind of vault, and we paused for a moment before it. Then, in that stillness of the tomb, sixty feet below the surface of the ground, and just on the other side of the little opening, we heard a low moaning, and I would have sworn it was a man who made the sounds.

“We held our rifles a little closer, and crawled through the aperture, pausing to look about us. We both nearly dropped our guns in our excitement; for, crouched in the farther corner, was a great white, hairy creature, watching us with red, flaming eyes. Then, even before we could recover ourselves, the thing gave a kind of guttural cry of anger, and started toward us. As it rose to its feet, I swear to you I turned sick as a woman. The beast was over eight feet tall, and was covered with a thick growth of hair which was snow white. Its arms were once and a half the length of those of a common man, and its head was set low on its shoulders like that of an ape or a monkey; but the skin beneath the hair was _as white as yours or mine_.

“I heard the Lieutenant’s gun go off, but the Thing never stopped. I raised my four-bore and let drive with the left barrel; then, overcome with a nameless fear of that great white beast, I called wildly to Arthur to follow me, and plunged through the opening and ran with all my strength toward the upper passage. It was not until I felt the fresh air on my face that I stopped to take breath, and I was so weak I could scarcely stand. Then, if you can, imagine my horror to find that I was alone. The Lieutenant was nowhere in sight. I called down the passage, and I could hear my voice echoing down the dismal place, but there was no answer.

“Think what you may; but I tell you it took more courage for me to force myself down into that vault again than it would to have walked up the steps to the scaffold. I crept fearfully along the passage, calling weakly every few minutes, and dreading what I should find; but--there was nothing to find.”

The Colonel paused, putting his hand over his eyes, and I could see by the moonlight that his face was white and drawn.

“And did you not find him in the lower passage?” I asked, when the silence had become oppressive.

“No, I did not find the Lieutenant,” he answered; “but when I came to the little square opening before the vault, there were some bloody little pieces scattered about the floor, and the place was all slippery, but there was no Lieutenant. You know it takes four horses to pull a man apart, and you can judge of the strength of that white beast when I tell you that there was not left of Arthur Stebbins a piece as big as your two hands.

“As I looked at that floor with the ghastly things which covered it, a wild rage took possession of me. I knew that the creature was in the room beyond, for I could hear a crunching as a dog makes with a bone. I rushed through the opening, straight toward the corner where it was crouching. It saw me coming, and leaped to its feet. Again that sickening fear that I had felt before came over me; but I stood my ground and waited till it nearly reached me. Then, with the muzzle of my gun almost against it, I fired both barrels full into its breast.

“I must have fainted or gone off my head after that, for the next thing I knew I was lying in a native’s hut on the Durbo road. Zur Khan, the man who owned the bungalow, said that he had found me four days before, wandering about on the plains, stark mad, and had taken me home.”

“And the Thing in the passage?” I asked breathlessly. “Did you never go back?”

“Yes; when I had recovered a little, I went back to the Mubapur Temple,” answered the Colonel; but he was silent for some minutes before he answered the first part of my question.

“In my report to the Government I said that Lieutenant Arthur Stebbins was torn to pieces in the lower passage of a Mubapur Temple by an immense white _ape_,--but I lied,” he added quietly.

THE FOOL AND HIS JOKE.