الفصل الفصل 8 · THE LOCKED DOOR.

. THE LOCKED DOOR.

The reader will perhaps understand that at first everything was so

strange about me, and my position was the outcome of such unexpected

adventures, that I had no discernment of the relative strangeness of

this or that thing. I followed the llama up the beach, and was

overtaken by Montgomery, who asked me not to enter the stone enclosure.

I noticed then that the puma in its cage and the pile of packages had

been placed outside the entrance to this quadrangle.

I turned and saw that the launch had now been unloaded, run out again,

and was being beached, and the white-haired man was walking towards us.

He addressed Montgomery.

“And now comes the problem of this uninvited guest. What are we to do

with him?”

“He knows something of science,” said Montgomery.

“I’m itching to get to work again—with this new stuff,” said the

white-haired man, nodding towards the enclosure. His eyes grew

brighter.

“I daresay you are,” said Montgomery, in anything but a cordial tone.

“We can’t send him over there, and we can’t spare the time to build him

a new shanty; and we certainly can’t take him into our confidence just

yet.”

“I’m in your hands,” said I. I had no idea of what he meant by “over

there.”

“I’ve been thinking of the same things,” Montgomery answered. “There’s

my room with the outer door—”

“That’s it,” said the elder man, promptly, looking at Montgomery; and

all three of us went towards the enclosure. “I’m sorry to make a

mystery, Mr. Prendick; but you’ll remember you’re uninvited. Our little

establishment here contains a secret or so, is a kind of Blue-Beard’s

chamber, in fact. Nothing very dreadful, really, to a sane man; but

just now, as we don’t know you—”

“Decidedly,” said I, “I should be a fool to take offence at any want of

confidence.”

He twisted his heavy mouth into a faint smile—he was one of those

saturnine people who smile with the corners of the mouth down,—and

bowed his acknowledgment of my complaisance. The main entrance to the

enclosure was passed; it was a heavy wooden gate, framed in iron and

locked, with the cargo of the launch piled outside it, and at the

corner we came to a small doorway I had not previously observed. The

white-haired man produced a bundle of keys from the pocket of his

greasy blue jacket, opened this door, and entered. His keys, and the

elaborate locking-up of the place even while it was still under his

eye, struck me as peculiar. I followed him, and found myself in a small

apartment, plainly but not uncomfortably furnished and with its inner

door, which was slightly ajar, opening into a paved courtyard. This

inner door Montgomery at once closed. A hammock was slung across the

darker corner of the room, and a small unglazed window defended by an

iron bar looked out towards the sea.

This the white-haired man told me was to be my apartment; and the inner

door, which “for fear of accidents,” he said, he would lock on the

other side, was my limit inward. He called my attention to a convenient

deck-chair before the window, and to an array of old books, chiefly, I

found, surgical works and editions of the Latin and Greek classics

(languages I cannot read with any comfort), on a shelf near the

hammock. He left the room by the outer door, as if to avoid opening the

inner one again.

“We usually have our meals in here,” said Montgomery, and then, as if

in doubt, went out after the other. “Moreau!” I heard him call, and for

the moment I do not think I noticed. Then as I handled the books on the

shelf it came up in consciousness: Where had I heard the name of Moreau

before? I sat down before the window, took out the biscuits that still

remained to me, and ate them with an excellent appetite. Moreau!

Through the window I saw one of those unaccountable men in white,

lugging a packing-case along the beach. Presently the window-frame hid

him. Then I heard a key inserted and turned in the lock behind me.

After a little while I heard through the locked door the noise of the

staghounds, that had now been brought up from the beach. They were not

barking, but sniffing and growling in a curious fashion. I could hear

the rapid patter of their feet, and Montgomery’s voice soothing them.

I was very much impressed by the elaborate secrecy of these two men

regarding the contents of the place, and for some time I was thinking

of that and of the unaccountable familiarity of the name of Moreau; but

so odd is the human memory that I could not then recall that well-known

name in its proper connection. From that my thoughts went to the

indefinable queerness of the deformed man on the beach. I never saw

such a gait, such odd motions as he pulled at the box. I recalled that

none of these men had spoken to me, though most of them I had found

looking at me at one time or another in a peculiarly furtive manner,

quite unlike the frank stare of your unsophisticated savage. Indeed,

they had all seemed remarkably taciturn, and when they did speak,

endowed with very uncanny voices. What was wrong with them? Then I

recalled the eyes of Montgomery’s ungainly attendant.

Just as I was thinking of him he came in. He was now dressed in white,

and carried a little tray with some coffee and boiled vegetables

thereon. I could hardly repress a shuddering recoil as he came, bending

amiably, and placed the tray before me on the table. Then astonishment

paralysed me. Under his stringy black locks I saw his ear; it jumped

upon me suddenly close to my face. The man had pointed ears, covered

with a fine brown fur!

“Your breakfast, sair,” he said.

I stared at his face without attempting to answer him. He turned and

went towards the door, regarding me oddly over his shoulder. I followed

him out with my eyes; and as I did so, by some odd trick of unconscious

cerebration, there came surging into my head the phrase, “The Moreau

Hollows”—was it? “The Moreau—” Ah! It sent my memory back ten years.

“The Moreau Horrors!” The phrase drifted loose in my mind for a moment,

and then I saw it in red lettering on a little buff-coloured pamphlet,

to read which made one shiver and creep. Then I remembered distinctly

all about it. That long-forgotten pamphlet came back with startling

vividness to my mind. I had been a mere lad then, and Moreau was, I

suppose, about fifty,—a prominent and masterful physiologist,

well-known in scientific circles for his extraordinary imagination and

his brutal directness in discussion.

Was this the same Moreau? He had published some very astonishing facts

in connection with the transfusion of blood, and in addition was known

to be doing valuable work on morbid growths. Then suddenly his career

was closed. He had to leave England. A journalist obtained access to

his laboratory in the capacity of laboratory-assistant, with the

deliberate intention of making sensational exposures; and by the help

of a shocking accident (if it was an accident), his gruesome pamphlet

became notorious. On the day of its publication a wretched dog, flayed

and otherwise mutilated, escaped from Moreau’s house. It was in the

silly season, and a prominent editor, a cousin of the temporary

laboratory-assistant, appealed to the conscience of the nation. It was

not the first time that conscience has turned against the methods of

research. The doctor was simply howled out of the country. It may be

that he deserved to be; but I still think that the tepid support of his

fellow-investigators and his desertion by the great body of scientific

workers was a shameful thing. Yet some of his experiments, by the

journalist’s account, were wantonly cruel. He might perhaps have

purchased his social peace by abandoning his investigations; but he

apparently preferred the latter, as most men would who have once fallen

under the overmastering spell of research. He was unmarried, and had

indeed nothing but his own interest to consider.

I felt convinced that this must be the same man. Everything pointed to

it. It dawned upon me to what end the puma and the other animals—which

had now been brought with other luggage into the enclosure behind the

house—were destined; and a curious faint odour, the halitus of

something familiar, an odour that had been in the background of my

consciousness hitherto, suddenly came forward into the forefront of my

thoughts. It was the antiseptic odour of the dissecting-room. I heard

the puma growling through the wall, and one of the dogs yelped as

though it had been struck.

Yet surely, and especially to another scientific man, there was nothing

so horrible in vivisection as to account for this secrecy; and by some

odd leap in my thoughts the pointed ears and luminous eyes of

Montgomery’s attendant came back again before me with the sharpest

definition. I stared before me out at the green sea, frothing under a

freshening breeze, and let these and other strange memories of the last

few days chase one another through my mind.

What could it all mean? A locked enclosure on a lonely island, a

notorious vivisector, and these crippled and distorted men?