The Hammer Horror Omnibus (24 page)

“So I, too, can never be sure.” His gaze fell to the knife in my hand.

“My dear Doctor Kleve, you have put it perfectly.”

“I will take the risk. You accept me as your pupil?”

I kept him at bay for a few more minutes so that he should not consider that his victory had been too easy. I questioned him about his studies so far. His record was an impressive one. He had worked in Edinburgh and Paris, and had studied under Karl Strauss in Vienna. I had made up my mind quite some time before I finally held out my hand to seal the bargain.

As he launched himself into a spate of eager questions, I said sharply: “Doctor Kleve . . . Hans . . . before we go any farther, there is one thing we must establish. You must exercise great caution when addressing me. The name is Stein—Victor Stein.”

“Of course. The Austrian or Swiss branch of that family, Doctor Stein?”

“Let’s settle for Switzerland. An exhilarating climate, Hans, if a little heady.”

He sat waiting for me to finish my meal. Although I tried to press a few morsels on him, he was too excited to eat. He wanted to start work at once. He did not know what the work entailed, but was sure that if I was involved in it there must be innumerable fascinating aspects. In this, of course, he was right.

When I was ready, I put him out of his misery.

“Come—I’ll show you my laboratory.”

As we walked through the streets towards the City Gate I began to feel a prickling of unease. I had taken the admiration in his approach to me as no more than my due; but now I asked myself how he could have known of my reputation in the past. The medical and surgical work of Baron Victor Frankenstein had been a closely guarded secret. My reputation had in fact been no reputation at all until the time of my trial for murder—and at that trial, scorn had been heaped on my claims to have created a living being which had in fact killed the girl of whose death I was accused. Had this ambitious young man somehow led me into a trap?

I asked him what he knew of my work in the days when I still bore the family name. To my stupefaction he told me that already there was a host of legends about me in the valley which had once been mine. Some told of a laboratory in which alchemy and other forbidden arts were practised. Others spoke of monsters created for my sport, of a race of superhuman beings which I had planned to loose upon the world, of subhuman servants whom I kept chained in the rooms of my house.

“Such exaggerations are bound to occur,” said Hans cheerfully. “But everyone knows that there is a substratum of truth there. You did make unique discoveries in methods of inducing life into inanimate matter, didn’t you?”

The appalling injustice of it made me laugh out loud. My execution had been ordered because no one had believed my story of creating life; yet now that I was supposedly dead, they were all beginning to accept that I had in fact done just what I claimed. The irony of it!

We reached the City Gate. I waited until the watchman had paced on his solemn way, and then led Hans to the heavy old door in the city wall—the door beyond which lay a disused wine cellar ideal for my purpose. I had paid a pittance for it two years earlier. It was not the ideal setting for a laboratory, but its remoteness from the fashionable quarter told in its favor. I had been lucky to find it and lucky to be left unmolested for so long.

Inside the door was a small room with several old wine casks ranged along the walls. On these I had placed various specimens of diseased human organs in jars. If anyone by any mischance pried this far, there would be nothing to see but the everyday features of a doctor’s research.

On the far side of the chamber another door opened on to a flight of steps down to the cellars proper. An oil lamp burned in a niche in the wall.

I led the way. I was halfway down when Hans, behind me, slipped and came stumbling down. I braced myself and took the impact, steadying him so that he could regain his balance.

“Careful! It would be a shame to lose you so soon.”

We reached the foot of the steps and the third door, the heaviest of them all. This retained its original appearance, but I had taken the precaution of reinforcing it on the other side so that even the most venturesome prowler would be unable to break it down.

I hammered on the door with my closed fist.

A small trap at eye level opened with a click. Hans started back. I laughed, looking into the beady eye of Werner. The dwarf’s feet were braced against a support several inches from the ground. When he had assured himself of my identity he skipped down and opened the door. It swung ponderously open.

I stood back to let Hans go in first. Then I caught him up, wanting to see his face. This was the first time I had been able to show my handiwork to a man of roughly my own standing, and it gave me great pleasure to watch his expression.

He was gratifyingly astonished. One could hardly have expected to find anything so complex beneath the old wall of the city.

I had built up the laboratory bit by bit in the maze of vaulted passages which made up the cellars. As I could afford it, I added to the basic equipment. There were benches packed with retorts and piping, a Whimshurst electrical generator, and a sequence of tanks linked in a pattern that made the best use of the convoluted passages. Cages for animals lined two rooms in the depths of the cellars. A furnace burned night and day for the disposal of unwanted material after experiments were finished or abandoned. Near the furnace, where an even temperature was maintained, I had recently installed a chimpanzee in a cage; and on the other side, in an alcove, were Werner’s sleeping quarters.

I had sent for the dwarf eighteen months ago. He had grown fretful over the delay, and as I was afraid that in his impatience he might say something rash, I decided to install him in Carlsbruck. He was a good keeper of the catacombs: they were not so very different from the cells of the prison, but were considerably more comfortable, and once he had carried out the various tasks which I assigned to him he was his own master. He followed all my experiments with unwavering concentration. I thought it best to take him into my confidence on every stage, since only in this way would he realize just what a long process his own transformation must inevitably be. The assembly of a perfect new body for him was not easy. I had access to material only from the Workhouse Hospital, and this was rarely in good condition. I found it necessary to discard dozens of items about which I had at first been optimistic. An apparently perfect skull would prove to have some bone defect when I got down to detailed examination. A pair of arms, transported with great difficulty and caution from the mortuary to this underground laboratory, might seem ideal when I started preparing them for a graft, but then begin to rot before I could subject them to preservation treatment.

Now, however, we were drawing close to the time when I felt the important stages of the experiment could be undertaken. I had planned to carry it through on my own, but it would simplify matters considerably if I had the assistance of a man such as Hans Kleve.

His reception from Werner was far from cordial. When I said, “This is Doctor Hans Kleve—he is to work with us,” the dwarf edged round me and muttered, “Do we really need him?”

“Yes,” I said firmly. “Doctor Kleve has presented himself at just the right time.”

The dwarf scowled past me. He was very worried. He was as reluctant as I had so far been to share our secret with anyone else.

Hans said: “The Doctor trusts me; I hope you will, too.”

Werner looked at me. I nodded. He forced a smile, and then, as Hans held out a hand to him, the smile became more natural.

“Good,” I said briskly.

“My name is Werner,” said the dwarf in a precise little voice, as though to draw attention to the fact that I had made no formal introduction. “Karl Werner.”

“I hope we shall work well together, Karl,” said Hans Kleve.

In all the time I had known him I had not contemplated addressing the dwarf as Karl. I realized that Hans belonged to a younger generation. There were not all that many years between us—but enough to result in a slackening of the conventions.

I mockingly made a formal introduction on behalf of Otto, the chimpanzee, and then turned back to the dwarf.

“You collected the parcel?”

“Over here, Doctor.”

He indicated the side table which I had set up just inside the door. A bundle of sacking had been placed on a surgical dish. A dark stain seeped through, and blood was coagulating in the dish. Werner unwrapped the bundle as we watched, to reveal an arm decorated with tattoo marks.

Hans gulped. “Isn’t that the arm of the man in the Workhouse—the one you were examining this morning?”

“It is indeed,” I confirmed. “I gather that while on land he is a pickpocket. To be a member of that profession you need sensitive fingers. They will be useful to me.”

I moved to another bench and beckoned Hans to follow me. He stood respectfully at my left side and studied the complicated jungle of wires, battery jars, and piping which I had built up.

“What is it, sir?”

“A brain,” I said. As he looked incredulous, I reached towards the glass tank at the end of the bench, covered with a dark cloth. “Let me demonstrate.” When the cloth was removed, it was to reveal a woman’s hand floating in clear liquid. The woman had been a difficult patient, but was difficult no more: a secondary infection had set in, and she had not long survived the operation. Now her hand, severed at the wrist, was connected to a network of flexible tubes and wires. “If you burn your hand in a flame,” I said, “what makes you snatch it away?”

“The nerves,” he said like an obedient pupil.

“Exactly. The nerves of the hands send a message to the brain, and the brain activates the muscles for withdrawing the hand. But you don’t put your hand too near a fire if you see it first. The eyes recognize fire as a harmful agent before there is any need for the nerves to respond.”

I took him with me to the other end of the bench, and removed the cover from a second tank. Two eyeballs floated on the surface, linked with the first tank through a system of artificial nerves.

“The brain,” I said. “Observe.”

I left Hans there while I went to start the Whimshurst machine. It rumbled into life with a crackle and shower of sparks. Then I took a taper and carried it to one of the wall niches where an oil lamp burned. I lit the taper from the lamp and, shading it from the draught with one hand, bore it carefully towards the first tank.

I said: “Watch the eyes.”

I moved the taper towards the hand floating in the tank. From the tank along the bench, the eyes swung to watch the flame. When it approached the side of the tank containing the hand, the hand began to react: it tried to force itself to the far side of the tank, its fingers clenching and twisting. I brought the taper closer. The hand writhed and splashed about the tank in a frenzy. When I brought the taper even closer, so that it almost touched the edge of the tank, the hand went wild and tried to clamber up the far side.

Then I blew out the flame. The hand relaxed and floated gently in the liquid. I went back to the noisy machine, and the electric hum and splutter died away.

“Fascinating, isn’t it?”

Hans was staring at the two disembodied eyes as though they were capable of exerting some hypnotic effect on him. “This is . . . a brain?”

“All this paraphernalia,” I said, “and capable of only one simple reaction. Can you imagine the complexity of the human brain? One-tenth the size of all this, and a million times more efficient. It controls every action and reaction, it stores memories, it motivates all life. And this”—I waved towards the tubes and pipes and wires—“is all I have been able to achieve so far.”

“You should be proud,” said Hans, awed. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

I did not suppose that he would have done. Crude as it was, my contrivance represented an advance on anything that had ever been achieved by other scientists.

I took him farther into my subterranean laboratory. He should see all there was to be seen, and comprehend the tasks that lay ahead. Karl Werner shuffled behind us, his doubts returning as I went to the curtained recess in the farthest cellar and prepared to draw back the curtain.

I said: “You know that Frankenstein was condemned to death?”

“Yes.”

“You know what for?”

Hans looked uncomfortable. “It was said that he murdered a girl who had been his mistress.”

“And his defence?”

“You . . . that is,
he
claimed to have created a being which went berserk.”

“It should have been perfect,” I said. “I made it to be perfect. If the brain hadn’t been damaged, my work would have been hailed as the greatest scientific achievement of all time. Frankenstein would then have been accepted as one of the world’s great geniuses instead of branded as a murderer. But I shall have my revenge—the satisfaction of making fools of them all.” I jerked back the curtain. “This is something I am proud of.”

Set in the recess was a vertical glass tank some fourteen feet high, containing the pale green fluid which I had developed after more than a thousand tests. Suspended in the liquid was the body of a man over six feet in height. Physically he was perfect. I had made sure of that. The lower part of the body from the waist down was still swathed in bandages, while skin and muscle knit more firmly. The upper part was bare. The top of the skull was also bandaged to protect the cavity within until I could lower a suitable brain into position—the brain which had been chosen long ago. At present the face, smooth and without blemish, was utterly devoid of expression.

As the figure rotated gently in the fluid, the arms moved slightly and the head tilted so that the blank, benign face appeared to stare down at the rapt Hans.

“Who is he?” whispered Hans, as though the creature might overhear.

“Nobody,” I said. “He isn’t born yet. But this time he’s perfect, except for a few small scars which will soon heal.”

“He’s not . . . alive?”

“Not yet.”

He went closer to the tank and looked in. I could tell that he was studying the very fine seams round the wrists.