The Hammer Horror Omnibus (25 page)

“You made this body from other bodies?”

“My voluntary work at the Hospital serves me well,” I said. “All that is lacking now is the brain. Then I can give it life.”

I sauntered away. Hans followed me slowly, with several backward glances at the large torso that swung gently, lazily in the tank.

“You’ve seen the result of this”—I indicated the artificial brain which sprawled over so much space—“and it’s by no means my first attempt. I keep this cumbersome thing only to remind me of the impossibility of the task should I think of trying again. No . . . the brain must be a living one. Unlike the limbs, it is impossible to restore life to the brain once it has been harmed. I learned that—learned it bitterly—years ago. The brain is life . . . and so a living brain must be used to control that body.”

“That would mean committing murder!”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “I have a volunteer.” I smiled at Hans, whose head must by now be in a whirl. “He’s here,” I said, “in the laboratory.”

He was taken aback. Instinctively he moved away from me.

I burst out laughing. “No, Hans, not you. Your brain is too valuable where it is.” I waved towards the dwarf, who was crouched down by the chimpanzee’s cage making friendly noises which made the animal dance happily up and down. “There he is.”

“Karl Werner?”

I explained the bargain that we had made. The dwarf had saved me from the scaffold, and in return I was committed to finding a new body for him.

“But surely,” said Hans in an undertone, “that paralysis of his indicates an injury to the brain?”

“I’ve examined him thoroughly. The paralysis is due to a blood clot. This can be dispersed during the operation. I can’t reshape his deformed body—but I can make sure that when the trouble has been cleared his brain will be able to function normally in a normal body. He has a fine brain. He’s intelligent . . . quick . . . and he has absorbed a great deal of knowledge since working with me. Haven’t you . . . Karl?”

He smiled, and nodded at Hans. “Doctor Stein is welcome to my brain, so long as he rids me of this.” He struck his sunken chest contemptuously.

“You must have great faith in Doctor Stein,” said Hans.

“I have.”

The dwarf went back to his game with the chimpanzee.

“Are you sure it can be done?” Hans asked me softly.

“The operation,” I assured him, “will be a complete success.”

4

I
was not unaccustomed to receiving beautiful young women in my consulting room, but when Margaret Conrad was shown in I had to acknowledge that I was face to face with a woman of singular character and attractiveness. She had clear grey eyes which were at the same time kind and ruthless: she had a mind of her own, and in spite of her youth she had made up this mind on most of the important principles of life. Her faintly olive skin spoke of a southern ancestry, but those eyes and her firm mouth were of the cool, practical north.

I invited her to sit down and asked what ailed her. To be frank, she looked the picture of health. It hardly came as a surprise when she said:

“I’m not a patient, Doctor Stein. There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“Then . . . ?”

“I come to offer my services.”

I recoiled from the idea of yet another impressionable young woman volunteering to become one of my disciples.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” I said.

“Your voluntary work at the Workhouse Hospital interests me. I’m not a trained nurse, but there are many jobs I could do there.”

At least this made a change from the usual plea to be allowed to decorate my fashionable surgery. It still did not appeal to me.

“I don’t think you quite appreciate the nature of our work there,” I said, “or the type of people we have to deal with.”

“I have heard all that is necessary,” she said.

“Hearing it and dealing with it in reality are very different things.”

She quivered with annoyance. I could see that she was easily aroused and that she would be passionate about everything that concerned her—personally or philosophically. What she needed was a strong-willed man to distract her.

She said severely: “It’s time we women ceased being purely ornamental. I am sure I could be very useful, and my aunt tells me you have so very little free time. You must need someone to help you.”

“Your aunt?”

“Countess Barscynska.”

It appeared that I was to be forever the target of the Countess’s plans.

I said: “You live with her?”

“I am staying for a few weeks, and then I may settle in the district. My parents live in the capital.”

It was time I dealt with my patients. They needed me; and I, for my part, needed their fees to subsidize my life’s work.

“I’m sure your aunt can find other good works for you to do,” I said, going to the door and waiting for her to accept this dismissal so that I could open it and usher her out. “Please pay her my respects.”

Margaret Conrad did not move. “I shall be at the Hospital at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“Miss Conrad, I thought I had made it clear: your services are not required.”

She seemed amused. There was not so much a twinkle as an ironic gleam in those disconcertingly direct eyes. “You have an exaggerated opinion of your own power,” she said lightly. “My father is the Minister responsible for all hospitals and asylums. He has agreed that I shall work with you. So you see, Doctor Stein, you have no choice. Nine o’clock, Doctor?”

I could have stood up to this and argued it at great length with the Minister, but I did not wish to jeopardize my position. My secret labors in the underground laboratory were what counted: the rest was only a façade, so what did it matter if some over-eager idealist thrust herself upon me?

I said: “As you say, Miss Conrad, I have no choice.”

She softened a little. “I shall not interfere with your work, Doctor. I promise you that.”

She had no way of guessing how true this was. Nor would she ever guess what my real work was.

As it happened, I was not visiting the Hospital at all the following day. I dealt with the usual group of patients in the morning and drove out on a round of visits in the early afternoon. Then I lay on my bed for two hours, not sleeping but conserving my energies. This evening was to be an important one, and I did not propose to embark on it even mildly tired as a consequence of the day’s exertions.

Hans Kleve had asked if he might spend some time in the Hospital and I had seen no reason to demur. It would not increase his popularity with his fellow members of the Medical Council, but this was no cause for lamentation: I could imagine the stirrings of alarm when they discovered that one of their number had, as it were, defected to the enemy. Hans took my place on this day. I imagined that he would be more soothing and sympathetic than I was towards the idlers and degenerates who frequented the Workhouse. When his day was ended he went home to change, and then after dark called for me at my surgery.

We had a glass of wine before setting out, and while we drank it he told me of the appearance of Margaret Conrad that morning. It had taken him quite by surprise. I apologized for not notifying him of her impending arrival, but I had really had very little time to do so: she had announced her intentions one day, and put them into effect the next.

“She seems a very determined young lady,” he agreed.

“Get her to wash one of the patients,” I advised. “That should scare her away.”

He then told me with amusement but also with a certain grudging admiration of her resolves on this first day. She had announced that she intended to read to the sick—which prompted me to remark that she would have difficulty making herself heard in that bedlam. She also wished to buy things which they needed, such as writing paper and soap. Hans had told her that the inmates rarely washed and never wrote.

Apparently she had also met Karl Werner. The dwarf had come in with a message for Hans, who had automatically introduced him. Karl had bobbed a grotesque little bow and Margaret had held out her hand, only to realize too late that the dwarf’s warped arm could not make the necessary response. It had been an embarrassing moment, but Hans assured me that the young woman had covered it with a warm, sympathetic smile. “Karl was quite taken with her,” he observed. I was not surprised by this. The dwarf’s consciousness of his own ugly frame had, if anything, intensified his appreciation of true beauty when he saw it. Margaret Conrad would have attracted any healthy man; her effect on the dwarf must have been considerable.

When we had finished our drinks I fetched my cloak.

“Ready?”

“I’m ready,” Hans said eagerly.

Tonight we were going to give Karl Werner his new body. The dwarf would disappear and never be seen again.

We made our way quickly through the darkened streets. Somebody somewhere was singing a plaintive chorale, and in the upper room of a shabby house a man and woman were screaming abuse at each other. Doubtless the customary uproar prevailed in the Workhouse Hospital; and in the fashionable salons of my wealthier patients there would be the usual, shrill, meaningless chatter. It was all remote now. Everything but the task which lay ahead was insignificant to me.

When we entered the cellar, Karl had already removed the cover from the tank. The body floated gently in its sustaining fluid. The wrists were completely healed. As soon as we had been admitted, the dwarf went back to contemplating the body that was soon to be his.

I hung up my cloak and indicated that Hans should do the same. I began to take surgical instruments from the stock which I had built up over these last few years. As I laid them on a clean cloth, I caught an apprehensive glance from the dwarf.

Hans put a sympathetic hand on Karl’s shoulder and directed his attention away from the gleaming instruments and back towards the tank.

“Keep looking at him, Karl. In a few hours that will be you.”

Leaving the dwarf, he came to help me with my preparations.

We moved two benches into the centre of the main cellar and cleared them of every scrap of equipment. On each bench I spread a cloth which had been scrubbed white. Then Hans and I climbed up beside the tank and carefully lifted out the dripping body. As Karl watched, willing us not to drop or damage it, we laid it on one of the benches.

Against the wall was a wooden frame on which the dwarf and I had worked for months. He jumped readily to my assistance as I manoeuvred it into position. We then spent a good hour assembling the network of wires and terminals for which the frame had been constructed.

Finally I was ready.

The body lay on one bench. I looked at the other bench, and then at Karl Werner. He stared back at me steadily. He was pale but unfaltering. I nodded once, and like a well-trained animal he scrambled on to the empty bench and stretched himself out to his full length—which was paltry enough.

Hans stood over him and soaked a pad in chloroform. He smiled down encouragingly. The dwarf summoned up an answering grin. Then Hans pressed the pad over his mouth and nostrils.

I waited until Hans had checked the dwarf’s breathing and his pulse. Then he stood back without a word.

I selected a scalpel and bent over the still, sleeping head. I had planned the exact incisions so long and had gone over every movement so meticulously in theory that I was able to work swiftly and without hesitation. It was simple and speedy. In a matter of minutes Hans was holding out a jar of fluid into which I gently dropped the brain. It floated for a moment, then sank slowly to the bottom like a bulbous, fissured creature of the sea.

When I had watched Hans place the jar safely to one side, I returned to the mindless body of the dwarf. I bound up the head to prevent the steady drip of blood, and then injected embalming fluid into the veins. The flawed body would be an engrossing study when I could find time to spare.

Together we turned our attention to the business of wiring the framework to the inert body which was to be Karl Werner’s. When the main connections had been made I lowered the brain into place and, under the most intense light we could achieve with our limited resources, devoted myself for what seemed an age to the minuscule operation of establishing the nerve connections and fibres.

It was early morning before we were able to enclose the head in a thick band of brass, padded on the inside, with terminals set in at two-inch intervals.

I started up the Whimshurst machine. Energy began to pulse through the wires, dinning in the very walls of the cellars. If it had not been that I had thoroughly tested the equipment at full pressure before committing myself to the further construction of this laboratory, I would have feared that the noise would have brought the authorities down upon us.

After a while, with my watch laid on the bench before me, I signalled to Hans to slow the spinning, flashing wheel down to half speed and keep it there. Then I turned my full attention to the body on the bench.

It was beginning to twitch. Life pulsed into it rhythmically, inexorably. One hand started to beat out a steady tempo on the bench—and then closed, opened again, groped convulsively at the air as though in pain, and pushed itself up like a mad creature dragging the arm after it.

Suddenly the hand grabbed at one of the overhead wires and pulled it down in a shower of crackling sparks.

The body writhed in pain.

“Turn it off!” I yelled at Hans. He slammed the control down, and the machine whined to a halt. I waved him towards the bench. “Anaesthetic!”

To make way for him, I touched one of the wires with the intention of moving it away from the head. A shock jolted through me. I drew on gloves and managed to clear a space near the head so that Hans could stoop over it with the anaesthetic pad.

The convulsions in the body subsided. When it was quite still I put my ear to the heart and listened.

It was all right. My creation was still alive.

We set to work to clean up the laboratory. I tested the machinery again and established that it was safe. Karl’s new body slept peacefully on the bench. Calm settled upon the cellars. The job had been done. There was nothing to do now but wait. Hans helped me to clean my instruments and put them tidily away. Every now and then he glanced at the prone figure.