The Malignant Entity (2 page)

“She finished school nearly a year ago, and since that time has been acting as her father’s secretary, typing his manuscripts and attending to much of his voluminous correspondence.

“He had been working day and night in his effort to prove his theory that a living organism can be created from inorganic matter. During their months of close association she found him extremely irritable until one morning about three weeks ago. It appeared that his very nature had changed over night and she assumed that he had made some important discovery. She remembers the exact date owing to the fact that Mrs. Harms’ roomer was found dead in bed on the night of the supposed discovery. This roomer, who was living under an alias, was found to be a notorious character known as Immune Benny, and is alleged to have committed numerous crimes, among which were several revolting murders, without ever having been convicted.

“After that night the professor’s jubilant attitude kept up until death. He paid no attention to his correspondence or manuscripts and spent the greater part of his time in his laboratory, presumably experimenting with numerous live animals which he had delivered each day. His first experiments, she stated, were with mice, rats and guinea pigs. He next used cats, rabbits and small dogs, then larger dogs until, on the day before his death he had two huge mastiffs brought to the house and took them into the laboratory. None of the animals taken behind the door ever reappeared, and she quite naturally assumed that they had been the subjects of vivisection. My theory, is that he—” The doctor was interrupted by a loud rap at the study door. He rose and opened it, revealing a sturdy ‘ uniformed policeman. A frightened housemaid peered around his huge bulk. The man seemed greatly perturbed. His voice shook as he asked—

“Where’s Rooney?”

“He’s on guard in the laboratory,” replied the doctor. “Are you the man sent to relieve him?” “I’m Officer Burke. The maid, here, showed me to the laboratory, but Rooney ain’t there. It’s a horrible place. Don’t blame him for leavin’.”

“Yes. That skeleton on the floor isn’t exactly pretty.”

“That
skeleton? You mean
them
skeletons* There was two of them,
and one was dressed in a cop’s uniform!”

With an exclamation of surprise and horror, the doctor threw down the manuscripts he was holding and rushed for the stairway. I followed breathlessly.

A Strange Diary

WHAT we saw in that awful room of death confirmed our wildest fears. A skeleton, with the bones whitened like those of the professor, lay on the floor facing the doorway. One bony arm was stretched across the threshold as if its owner had been attempting to drag himself from the room when struck down. A blue uniform bagged loosely over the bones, and on the feet were the heavy, hobnailed, square-toed shoes I' had noticed on Rooney’s feet some time before.

The doctor squinted at the star on the breast of the recumbent figure. Then he turned to Officer Burke who had come up behind us.

“What was Rooney’s number ?” he asked.

“942.”

“Then this is Rooney’s uniform and it probably is his skeleton. ’Call up the chief and tell him what happened. This is horrible—diabolical!”

“Your theory,” I said, “does this shed any light on it?”

“On the contrary,” he replied, “It makes the case more baffling than ever. It seems incredible that such things can really happen. I tell you, Evans, there is some mysterious force at work here— something new and unheard of in the annals of scientific research. It is my opinion that the late Professor Townsend chanced upon some force hitherto unknown to scientists and played with it like a little child with fire until it suddenly destroyed him. The death of Officer Rooney is ample proof that this terrible force, whatever it may be, survived him.

“Now let us conjecture regarding the nature of this thing that has taken the lives of two human beings. We know that the professor’s chief ambition was to create life from inert matter. All of his experiments in the laboratory were made with this object in view. All his printed works show plainly his firm belief that the thing could be accomplished, some of them going so far as to point out the processes by which he believed protoplasm, the primitive basic life substance, might be analyzed. As protoplasm is a compound of almost unlimited complexity in its physical and chemical constitution, our most skilled chemists have been unable to unravel its secrets. In fact, the further a chemist gets in his attempts at analysis the more baffling and complex he finds it to be. Being a compound composed of complex substances which are in turn composed of others still more complex, and so on, ad infinitum, its secrets are fully as inscrutable as those of the starry universe.

“The professor’s firststep, therefore, in this seemingly impossible undertaking, would be to analyze protoplasm. Assuming that he succeeded in reducing it to its basic elements his next problem would be to take similar elements and, through a process even more complex than the previous one, assemble and re-assemble them until they were capable of sustaining life.

“Let us suppose that he did these things. Let us assume that he has succeeded in creating protoplasm. What next? We will say that he has taken some primitive form of life for a pattern, a moneron, perhaps, the most simple type of animal, consisting of a single cell of protoplasm. There still exists a difference between the moneron and the synthetically created cell. Chemically and physically they are the same, but the moneron is
alive.

“What is life? Broadly defined as we recognize it on this earth, it is a temporary union of mind and matter. There may be, and probably is another kind of life which is simply mind without matter, but we of the material world know it not. To us, mind without matter or matter without mind are equally dead. The moneron has a mind—a soul—a something that makes it a living individual. Call it what you will. The professor’s cell of man-made protoplasm has not. Can you conceive of any possible way in which he could, having reached this stage, create an individual mind or soul, an essence of life that, once united with his cell of protoplasm would form an entity?”

“It seems impossible,” I admitted.

“So it seems,” he replied, “yet it is only on such an hypothesis that I can account for the mysterious deaths of the professor and Officer Rooney.”

“But I don’t see how a moneron or a creature remotely resembling one could kill and completely devour a man in less than two hours,” I objected.

“Nor I,” agreed the doctor. “In fact I am of the opinion that, if the professor did succeed in creating life, the result was unlike any creature large or small, now inhabiting the earth—a hideous monster, perhaps, with undreamed of powers and possibilities—an alien organism among billions of other organisms, hating them all because it has nothing in common with them—a malignant entity governed solely by the primitive desire for food and growth with only hatred of and envy for the more fortunate
natural
creatures around it.”

“If the professor did succeed in creating or discovering such a creature,” I said, “it is evidently in this house at this very moment. Unless it has the faculty of making itself invisible a thorough search should reveal its whereabouts, for having consumed two men it must be a monster of no mean proportions.”

“That is true,” replied the doctor, “however, we have another hypothesis that is equally worthy of our consideration if we accept the premise that the professor created a living creature. Judging from his writings he spent a considerable portion of his time studying and experimenting in microbiology. Suppose he succeeded in creating a microscopic organism, and that organism had the power to reproduce its kind. If it reproduced by fission, that is, by simply dividing itself after it had attained a certain size, the only check to its increase would be death or lack of food. The more food it could obtain that much more rapidly would it and its descendants multiply. Countless billions of such creatures might occupy this room and yet be invisible without the aid of a compound microscope. There is ample room for a swarm of such creatures numerous enough to devour a man to float in the air above our heads without revealing its presence.” The words of the doctor affected me strangely. Involuntarily I looked upward, half expecting a swarm of man-eating microbes to descend and devour me. For a moment I was seized with a feeling of panic so strong I could scarcely restrain myself from leaping for the door. The fact that the sun had just set and dusky shadows were thickening in the room augmented the illusion. I crossed the floor nervously and pressed the switch beside the door. Instantly the place was flooded with blue-white light from a cluster of powerful globes depending from the middle of the ceiling.

As I was recrossing the room my eyes fell on the contents of the glass-lined tank. I stared unbelievingly for a moment, then called Dr. Dorp.

“What is it, Evans?” he asked.

“The liquid in this tank,” I replied. “It has changed color. Something has turned it pink.” “The effect of the artificial light, no doubt,” he said, coming up beside me. Then I saw the expression of doubt on his face change to one of surprise and wonder.

“You are right,” he exclaimed. “It has not only changed color but a still more remarkable transformation has taken place. When we noticed it this afternoon, the tank was a third full of the colorless liquid.
This pink fluid reaches half way to the top!”

A Drawer Filled With Bones

HE tread of many feet sounded in the hall.

Chief McGraw paused in the doorway, staring down at the blue-clad skeleton on the floor, a look of horror on his face. Behind him were four policemen in uniform.

“Is—is that the skeleton of poor old Rooney?”

McGraw asked. It’s too ghastly a thing to believe. “I’m afraid it is,” replied Dr. Dorp.

The chief knelt and examined the star on the bagging blue coat.

“It’s hellish, positively hellish,” he said, rising. “Do you know what killed him?”

“We are working on a theory—” began the doctor, but was interrupted by the chief.

“Theories be damned!” he snapped. “Work on your theories if you want to. This thing has gone too far. I'm going to get some
facts'.”
He swung on the four men behind him. “Search the house,” he said. “Look sharp for anything of a suspicious nature. An infernal machine, perhaps, or a blood sucking animal. There is a man-killer of some kind, human or otherwise, hidden in this house, and it’s our business to find it.”

When the men. had departed he stepped over Rooney’s skeleton.

“I’ll search this room myself,” he said.

He did, with professional thoroughness, looking for hidden panels and sounding the walls, both in the open areas and behind the shelves, for hollow spaces. Then he began opening the drawers in a tall cabinet that stood in one corner, disclosing surgical and dissecting instruments of various kinds, an indexed set of microscope slides with some extra lenses, platinum dishes; porcelain drying pans, crucibles, glass rods and tubing, pipettes, rubber tubing and stoppers, rubber gloves and aprons, and other miscellaneous laboratory paraphernalia.

The bottom drawer of the cabinet was quite large and deep. The chief cried out excitedly when he saw its contents.

“Good Lord! Look at that!” he exclaimed.

It was filled to the top with dry, white bones. “Nothing but the bones of small animals,” said Dr. Doi’p, picking up a skull. “This, for instance, is the skull of a dog.” Then, taking up another: “Here is the skull of a rabbit. Notice the characteristic chisel-shaped teeth. This one beside it once supported the be-whiskered countenance of a common house cat.”

“What do you suppose he was doing with them ?” asked the chief.

“It is my belief that they were brought here to be killed and devoured by the same thing that killed the professor and Rooney.”

“And that thing is—”

“At present, merely a shadowy theory, although it most certainly has an existence. There is a power in this house that is a menace to everyone under this roof—a malignant entity that destroys human beings in some mysterious manner unparalleled in the annals of science or human experience. This much we know, reasoning from effects. Reasoning from possible causes we are aware that the hobby of Professor Townsend was the endeavor to create a living thing from inorganic matter, and putting the two together it seems to me that the logical hypothesis would be that he either succeeded in creating a monster of a sort unknown to biologists, or discovered and developed unheard of powers and habits in a creature already known.” “If there’s such a thing in this house, believe me I’m going to find it,” said the chief, stamping out of the room.

“Now that we have a few moments to ourselves,” said Dr. Dorp when McGraw had departed, “let us conduct a search, or rather an inquiry on our own account. I perceive that we have a very excellent compound microscope at our disposal and am curious to examine the liquid which-has so mysteriously risen and changed color in the tank.”

He took a blank slide from the cabinet drawer and a small glass rod from the table. As he was about to dip the rod in the liquid he uttered a low exclamation of surprise.

“What’s up now?” I asked.

“This amazing liquid has again become transparent,” he replied. “The red tint is gone.”

He plunged the tip of the rod into the viscous liquid, twisted it slightly and withdrew it. Although the liquid seemed quite heavy it slipped from the end of the rod much after the manner of the white of an egg. After considerable juggling he succeeded in obtaining a small amount which he smeared on the slide. He then placed the slide in position and adjusted the microscope with a practiced hand.

“Well,” I asked, after he had peered into the eyepiece for a full ten minutes, “what is the stuff, anyway?”.

“Here, look for yourself,” he replied.

What I saw in the field of the microscope appeared to be a mesh work or foam work of exceedingly fine bubbles or perhaps globules. Granules of different sizes' and shapes seemed imbedded in these globules and the whole was dotted at intervals with small white objects. While I watched several of these white objects seemed to dissolve and disappear. All of them apparently were endowed with life for I noticed that they expanded or contracted spasmodically and seemed endeavoring to push their way through the surrounding bubbles.