SUPPING WITH THE DEVIL (continued 2)

The doctor was quite mad, Jenkins was convinced of that and as there seemed no way of conveying him to an asylum where he belonged it would be well to remove him altogether from this world where he was doing so much evil not only to the animals but to Mankind.

Therefore waiting and watching for his opportunity Jenkins went quietly day by day about his work, suffering inwardly horribly for the poor mutilated animals he had to tend, but letting no sign of agitation or distress appear in his sedate and stoic manner. The doctor from time to time eyed him curiously noting with grim satisfaction the physical changes that had taken place in his hard-working attendant. He was quite aware that Jenkins was more or less against his work and felt pain in seeing the tortures of the animals, and therefore his evil mind delighted in forcing him to witness the most brutal experiments. Such as tearing out a dog’s eyes to transplant them to another or cutting out an ear by the roots and sewing it into the victim’s neck. He knew also that Jenkins saw through the whole farce and that he could not deceive his attendant as he did the easy going public, so he no longer pretended that these experiments had any use in them. At the end of a loathsome exhibition of suffering and torture which had especially gratified his perverted sexuality, he would turn his gloating face with its protruding eyes and saliva covered lips to Jenkins and dig him playfully in the ribs.

“Good work that, eh, Jenkins? Not exactly useful, but interesting, eh? Let’s say interesting,” and Jenkins, a wooden figure with a wooden face would stand there with the fires of just indignation burning him to death within and exerting all his mental and moral force to keep himself from striking down the fiend in front of him.

So the days passed for the two men, shut away from the world in their little building on the piece of waste ground by the common—playfully for the doctor who “loved his work” as he was never tired of informing the newspapers. He did indeed love his work and wallowed in its atrocity as a drunkard in his cups. It was the only true thing he ever said but that was true, he loved his work—painfully for Jenkins who thought each night he could bear his martyrdom no longer. But at last the end came.

Jenkins had had a peculiarly sickening afternoon: dog after dog had been taken: thrown in the vivisecting trough, wrenched and racked and torn, its nerves stimulated, red hot irons passed through its most sensitive parts and finally been thrown in shrieking agony into a corner. The doctor was enjoying himself, that he loved his work was very evident from his excited face, from which he occasionally wiped the sweat and then resumed his task with fresh ardour. Six o’clock struck and the doctor stopped.

“Done a good day’s work, I think,” he remarked. “Take ’em away, Jenkins, kill ’em if you like. I’ve done with them. I’ll have a fresh lot to-morrow,” and he waved his hand to the mangled heap on the stone floor in the corner from which long gasping shivering cries were rising. “I’m going out. Go upstairs and get your tea. I shan’t want you again till to-morrow.” With that he turned to his dressing room from which Jenkins knew he would soon emerge, calm, collected, bland, immaculate, the suave man of Science that he appeared in public.

Before getting his tea, Jenkins turned to see what could be done for the poor bleeding remnants of living beings in the heap. Alas, nothing but to quiet them in death. He bent over them despatching them as gently and as quickly as he could and in half an hour the last poor battered thing had expired. Just then the doctor came out smooth and sleek and genially smiling. Well dressed as always and holding a little paper in his hand.

“I’m thinking of making a few remarks to-night on the benefit of Vivisection. Some old faddists are getting up on their hind legs and saying it shouldn’t be allowed, so it’s best to give the public our usual little dose of talk.”

Jenkins, sick to death, just nodded and went on with his task of carrying out the dead bodies. Then suddenly as the lightning flashes the moment was upon him and the whole man’s spirit sprang to attention and every fibre within him quivered for action. On his way out the doctor paused by the door of the lethal chamber and Jenkins on his way back for another body, found him standing in the hallway sniffing delicately about him.

“There’s a queer smell here,” he remarked. “I don’t like it. Where does it come from?”

As he spoke he turned the handle, pushed open the door, of the lethal room, and—entered. Jenkins, the blood stinging in all his veins and a great light in his brain, moved forward. He was not conscious of movement, only of intention. Equally without consciousness of the action, his arm shot out, his lean fingers gripped the handle. The brain had had standing orders given it long ago and now the moment had come, like lightning it obeyed.

The heavy door swung to and clicked. It was shut and no earthly power could open it from within. There was no sound. Silence fell on the laboratory. The instant the door had closed Jenkins became a different man. The great deed for which he had lived night and day was done, swiftly and successfully accomplished. He held his head high. His heart swelled within him with a joyous sense of duty done just as when he had walked out of the enlisting office in August, 1914, a soldier proud to die for his country. So now if he had to die on the scaffold for this night’s work he would die proudly for he knew that the work was good. One liar, one duper of the public, one traitor to his country, one monster of cruelty, if but one, had been put out of existence. A great flood of joy seemed to engulf him and he stalked forward to the pipes and tubes to turn on the taps that let in to the chamber the deadly gasses.

It was but the work of a few minutes, for the useful chamber was always kept in readiness by the doctor. It might be some unexpected visitor might call at the moment when an animal was screaming under the doctor’s fingers and then the quickest way to obtain silence was to throw it into the lethal room out of the way before the visitor was admitted. Of course if it were a man of Science such a precaution was unnecessary because he would understand that the piercing cries only meant his fellow worker was “loving his work” and pursuing it as usual but it might be an ordinary person who called and then ordinary people take a different view of these things and have to be humbugged accordingly.

Jenkins stalked to the tubes and turned the taps full on. There were no merciful air holes in this chamber arranged so that the air might mix with the burning gasses and the victim may be overcome by the mixed fumes instead of being choked and burnt to death. No, the doctor wouldn’t have air holes and when Jenkins had pointed out to him how twisted and contorted the bodies were that he had to remove pointing to the fact that a very painful death had been experienced, the doctor had gazed at him over his cigarette smoke with a mild reflective gaze for a few seconds and then had turned away without a word. The air holes had never been made and a grim smile hovered for a moment over the attendant’s impassive face as he turned on the gas and then walked away down the passage to the stairway where he sat down on the lowest stair ... waiting, while the minutes passed. Then suddenly the three dogs in the reserve room broke into loud and joyous barking. Jenkins listened astonished. He had never heard them do that before. No animal within those walls ever lifted its voice except to wail in agony. But now? Did they know their hideous persecutor was dead? Could they see the spirit passing? Animals have many higher gifts than man: many instincts, many powers that are denied to him; or that he has destroyed by his vices, which they are without. And their nearness to the spiritual world had often struck Jenkins before. This was extraordinary. He could hear them bounding and scuffling about in the room giving short sharp barks of joy. Jenkins first thought was to go in but with his hand on the door knob he paused. He had only just lately had their dead companions in his arms. He would go and take off his blood stained garments before meeting them, get rid of the scent of death which they would recognize so well but he had something to do first. He must put out of their long long suffering those poor unfortunates that awaited in the ghastly gallery the morrow’s torture. He switched on the lights and then entered the gallery, where the scientist had pursued the work he loved. Jenkins could not bear to meet the sad, glazing eyes that stared dully at him through the bars of those cruel cages. What would he not have given to have been able to restore the joyous healthy forms they had possessed before the Scientist had cut and beaten and mangled and starved them out of all resemblance to living creatures. But he was helpless, man can destroy but he cannot create an animal.

At last it was over. All life was extinguished and the many mangled forms lay stretched on the cold zinc floors of their cages where they had dragged out their existence of months and years of suffering. Jenkins gave one glance round: his hands and feet cold but his heart burning like a red hot coal within him.

“This place justifies me,” he thought, “if anything is needed, this place alone is my excuse.”

Then he switched out the lights and death and darkness reigned supreme in the place of agony.

Coming out into the hall, he heard the joyous voices of the living dogs and his face cleared a little of its gloom. He walked to the lethal chamber and turned off the tap. Then he hurried up to his own little flat and there soon had stove and lamp well alight. He washed and changed his clothes rapidly. It was wonderful how light and strong he felt. Some great pressure in the atmosphere was removed now that he knew that evil thing was safely locked in the chamber below. Where had the evil spirit gone? Jenkins did not know nor care. If it were about in the house any where still Jenkins was not afraid of it.

His conscience was so absolutely clear, his heart, his brain, all his instincts told him he was right, that he had done well. He felt certain that any decent man watching that fiend working day by day would have acted as he had done, if he had stayed his hand so long. Most men in his place would have jumped on the doctor and strangled him when he first realised what the so-called scientist really was. No good man who knew the truth would condemn him so his heart was light and he had no fear of the doctor’s ghost. He would have met it cheerfully and give it some straight talk had it ventured up the stairs.

But no ghost or spirit came and Jenkins hurried along over his dressing and then made his long belated tea. Then with an armful of dog biscuits and a great jug of milk he descended to the expectant four foots below.

The lights were burning and the place looked cosy and cheery enough. The lethal room was there solid and silent guarding well its secrets and the welcoming bark of the dogs hearing his footsteps resounded through the hall. Jenkins opened the door and immediately out bounded the dogs leaping up to and caressing him. He saw at once the difference in them. Up to now a horror and terror had seemed to brood over them: it was in the air of the whole place, never had they ventured before uninvited into the hall. What they smelt, what they heard in that accursed place had told them frightful things, though Jenkins had guarded them all he could from that knowledge.

Now they capered about the hall unrestrained and leapt up at Jenkins’ side as if acclaiming him and welcoming him as their master. Jenkins, too sad at heart for his frolicsome companion to wholly cheer, went into their room soberly and filled all their saucers to the brim and broke their biscuits with careful fingers. After all it was so little that he had done! Just one of these men stopped from their horrible work, only one out of so many. Yet little actions sometimes had widespreading results. He wondered sadly whether by the voluntary sacrifice of his life he could do anything, by giving himself up and telling plainly and boldly his whole story in the dock to judge and jury, would he accomplish anything? Would Judge and Jury listen and believe? No, he thought not, they would be just like the lady to whom he had restored the cat. A personal motive would be ascribed to him for his act and Judge and Jury would only listen to the crowd of scientists who would pack the court. They would tell the judge and jury that animals did not feel, that when cut up alive it was done with the greatest kindness that the vivisectors who were appointed to inspect these places would certainly not sympathise with vivisectors working these, that Sir Charles Smith-Brown, Dsc. M.D., L.R.C.P., etc., etc., was the kindest man that ever breathed, that he lived only to benefit humanity and all these lies would be believed and all this absurd nonsense swallowed and Jenkins’ plain truth set aside and Jenkins hanged. That would be all. As for the newspapers they would not report a word of what Jenkins said but only what the scientists said by whom they were paid. No to keep his life if possible and gradually try to disseminate the truth was the only way that offered any hope. There must be some thinking men and women in England. They could not all be maundering fools like those that sat in Parliament and babbled about “effective inspection of laboratories” by vivisectors and voted huge sums of money for cancer research, i.e., for infecting thousands of animals with cancer, for cultivating cancer, and thus spreading the disease through the length and breadth of the land.

No, he decided, slightly comforted, they couldn’t all be fools! There must be some common sense left in England somewhere. He must try to find it and appeal to it.

The dogs’ supper over, he let them out for a run and then proceeded on his rounds as usual to see all was closed for the night. There were some letters for the doctor in the letter box and these he took out and arranged carefully on the table under a green shaded lamp in the doctor’s own special little study, the door of which was just opposite the door of the lethal chamber on the other side of the hall.

He turned out all the lights and locked all the outer doors except the hall door which “the doctor would open with his latch key when he returned.”

Jenkins felt the value of knowing his story beforehand and he was from now on going to entirely forget that the doctor’s body lay in the lethal chamber. When it was eventually dragged out, it must be a surprise to him. He had been told by the doctor that the latter was going out and that he might go upstairs to his tea. That was at 6 o’clock. He had availed himself of the permission and gone upstairs leaving the doctor in the hall. He had not seen him since and when he came down he concluded that the doctor had gone out and not returned. That was going to be his story and he was going to act in every particular as if were a true one. So he ranged the letters carefully under the lamp tidied the doctor’s papers and left everything in order for his return.

At ten he went to the main door and whistled in the dogs, saw them to their beds with many caresses, then rather wearily sought his own.

But there was quiet and peace waiting for him to-night. No shrieks, no groans, the dead and the living alike side by side slept soundly that night in the laboratory.

CHAPTER 6

Six days had elapsed and the laboratory still stood silent without a master. Jenkins moved about in it silently as a ghost, doing everything exactly as he would have done had he expected the doctor’s return any minute. He had sent the three dogs down into the country by train to the man who kept an eye on his little cottage while he was away and who would look after them. Inwardly he was longing for it all to be over, longing to leave this accursed spot where he had gone through such horrible suffering. His work was all done there now. Every cage in the long corridor had been thoroughly cleaned out: the bars polished: the floor washed and the tiles of the corridor itself swabbed over and rubbed to a glistening cleanliness. The doctor’s rooms were kept swept and dusted and each day’s letters as they came in were ranged in neat order on his writing table, with a little space between each day’s group. The fires were lighted in the morning, the lamps lighted in the evening.

Jenkins waited up till ten o’clock each night. Then solemnly switched off the lights and retired. He was pale and gaunt but not unhappy now, as compared with his former days here. He had done what he could. It was not much but it was something, and perhaps work lay ahead for him in the future. Perhaps he could be instrumental in exposing this awful vice, this cruel murderous lust that called itself Scientific Research. He missed the three dogs enormously but here again he hugged himself with pleasure in thinking they were safe and out of the way.

It was just five on the Saturday evening and Jenkins was downstairs taking his tea in the dogs’ room where he kept now his little outfit for tea making, that he might be at hand to open the door. A ring came and he rose at once to answer.

“Sir C. Smith-Brown at home?” queried the thin-lipped young man who stood outside.

“No, sir.”

“Oh. When do you expect him back?”

“Any time, sir. He has not been in this week: not since Monday evening.”

“Really? I wonder where he is then. I don’t seem able to catch him anywhere. Did he say he was going into the country or anything?”

Jenkins shook his head.

“No, sir. He just left on Monday about six and said he wouldn’t want me again that day. I expected him next morning but he didn’t come and I haven’t seem him since.”

“Funny! You’ve been here all the time I suppose?”

“Oh, yes, sir, I never go out unless the doctor gives me special leave to.”

“Well, I’ll look up Dr. Jones and see if he’s there. Thanks, good night.”

The young man departed. Jenkins closed the door and went back to the dogs’ room where he reboiled his kettle and made himself another cup of tea.

“That’s the beginning,” he thought to himself. “Now there’ll be a disagreeable time I expect, and after that I’ll be free I hope,” and he smiled to himself as he thought of the rescued dogs waiting for him in the country.

Jenkins was right. The search for the doctor had begun. At nine thirty, a longer more peremptory ring sounded through the house accompanied by a knock. He went at once to the door. The thin-lipped young man was there but this time in company with a shortish rotund man who made up for his insignificant stature with great pomposity of manner. As soon as the door was opened he stepped over the threshold with a hint of defiance in his bearing as if he expected an effort on the part of Jenkins to keep him out and had determined it should be unsuccessful. Jenkins inwardly amused immediately stepped back having opened the door to its fullest extent.

“This seems a serious affair about your master,” began his visitor. “He is not at his house, he is not at his hospital, and you say he is not here.” There was the faintest accent laid on the “you say.” Jenkins looked gravely interested.

“When did you see him last?”

“Monday evening, sir, about six.”

“He’s not been back since, not even looked in, eh?”

“No, sir, I don’t think he could have. All his letters are here.” He stepped to the study door and threw it open, switching on the light. The neat cosy little room stood revealed very orderly. On the table under the green shaded lamp lay the doctor’s letters ranged in their little groups according to the day of their arrival.

The doctor’s chair was drawn toward the hearth, neatly swept up where a small fire burnt primly.

The two visitors peered into the room, the rotund Dr. Jones went up to the table and fingered one or two of the letters as if he hoped to gain information from them.

“Such an exact man, such a precise man, I can’t understand his going off like this for six days and telling nobody.”

He stared hard at Jenkins who returned his gaze with a slightly distressed expression but made no reply.

“Well, I think I and my friend would like just to look through the place,” Jones continued, his manner something between embarrassment and aggression.

“We should feel more satisfied you know and something might strike us as a clue to his disappearance.”

Jenkins assented at once.

“Do, sir, will you go round alone or shall I come with you?”

“Oh, you come along by all means,” Jones answered and the three of them came out of the study into the hall again. Jenkins opened the next door that of the cold long gallery where the agonized animals had suffered such hideous miseries. Here there were no fires: the air was deadly chill and still foul, or so it seemed to Jenkins, the electric light fell wanly on the white walls, the lofty arched roof and the cold glistening tiles of the floor.

Jones advanced. Then stopped short with an exclamation as his eye caught the long row of empty silent cages.

“What’s this? Got rid of his animals? Why that looks as if he knew he were not coming back! What do you thing of that Edward?” he addressed his companion.

“Looks like it,” he replied laconically.

“When did the doctor dispose of his animals?” asked Jones wheeling round upon Jenkins.

“He’d been using them up for some time, sir,” answered Jenkins, “and last week he said he’d finish with all he’d got and have a fresh stock in and I was to clean out all the cages and have them ready for a new lot.”

“Oh, he said that, did he?” returned Jones. “Hm—hm—hm. Well, let’s go on down to the end. See if he’s left a note or anything on the table.”

The three men filed down the cold long room to the end where behind the screen which helped to shut this part off from the corridor stood the doctor’s armchair close to the hearth. The heavy writing table was covered with papers all neatly piled and arranged. Everything was neat and in order all most carefully dusted. The large inkstand carefully polished and a tray of freshly nibbed pens awaited the doctor’s return. Evidently his servant had expected him back.

Dr. Jones looked disconsolately over the table. There was no note or letter there. The last thing apparently that the doctor had written was a chemical equation, drawn out on a half sheet of notepaper. This lay on the blotting pad, carefully preserved by the invaluable Jenkins.

Dr. Jones looked at it and then laughed. To those who know how to read the ciphers it represented a burning solution, designed to separate living flesh from living bone.

“Well nothing here, Edward, we’ll go upstairs,” and following Jenkins, upstairs they went. They tramped through the doctor’s comfortable little suite above, looking in cupboards and under the bed and finding nothing but order and extreme cleanliness everywhere.

After that Jenkins’ rooms were entered and searched but the simple furniture and narrow bed were soon looked over and under. The dog’s room, the bathroom, the landings the little coal cellar: they searched all most thoroughly expecting as it seemed to Jenkins to find the doctor’s body concealed somewhere and possibly swinging behind some door. Dr. Jones seemed to have jumped to the conclusion that it was a case of suicide.

“I can’t understand his stopping all his experiments and giving up all the animals like that,” Jenkins heard him remark to his friend. “Looks like suicide, ’pon my word it does.”

Their search yielded nothing however and at last with a curt goodnight to Jenkins they left, passing by the lethal chamber on their way out.

“Fools,” thought Jenkins as he closed the door after them.

After that there was no more tranquility at the laboratory. The bell was frequently being rung, people came to enquire, Jenkins was interviewed by various persons, asked the same questions over and over again and told the same lies in answer with commendable consistency.

The papers now had got hold of the story and devoted large spaces to the mysterious disappearance of the famous scientist. Reporters came to see Jenkins and to hear repeated the few simple sentences he could tell them. But to these reporters he added to his story accounts of the doctor’s doings and took the reporters in to see the vivisecting troughs and all the ghastly instruments of torture that are the stock in trade of the Scientific Researcher. But though they looked open eyed and open mouthed on these gruesome objects and wandered up and down the long gallery reading the incriminating labels on the empty cages never a word of any of these things appeared in their reports in the papers as Jenkins vainly hoped.

In talking to them, he naturally had to preserve the stolid indifference of manner that had been his mask so long and appear to think all this scientific atrocity in order and he could feel that even these light headed and unthinking young men shrank away from him in loathing. At such times Jenkins would feel a madness of longing to shake them by the hand and urge them to carry his message to the world but all this he crushed down. To show the least disapprobation of the doctor’s doings, to be anything but the servile laboratory attendant would attract suspicion to himself, perhaps fasten the noose round his neck. So he bore their evident contempt and disgust with himself as he had borne all the rest of his sufferings in that place without a sign and in their attitude to him he had a certain rejoicing. It gave a glimmer of hope for the future.

“Catch me giving a penny of my money to Cancer Research after this,” he heard one of the men say to his companion as they went out and his heart warmed with hope.

Alas! the next morning in the very paper which had sent these two to report there was a glowing article upon the doctor’s work, his superb labours for humanity and all the rest of the unutterable twaddle with which Jenkins was by now so familiar. Days passed and still nothing was heard of the eminent scientist, the Press made all they could out of his disappearance, it was the favorite topic of the clubs and dinner parties. He had simply vanished and public interest and excitement skilfully fanned by the papers waxed and grew.

On the second Saturday after his disappearance just when Editors were thinking out a new headline, the favorite Possible Clue found to the Smith-Brown Mystery, having been rather overworked the end came abruptly.

At nine in the morning Jenkins opened the door to a small group of men led by a man in an inconspicuous uniform.

“I am a police inspector and have a warrant to search these premises.”

“Yes, sir,” returned Jenkins simply. There was nothing very new in that. “This is the doctor’s study sir,” he said, throwing open the door as he had done before for Dr. Jones.

The Inspector just glanced that way. Then he stepped up to the door on the other side of the hall.

“What’s this?”

Jenkins turned back to him.

“That’s the lethal chamber, sir.”

The Inspector put his hand on the handle, turned it and pushed the door. It resisted and as he pushed it more there was the soft heavy sound of some inert thing being moved within.

“Stand back, gentlemen, please,” he said as the little group pressed forward, and turned his electric torch into the black aperture made by the partially opened door. The white light gushed in and its broad streak fell on the large head and upturned face of the doctor. Mouth wide open as he died gasping, eyes bulging in a last grisley stare. There was a gasp of horror from the onlookers as they drew back, a sickly odour stealing out from the little room and enveloping them.

The Inspector seemed the only man unmoved. He ordered one of his men to support the door that it should not close and two others to follow him. Then he went in and the three of them brought out the doctor’s body between them into the hall and laid it down. It was horribly contorted as if the man had died writhing.

Jenkins turned away. He knew the look so well, just so all knotted with agony, had the poor little monkeys been when he drew them out from where they had huddled against the door or walls. The Inspector touched his arm.

“This must be very painful to you,” he said kindly, touched by the woebegone look of Jenkins’ gaunt wasted face.

“We do not need you for the moment. I shall have some questions to ask you presently but don’t stand here now. Go into the next room and sit down.”

“Thank you, sir,” replied Jenkins brokenly and went.

Nothing could have been better nor convinced the Inspector more completely of his entire innocence of any participation in the doctor’s death but it was not pose on Jenkin’s part. In truth, physically he felt he could not stand much more of nervous strain and mentally he felt actually crushed with grief, though it was not as the Inspector supposed for his master, but for the countless little victims that master had so wantonly destroyed.

After a time the Inspector came to him and examined him. He questioned him and cross-questioned him but Jenkins made no mistakes. His short simple sentences, his direct replies, his simple manner, even his wooden face all together produced the impression of a man, unlikely to do anything exceptional and original. He seemed to be the typical routine worker and wholly unconnected with the tragic event of his master’s death.

At the inquest a verdict of Death from Misadventure, the doctor having been overcome by the old gas fumes remaining in the unventilated chamber, was returned and Jenkins after his evidence was allowed to leave for his home, unsuspected and unopposed.

Down in his tiny cottage, one evening, before a blazing fire, where his three dogs lay extended in dozing comfort, sitting by the table with his pot of tea beside him, he was somewhat laboriously reading a dull newspaper until his eyes caught these astounding head lines:

New Crusade for the Churches. 1,000,000 pounds appeal. Science and Religion to co-operate.

Looking through the article he gathered that clergymen in all the churches were to preach to their congregations on the beauty and virtue of Scientific Research and raise a million pounds to be spent upon it. It was stated their scheme had the warm approval of the doctors. A little lower down he came on this paragraph:

“There is no more noble example of selfless service on behalf of humanity than the men and women engaged in Research work,” and a little lower down still these same men and women were described as “dedicated spirits giving themselves as instruments into the hands of God, that His Will may be done upon Earth.”

After reading this Jenkins sat back in his chair and remembered the doctor giving measles to his monkeys, filling cats with water till they burst and infecting healthy animals with cancer which never becomes human cancer and starving dogs to give them rickets.

“And the church now is going to help,” he muttered. “Good Lord and Good Lord and Good Lord—”