The Greatest Sci-Fi Works of H. G. Wells. H. G. WellsЧитать онлайн книгу.

      CHAPTER 7

       THE LOCKED DOOR

       Table of Contents

      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 about me. 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 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 greyhaired 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 Bluebeard’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 acknowledgement 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 greyhaired 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 greyhaired 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 deckchair 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, which 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 and white-swathed 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 peculiar furtive manner, quite unlike the frank stare of your unsophisticated savage. I wondered what language they spoke. 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 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 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, that to read 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 he deserved to be, but I still think 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 have once fallen under the overmastering spell