I
In the heart of a second-growth piney-woods jungle of southern
Alabama, a region sparsely settled by backwoods blacks and Cajans — that queer,
half-wild people descended from Acadian exiles of the middle eighteenth century
— stands a strange, enormous ruin.
Interminable trailers of Cherokee
rose, white-laden during a single month of spring, have climbed the heights of
its three remaining walls. Palmetto fans rise knee high above the base. A dozen
scattered live oaks, now belying their nomenclature because of choking tufts of
gray, Spanish moss and two-foot circlets of mistletoe parasite which have
stripped bare of foliage the gnarled, knotted limbs, lean fantastic beards
against the crumbling brick.
Immediately beyond, where the ground
becomes soggier and lower — dropping away hopelessly into the tangle of
dogwood, holly, poison sumac and pitcher plants that is Moccasin Swamp —
undergrowth of ti-ti and annis has formed a protecting wall impenetrable to all
save the furtive ones. Some few outcasts utilize the stinking depths of that
sinister swamp, distilling “shinny” of “pure cawn” liquor for illicit trade.
Tradition states that this is the
case, at least — a tradition which antedates that of the premature ruin by many
decades. I believe it, for during evenings intervening between investigations
of the awesome spot I often was approached as a possible customer by
woodbillies who could not fathom how anyone dared venture near without
plenteous fortification of liquid courage.
I know “shinny,” therefore I did not
purchase it for personal consumption. A dozen times I bought a quart or two,
merely to establish credit among the Cajans, pouring away the vile stuff
immediately into the sodden ground. It seemed then that only through filtration
and condensation of their dozens of weird tales regarding “Daid House” could I
arrive at understanding of the mystery and weight of horror hanging about the
place.
Certain it is that out of all the
superstitious cautioning, head-wagging and whispered nonsensities I obtained only
two indisputable facts. The first was that no money, and no supporting battery
of ten-gauge shotguns loaded with chilled shot, could induce either Cajan or
darky of the region to approach within five hundred yards of that flowering
wall! The second fact I shall dwell upon later.
Perhaps it would be as well, as I am
only a mouthpiece in this chronicle, to relate in brief why I came to Alabama
on this mission.
I am a scribbler of general fact
articles, no fiction writer as was Lee Cranmer — though doubtless the
confession is superfluous. Lee was my roommate during college days. I knew his
family well, admiring John Corliss Cranmer even more that I admired the son and
friend — and almost as much as Peggy Breede whom Lee married. Peggy liked me,
but that was all. I cherish sanctified memory of her for just that much, as no
other woman before or since has granted this gangling dyspeptic even a hint of
joyous and sorrowful intimacy.
Work kept me to the city. Lee, on
the other hand, coming of wealthy family — and, from the first, earning from
his short stories and novel royalties more than I wrested from editorial
coffers — needed no anchorage. He and Peggy honeymooned a four-month trip to
Alaska, visited Honolulu the next winter, fished for salmon on Cain's River,
New Brunswick, and generally enjoyed the outdoors at all seasons.
They kept an apartment in Wilmette,
near Chicago, yet, during the few spring and fall seasons they were “home,”
both preferred to rent a suite at one of the country clubs to which Lee
belonged. I suppose they spent thrice or five times the amount Lee actually
earned, yet for my part I only honored that the two should find such great
happiness in life and still accomplish artistic triumph.
They were honest, zestful young
Americans, the type — and pretty nearly the only type — two million dollars
cannot spoil. John Corliss Cranmer, father of Lee, though as different from his
boy as a microscope is different from a painting by Remington, was even further
from being dollar-conscious. He lived in a world bounded only by the widening
horizon of biological science — and his love for the two who would carry on
that Cranmer name.
Many a time I used to wonder how it
could be that as gentle, clean-souled and lovable a gentleman as John Corliss
Cranmer could have ventured so far into scientific research without attaining
small-caliber atheism. Few do. He believed both in God and humankind. To accuse
him of murdering his boy and the girl wife who had come to be loved as the
mother of baby Elsie — as well as blood and flesh of his own family — was a
gruesome, terrible absurdity! Yes, even when John Corliss Cranmer was declared
unmistakably insane!
Lacking a relative in the world,
baby Elsie was given to me — and the middle-aged couple who had accompanied the
three as servants about half of the known world. Elsie would be Peggy over
again. I worshiped her, knowing that if my stewardship of her interests could
make of her a woman of Peggy's loveliness and worth I should not have lived in
vain. And at four Elsie stretched out her arms to me after a vain attempt to
jerk out the bobbed tail of Lord Dick, my tolerant old Airedale — and called me
“papa.”
I felt a deep-down choking… yes,
those strangely long black lashes some day might droop in fun or coquetry, but
now baby Elsie held a wistful, trusting seriousness in depths of ultramarine
eyes — that same seriousness which only Lee had brought to Peggy.
Responsibility in one instant become
double. That she might come to love me as more than foster parent was my
dearest wish. Still, through selfishness I could not rob her of rightful
heritage; she must know in after years. And the tale that I would tell her must
not be the horrible suspicion which had been bandied about in common talk!
I went to Alabama, leaving Elsie in
the competent hands of Mrs. Daniels and her husband, who had helped care for
her since birth.
In my possession, prior to the trip,
were the scant facts known to authorities at the time of John Corliss Cranmer's
escape and disappearance. They were incredible enough.
For conducting biological research
upon forms of protozoan life, John Corliss Cranmer had hit upon this region of
Alabama. Near a great swamp teeming with microscopic organisms, and situated in
a semitropical belt where freezing weather rarely intruded to harden the bogs,
the spot seemed ideal for his purpose.
Through Mobile he could secure
supplies daily by truck. The isolation suited him. With only an octoroon man to
act as chef, houseman and valet for the times he entertained visitors, he
brought down scientific apparatus, occupying temporary quarters in the village
of Burdett's Corners while his woods house was in process of construction.
By all accounts the Lodge, as he
termed it, was a substantial affair of eight or nine rooms, built of logs and
planed lumber bought at Oak Grove. Lee and Peggy were expected to spend a
portion of each year with him; quail, wild turkey and deer abounded, which fact
made such a vacation certain to please the pair. At other times all save four
rooms were closed.
This was in 1907, the year of Lee's
marriage. Six years later when I came down, no sign of a house remained except
certain mangled and rotting timbers projecting from viscid soil — or what
seemed like soil. And a twelve-foot wall of brick had been built to enclose the
house completely! One partion of this had fallen inward!
II
I wasted weeks of time first,
interviewing officials of the police department at Mobile, the town marshals
and county sheriffs of Washington and Mobile counties, and officials of the
psychopathic hospital from which Cranmer made his escape.
In substance the story was one of
baseless homicidal mania. Cranmer the elder had been away until late fall,
attending two scientific conferences in the North, and then going abroad to
compare certain of his findings with those of a Dr. Gemmler of Prague
University. Unfortunately, Gemmler was assassinated by a religious fanatic
shortly afterward. The fanatic voiced virulent objection to all Mendelian research
as blasphemous. This was his only defense. He was hanged.
Search of Gemmler's notes and
effects revealed nothing save an immense amount of laboratory data on
karyokinesis — the process of chromosome arrangement occurring in first growing
cells of higher animal embryos. Apparently Cranmer had hoped to develop some
similarities, or point out differences between hereditary factors occurring in
lower forms of life and those half-demonstrated in the cat and monkey. The
authorities had found nothing that helped me. Cranmer had gone crazy; was that
not sufficient explanation?
Perhaps it was for them, but not for
me — and Elsie.
But to the slim basis of fact I was
able to unearth.
No one wondered when a fortnight
passed without appearance of any person from the Lodge. Why should anyone
worry? A provision salesman in Mobile called up twice, but tailed to complete
the connection. He merely shrugged. The Cranmers had gone away somewhere on a
trip. In a week, a month, a year they would be back. Meanwhile he lost commissions,
but what of it? He had no responsibility for those queer nuts up there in the
piney-woods. Crazy? Of course! Why should any guy with millions to spend shut
himself up among the Cajans and draw microscope-enlarged notebook pictures of —
what the salesman called — “germs”?
A stir was aroused at the end of the
fortnight, but the commotion confined itself to building circles. Twenty
carloads of building brick, fifty bricklayers, and a quarter-acre of
fine-meshed wire — the sort used for screening off pens of rodents and small
marsupials in a zoological garden — were ordered, damn expense, hurry! by an
unshaved, tattered man who identified himself with difficulty as John Corliss
Cranmer.
He looked strange, even then. A
certified check for the total amount, given in advance, and another check of
absurd size slung toward a labor entrepreneur, silenced objection, however.
These millionaires were apt to be flighty. When they wanted something they
wanted it at tap of the bell. Well, why not drag down the big profits? A poorer
man would have been jacked up in a day. Cranmer's fluid gold bathed him in
immunity to criticism.
The encircling wall was built, and
roofed with wire netting which drooped about the squat-pitch of the Lodge.
Curious inquiries of workmen went unanswered until the final day.
Then Cranmer, a strange, intense
apparition who showed himself more shabby than a quay derelict, assembled every
man jack of the workmen. In one hand he grasped a wad of blue slips — fifty-six
of them. In the other he held a Luger automatic.
“I offer each man a thousand dollars
for silence!” he announced. “As an alternative — death! You know little. Will
all of you consent to swear upon your honor that nothing which has occurred
here will be mentioned elsewhere? By this I mean absolute silence! You will not
come back here to investigate anything. You will not tell your wives. You will
not open your mouths even upon the witness stand in case you are called! My
price is one thousand apiece.
“In case one of you betrays me I
give you my word that this man shall die! I am rich. I can hire men to do
murder. Well, what do you say?”
The men glanced apprehensively
about. The threatening Luger decided them. To a man they accepted the blue
slips — and, save for one witness who lost all sense of fear and morality in
drink, none of the fifty-six has broken his pledge, as far as I know. That one
bricklayer died later in delirium tremens.
III
They found him the first time,
mouthing meaningless phrases concerning an amoeba — one of the tiny forms of
protoplasmic life he was known to have studied. Also he leaped into a hysteria
of self-accusation. He had murdered two innocent people! The tragedy was his
crime. He had drowned them in ooze! Ah, God!
Unfortunately for all concerned,
Cranmer, dazed and indubitably stark insane, chose to perform a strange
travesty on fishing four miles to the west of his lodge — on the further border
of Moccasin Swamp. His clothing had been torn to shreds, his hat was gone, and
he was coated from head to foot with gluey mire. It was far from strange that
the good folk of Shanksville, who never had glimpsed the eccentric millionaire,
failed to associate him with Cranmer.
They took him in, searched his
pockets — finding no sign save an inordinate sum of money — and then put him
under medical care. Two precious weeks elapsed before Dr. Quirk reluctantly
acknowledged that he could do nothing more for this patient, and notified the
proper authorities.
Then much more time was wasted. Hot
April and half of still hotter May passed by before the loose ends were
connected. Then it did little good to know that this raving unfortunate was
Cranmer, or that the two persons of whom he shouted in disconnected delirium
actually had disappeared. Alienists absolved him of responsibility. He was
confined in a cell reserved for the violent.
Meanwhile, strange things occurred
back at the Lodge — which now, for good and sufficient reason, was becoming
known to dwellers of the woods as Dead House. Until one of the walls fell in,
however, there had been no chance to see — unless one possessed the temerity to
climb either one of the tall live oaks, or mount the barrier itself. No doors
or opening of any sort had been placed in that hastily contructed wall!
By the time the western side of the
wall fell, not a native for miles around but feared the spot far more than even
the bottomless, snake-infested bogs which lay to west and north.
The single statement was all John Corliss
Cranmer ever gave to the world. It proved sufficient. An immediate search was
instituted. It showed that less than three weeks before the day of initial
reckoning, his son and Peggy had come to visit him for the second time that
winter — leaving Elsie in company of the Daniels pair. They had rented a pair
of Gordons for quail hunting, and had gone out. That was the last anyone had
seen of them.
The backwoods Negro who glimpsed
them stalking a covey behind their two pointing dogs had known no more — even
when sweated through twelve hours of third degree. Certain suspicious
circumstances (having to do only with his regular pursuit of “shinny”
transportation) had caused him to fall under suspicion at first. He was
dropped.
Two days later the scientist himself
was apprehended — a gibbering idiot who sloughed his pole — holding on to the
baited hook — into a marsh where nothing save moccasins, an errant alligator,
or amphibian life could have been snared.
His mind was three-quarters dead.
Cranmer then was in the state of the dope fiend who rouses to a sitting
position to ask seriously how many Bolshevists were killed by Julius Caesar
before he was stabbed by Brutus, or why it was that Roller canaries sang only
on Wednesday evenings. He knew that tragedy of the most sinister sort had
stalked through his life — but little more, at first.
Later the police obtained that one
statement that he had murdered two human beings, but never could means or
motive be established. Official guess as to the means was no more than wild
conjecture; it mentioned enticing the victims to the noisome depths of Moccasin
Swamp, there to let them flounder and sink.
The two were his son and
daughter-in-law, Lee and Peggy!
IV
By feigning coma — then awakening with suddenness to assault three
attendants with incredible ferocity and strength — John Corliss Cranmer escaped
from Elizabeth Ritter Hospital.
How he hid, how he managed to
traverse sixty-odd intervening miles and still balk detection, remains a minor
mystery to be explained only by the assumption that maniacal cunning sufficed
to outwit saner intellects.
Traverse those miles he did, though
until I was fortunate enough to uncover evidence to this effect, it was
supposed generally that he had made his escape as stowaway on one of the banana
boats, or had buried himself in some portion of the nearer woods where he was
unknown. The truth ought to be welcome to householders of Shanksville,
Burdett's Corners and vicinage — those excusably prudent ones who to this day
keep loaded shotguns handy and barricade their doors at nightfall.
The first ten days of my
investigation may be touched upon in brief. I made headquarters in Burdett's
Corners, and drove out each morning, carrying lunch and returning for my grits
and piney-woods pork or mutton before nightfall. My first plan had been to camp
out at the edge of the swamp, for opportunity to enjoy the outdoors comes
rarely in my direction. Yet after one cursory examination of the premises, I
abandoned the idea. I did not want to camp alone there. And I am less
superstitious than a real estate agent.
It was, perhaps, psychic warning:
more probably the queer, faint, salt odor as of fish left to decay, which hung
about the ruin, made too unpleasant an impression upon my olfactory sense. I
experienced a distinct chill every time the lengthening shadows caught me near
Dead House.
The smell impressed me. In newspaper
reports of the case one ingenious explanation had been worked out. To the rear
of the spot where Dead House had stood — inside the wall — was a swampy hollow
circular in shape. Only a little real mud lay in the bottom of the bowl-like
depression now, but one reporter on the staff of The Mobile Register guessed
that during the tenancy of the lodge it had been a fishpool. Drying up of the
water had killed the fish, who now permeated the remnant of mud with this foul
odor.
The possibility that Cranmer had
needed to keep fresh fish at hand for some of his experiments silenced the
natural objection that in a country where every stream holds gar, pike, bass,
catfish and many other edible varieties, no one would dream of stocking a
stagnant puddle.
After tramping about the enclosure,
testing the queerly brittle, desiccated top stratum of earth within and speculating
concerning the possible purpose of the wall, I cut off a long limb of
chinaberry and probed the mud. One fragment of fish spine would confirm the
guess of that imaginative reporter.
I found nothing resembling a piscal
skeleton, but established several facts. First, this mud crater had definite
bottom only three or four feet below the surface of remaining ooze. Second, the
fishy stench become stronger as I stirred. Third, at one time the mud, water,
or whatever had comprised the balance of content, had reached the rim of the
bowl. The last showed by certain marks plain enough when the crusty, two-inch
stratum of upper coating was broken away. It was puzzling.
The nature of that thin, desiccated
effluvium which seemed to cover everything even to the lower foot or two of
brick, came in for next inspection. It was strange stuff, unlike any earth I
ever had seen, though undoubtedly some form of scum drained in from the swamp
at the time of river floods or cloudbursts (which in this section are common
enough in spring and fall). It crumbled beneath the fingers. When I walked over
it, the stuff crunched hollowly. In fainter degree it possesed the fishy odor
also.
I took some samples where it lay
thickest upon the ground, and also a few where there seemed to be no more than
a depth of a sheet of paper. Later I would have a laboratory analysis made.
Apart from any possible bearing the
stuff might have upon the disappearance of my three friends, I felt the tug of
article interest — that wonder over anything strange or seemingly inexplicable
which lends the hunt for fact a certain glamor and romance all its own. To
myself I was going to have to explain sooner or later just why this lay er
covered the entire space within the walls and was not perceptible anywhere
outside! The enigma could wait, however — or so I decided.
Far more interesting were the traces
of violence apparent on wall and what once had been a house. The latter seemed
to have been ripped from its foundations by a giant hand, crushed out of
semblance to a dwelling, and then cast in fragments about the base of wall —
mainly on the south side, where heaps of twisted, broken timbers lay in
profusion. On the opposite side there had been such heaps once, but now only
charred sticks, coated with that gray-black, omnipresent coat of desiccation,
remained. These piles of charcoal had been sifted and examined most carefully
by the authorities, as one theory had been advanced that Cranmer had burned the
bodies of his victims. Yet no sign whatever of human remains was discovered.
The fire, however, pointed out one
odd fact which controverted the reconstructions made by detectives months
before. The latter, suggesting the dried scum to have drained in from the
swamp, believed that the house timbers had floated out to the sides of the
wall—there to arrange themselves in a series of piles! The absurdity of such a
theory showed even more plainly in the fact that if the scum had filtered
through in such a flood, the timbers most certainly had been dragged into piles
previously! Some had burned — and the scum coated their charred surfaces! What
had been the force which had torn the lodge to bits as if in spiteful fury? Why
had the parts of the wreckage been burned, the rest to escape?
Right here I felt was the keynote to
the mystery, yet I could imagine no explanation. That John Corliss Cranmer
himself — physically sound, yet a man who for decades had led a sedentary life
— could have accomplished such a destruction, unaided, was difficult to
believe.
V
I turned my attention to the wall,
hoping for evidence which might suggest another theory.
That wall had been an example of the
worst snide construction. Though little more than a year old, the parts left
standing showed evidence that they had begun to decay the day the last brick
was laid. The mortar had fallen from the interstices. Here and there a brick
had cracked and dropped out. Fibrils of the climbing vines had penetrated
crevices, working for early destruction.
And one side already had fallen.
It was here that the first
glimmering suspicion of the terrible truth was forced upon me. The scattered
bricks, even those which had rolled inward toward the gaping foundation ledge,
had not been coated with scum! This was curious, yet it could be explained by
surmise that the flood itself had undermined this weakest portion of the wall.
I cleared away a mass of brick from the spot on which the structure had stood;
to my surprise I found it exceptionally firm! Hard red clay lay beneath! The
flood conception was faulty; only some great force, exerted from inside or
outside, could have wreaked such destruction.
When careful measurement, analysis
and deduction convinced me — mainly from the fact that the lowermost layers of
brick all had fallen outward, while the upper portions toppled in — I began to
link up this mysterious and horrific force with the one which had rent the
Lodge asunder. It looked as though a typhoon or gigantic centrifuge had needed
elbow room in ripping down the wooden structure.
But I got nowhere with the theory,
though in ordinary affairs I am called a man of too great imaginative
tendencies. No less than three editors have cautioned me on this point. Perhaps
it was the narrowing influence of great personal sympathy — yes, and love. I
make no excuses, though beyond a dim understanding that some terrific,
implacable force must have made spot his playground, I ended my ninth day of
note-taking and investigation almost as much in the dark as I had been while a
thousand miles away in Chicago.
Then I started among the darkies and
Cajans. A whole day I listened to yarns of the days which preceded Cranmer's
escape from Elizabeth Ritter Hospital — days in which furtive men sniffed
poisoned air for miles around Dead House, finding the odor intolerable. Days in
which it seemed none possessed nerve enough to approach close. Days when the
most fanciful tales of medieval superstitions were spun. These tales I shall
not give; the truth is incredible enough.
At noon upon the eleventh day I
chanced upon Rori Pailleron, a Cajan — and one of the least prepossessing of
all with whom I had come in contact. “Chanced” perhaps is a bad word. I had
listed every dweller of the woods within a five-mile radius. Rori was sixteenth
on my list. I went to him only after interviewing all four of the Crabiers and
two whole families of Pichons. And Rori regarded me with the utmost suspicion
until I made him a present of the two quarts of “shinny” purchased of the
Pichons.
Because long practice has perfected
me in the technique of seeming to drink another man's awful liquor — no, I'm
not an absolute prohibitionist; fine wine or twelve-year-in-cask Bourbon
whiskey arouses my definite interest — I fooled Pailleron from the start. I
shall omit preliminaries, and leap to the first admission from him that he knew
more concerning Dead House and its former inmates than any of the other darkies
or Cajans roundabout.
“…But I ain't talkin'. Sacre! If I
should open my gab, what might fly out? It is for keeping silent, y'r damn
right!…”
I agreed. He was a wise man —
educated to some extent in the queer schools and churches maintained
exclusively by Cajans in the depths of the woods, yet naive withal.
We drank. And I never had to ask another
leading question. The made him want to interest me; and the only extraordinary
in this whole neck of the woods was the Dead House.
Three-quarters of a pint of acrid,
nauseous fluid, and he hinted darkly.
A pint, and he told me something I
scarcely could believe. Another half-pint… But I shall give his confession in
condensed form.
He had known Joe Sibley, the
octoroon chef, houseman and valet who served Cranmer. Through Joe, Rori had
furnished certain indispensables in way of food to the Cranmer household. At
first, these salable articles had been exclusively vegetable — white and yellow
turnip, sweet potatoes, corn and beans — but later, meat!
Yes, meat especially — whole lambs,
slaughtered and quartered, the coarsest variety of piney-woods pork and beef,
all in immense quantity!
VI
In December of the fatal winter, Lee
and his wife stopped down at the Lodge for ten days or thereabouts.
They were en route to Cuba at the
time, intending to be away five or six weeks. Their original plan had been only
to wait over a day or so in the piney-woods, but something caused an amendment
to the scheme.
The two dallied. Lee seemed to have
become vastly absorbed in something — so much absorbed that it was only when
Peggy insisted upon continuing their trip that he could tear himself away.
It was during those ten days that he
began buying meat. Meager bits of it at first — a rabbit, a pair of squirrels,
or perhaps a few quail beyond the number he and Peggy shot. Rori furnished the
game, thinking nothing of it except that Lee paid double prices — and insisted
upon keeping the purchases secret from other members of the household.
“I'm putting it across on the
Governor, Rori!” he said once with a wink. "Going to give him the shock of
his life. So you mustn't let on, even to Joe, about what I want you to do.
Maybe it won't work out, but if it does…! Dad'll have the scientific world at
his feet! He doesn't blow his own horn anywhere near enough, you know.”
Rori didn't know. Hadn't a suspicion
what Lee was talking about. Still, if this rich, young idiot wanted to pay him
a half dollar in good silver coin for a quail that anyone — himself included —
could knock down with a five-cent shell, Rori was well satisfied to keep his
mouth shut. Each evening he brought some of the small game. And each day Lee
Cranmer seemed to have use for an additional quail or so...
When he was ready to leave for Cuba,
Lee came forward with the strangest of propositions. He fairly whispered his
vehemence and desire for secrecy! He would tell Rori, and would pay the Cajan
five hundred dollars — half in advance, and half at the end of five weeks when
Lee himself would return from Cuba — provided Rori agreed to adhere absolutely
to a certain secret program! The money was more than a fortune to Rori; it was
undreamt of affluence. The Cajan acceded.
“He wuz tellin' me then how the ol'
man had raised some kind of pet,” Rori confided, “an' wanted to get shet of it.
So he give it to Lee, tellin' him to kill it, but Lee was sot on foolin' him.
W'at I ask yer is, w'at kind of a pet is it w'at lives down in a mud sink an'
eats a couple hawgs every night?”
I couldn't imagine, so I pressed him
for further details. Here at last was something which sounded like a clue!
He really knew too little. The
agreement with Lee provided that if Rori carried out the provisions exactly, he
should be paid extra and at his exorbitant scale of all additional outlay, when
Lee returned.
The young man gave him a daily
schedule which Rori showed. Each evening he was to procure, slaughter and cut
up a definite — and growing — amount of meat. Every item was checked, and I saw
that they ran from five pounds up to forty!
“What in heaven's name did you do
with it?” I demanded, excited now and pouring him an additional drink for fear
caution might return to him.
“Took it through the bushes in back
an' slung it in the mud sink there! An' suthin' come up an' drug it down!”
“A gator?”
“Diable! How should I know? It was
dark. I wouldn't go close.” He shuddered, and the fingers which lifted his
glass shook as with sudden chill. “Mebbe you'd of done it, huh? Not me, though!
The young fellah tole me to sling it in, an' I slung it.
“A couple times I come around in the
light, but there wasn't nuthin' there you could see. Jes' mud, an' some water.
Mebbe the thing didn't come out in daytimes…”
“Perhaps not,” I agreed, straining
every mental resource to imagine what Lee's sinister pet could have been. “But
you said something about two hogs a day? What did you mean by that? This paper,
proof enough that you're telling the truth so far, states that on the
thirty-fifth day you were to throw forty pounds of meat — any kind — into the
sink. Two hogs, even the piney-woods variety, weigh a lot more than forty
pounds!”
“Them was after — after he come
back!”
From this point onward, Rori's tale
became more and more enmeshed in the vagaries induced by bad liquor. His tongue
thickened. I shall give his story without attempt to reproduce further verbal
barbarities, or the occasional prodding I had to give in order to keep him from
maundering into foolish jargon.
Lee had paid munificently. His only
objection to the manner in which Rori had carried out his orders was that the
orders themselves had been deficient. The pet, he said, had grown enormously.
It was hungry; ravenous. Lee himself had supplemented the fare with huge pails
of scraps from the kitchen.
From that day Lee purchased from
Rori whole sheep and hogs! The Cajan continued to bring the carcasses at
nightfall, but no longer did Lee permit him to approach the pool. The young man
appeared chronically excited. He had a tremendous secret — one the extent of
which even his father did not guess, and one which would astonish the world!
Only a week or two more and he would spring it. First he would have to arrange
certain data.
Then came the day when everyone
disappeared from Dead House. Rori came around several times, but concluded that
all of the occupants had folded tents and departed — doubtless taking their
mysterious “pet” along. Only when he saw from a distance Joe, the octoroon
servant, returning along the road on foot toward the Lodge, did his slow mental
processes begin to ferment. That afternoon Rori visited the strange place for
the next to last time.
He did not go to the Lodge himself —
and there were reasons. While still some hundreds of yards away from the place
a terrible, sustained screaming reached his ears! It was faint, yet
unmistakably the voice of Joe! Throwing a pair of number two shells into the
breech of his shotgun, Rori hurried on, taking his usual path through the brush
at the back.
He saw — and as he told me, even
“shinny” drunkenness fled his chattering tones — Joe, the octoroon. Aye, he
stood in the yard, far from the pool into which Rori had thrown the carcasses —
and Joe could not move!
Rori failed to explain in full, but
something, a slimy, amorphous something, which glistened in the sunlight,
already engulfed the man to his shoulders! Breath was cut off. Joe's contorted
face writhed with horror and beginning suffocation. One hand — all that was
free of the rest of him! — beat feebly upon the rubbery, translucent thing that
was engulfing his body!
Then Joe sank from sight…
VII
Five days of liquored indulgence
passed before Rori, along in his shaky cabin, convinced himself that he had
seen a phantasy born of alcohol. He came back the last time — to find a high
wall of brick surrounding the Lodge, and including the pool of mud into which
he had thrown the meat!
While he hesitated, circling the
place without discovering an opening — which he would not have dared to use,
even had he found it — a crashing, tearing of timbers, and persistent sound of
awesome destruction came from within. He swung himself into one of the oaks
near the wall. And he was just in time to see the last supporting stanchions of
the Lodge give way outward!
The whole structure came apart. The
roof fell in — yet seemed to move after it had fallen! Logs of wall deserted
layers of plywood in the grasp of the shearing machine!
That was all. Soddenly intoxicated
now, Rori mumbled more phrases, giving me the idea that on another day when he
became sober once more, he might add to his statements, but I — numbed to the
soul — scarcely cared. If that which he related was true, what nightmare of
madness must have been consummated here!
I could vision some things now which
concerned Lee and Peggy, horrible things. Only remembrance of Elsie kept me
faced forward in the search — for now it seemed almost that the handiwork of a
madman must be preferred to what Rori claimed to have seen! What had been that
sinister translucent thing? That glistening thing which jumped upward about a
man, smothering, engulfing?
Queerly enough, though such a theory
as came most easily to mind now would have outraged reason in me if suggested
concerning total strangers, I asked myself only what details of Rori's
revelation had been exaggerated by fright and fumes of liquor. And as I sat on
the creaking bench in his cabin, staring unseeing as he lurched down to the
floor, fumbling with a lock box of green tin which lay under his cot, and
muttering, the answer to all my questions lay within reach!
It was not until next day, however,
that I made the discovery. Heavy of heart I had reexamined the spot where the
Lodge had stood, then made my way to the Cajan's cabin again, seeking sober
confirmation of what he had told me during intoxication.
In imagining that
such a spree for Rori would be ended by a single night, however, I was
mistaken. He lay sprawled almost as I had left him. Only two factors were
changed. No “shinny” was left — and lying open, with its miscellaneous contents
strewed about, was the tin box. Rori somehow had managed to open it with the
tiny key still clutched in his hand.
Concern for his safety alone was
what made me notice the box. It was a receptacle for small fishing tackle of
the sort carried here and there by any sportsman. Tangles of Dowagiac minnows,
spool hooks ranging in size to silver-backed number eights; three reels still
carrying line of different weights, spinners, casting plus, wobblers, floating
baits, were spilled out upon the rough plank flooring where they might snag
Rori badly if he rolled. I gathered them, intending to save him an accident.
With the miscellaneous assortment in
my hands, however, I stopped dead. Something had caught my eye — something
lying flush with the bottom of the lock box! I stared, and then swiftly tossed
the hooks and other impediments upon the table. What I had glimpsed there in
the box was a loose-leaf notebook of the sort used for recording laboratory
data! And Rori scarcely could read, let alone write!
Feverishly, a riot of recognition,
surmise, hope and fear bubbling in my brain, I grabbed the book and threw it
open. At once I knew that this was the end. The pages were scribbled in pencil,
but the handwriting was that precise chirography I knew as belonging to John
Corliss Cranmer, the scientist!
Could he not have obeyed my
instructions! Oh, God! This…
These were the words at top of the
first page which met my eye.
Because knowledge of the
circumstances, the relation of which I pried out of the reluctant Rori only
some days later when I had him in Mobile as a police witness for the sake of my
friend's vindication, is necessary to understanding, I shall interpolate.
Rori had not told me everything. On
his late visit to the vicinage of Dead House he saw more. A crouching figure,
seated Turk fashion on top of the wall, appeared to be writing industriously.
Rori recognized the man as Cranmer, yet did not hail him. He had no
opportunity.
Just as the Cajan came near, Cranmer
rose, thrust the notebook, which had rested across his knees, into the box.
Then he turned, tossed outside the wall both the locked box and a ribbon to
which was attached the key.
Then his arms raised toward heavens.
For five seconds he seemed to invoke the mercy of Power beyond all of man's
scientific prying. And finally he leaped, inside…!
Rori did not climb to investigate.
He knew that directly below this portion of wall lay the mud sink into which he
had thrown the chunks of meat!
VIII
This is a true transcription of the
statement I inscribed, telling the sequence of actual events at Dead House. The
original of the statement now lies in the archives of the detective department.
Cranmer's notebook, though written
in a precise hand, yet betrayed the man's insanity by incoherence and frequent
repetitions. My statement has been accepted now, both by alienists and by
detectives who had entertained different theories in respect to the case. It
quashes the noisome hints and suspicions regarding three of the finest
Americans who ever lived – and also one queer supposition dealing with supposed
criminal tendencies in poor Joe, the octoroon.
John Corliss Cranmer went insane for
sufficient cause!
As readers of popular fiction know
well, Lee Cranmer's forte was the writing of what is called — among fellows in
the craft — pseudo-scientific story. In plain words, this means a yarn, based
upon solid fact in the field of astronomy, chemistry, anthropology or what-not,
whichcarries to logical conclusion improved theories of men who devote their
lives to searching out further nadirs of fact.
In certain fashion these men are
allies of science. Often they visualize something which has not been imagined
even by the best of men from whom they secure data, thus opening new horizons
of possibility. In a large way Jules Verne was one of these men in his day; Lee
Cranmer bade fair to carry on the work in worthy fashion — work taken up for a
period by an Englishman named Wells, but abandoned for stories of a different —
and, in my humble opinion, less absorbing — type.
Lee wrote three novels, all
published, which dealt with such subjects — two of the three secured from his
own father's labors, and the other speculating upon the discovery and possible
uses of inter-atomic energy. Upon John Corliss Cranmer's return from Prague
that fatal winter, the father informed Lee that a greater subject than any with
which the young man had dealt now could be tapped.
Cranmer, senior, had devised a way
in which the limiting factors in protozoic life and growth, could be nullified;
in time, and with cooperation of biologists who specialized upon karyokinesis
and embryology of higher forms, he hoped — to put the theory in pragmatic terms
— to be able to grow swine the size of elephants, quail or woodcock with
breasts from which a hundredweight of white meat could be cut away, and steers
whose dehorned heads might butt at the third story of a skyscraper!
Such result would revolutionize the
methods of food supply, of course. It also would hold out hope for all
undersized specimens of humanity — provided only that if factors inhibiting
growth could be deleted, some methods of stopping gianthood also could be
developed.
Cranmer the elder, through use of an
undescribed (in the notebook) growth medium of which one constituent was
agar-agar, and the use of radium emanations, had succeeded in bringing about
apparently unrestricted growth in the paramoecium protozoan, certain of the
vegetable growths (among which were bacteria), and in the amorphous cell of
protoplasm known as the amoeba — the last a single cell containing only
nucleolus, nucleus, and a space known as the contractile vacuole which somehow
aided in throwing off particles impossible to assimilate directly. This point
may be remembered in respect to the piles of lumber left near the outside walls
surrounding Dead House!
When Lee Cranmer and his wife came
south to visit, John Corliss Cranmer showed his son an amoeba — normally an organism
visible under low-power microscope — which he had absolved from natural growth
inhibitions. This amoeba, a rubbery, amorphous mass of protoplasm, was of the
size then of a large beef liver. It could have been held in two cupped hands,
placed side by side.
“How large could it grow?” asked
Lee, wide-eyed and interested.
“So far as I know,” answered his
father, “there is no limit now! It might, if it got food enough, grow to be as
big as the Masonic Temple!
“But take it out and kill it.
Destroy the organism utterly — burning the fragments — else there is no telling
what might happen. The amoeba, as I have explained, reproduces by simple
division. Any fragment remaining might be dangerous.”
Lee took the rubbery, translucent
giant cell — but he did not obey orders. Instead of destroying it as his father
had directed, Lee thought out a plan. Suppose he should grow this organism to
tremendous size? Suppose, when the tale of his father's accomplishment were
spread, an amoeba of many tons weight could be shown in evidence? Lee, of
somewhat sensational cast of mind, determined instantly to keep secret the fact
that he was not destroying the organism, but encouraging its further growth.
Thought of possible peril never crossed his mind.
He arranged to have the thing fed —
allowing for normal increase of size in an abnormal thing. It fooled him only
by growing much more rapidly. When he came back from Cuba the amoeba
practically filled the whole of the mud sink hollow. He had to give it much
greater supplies…
The giant cell came to absorb as
much as two hogs in a single day. During daylight, while hunger still was
appeased, it never emerged, however. That remained for the time that it could
secure no more food near at hand to satisfy its ravenous and increasing
appetite.
Only instinct for the sensational
kept Lee from telling Peggy, his wife, all about the matter. Lee hoped to
spring a coup which would immortalize his father, and surprise his wife
terrifically. Therefore, he kept his own counsel — and made bargains with the
Cajan, Rori, who supplied food daily for the shapeless monster of the pool.
The tragedy itself came suddenly and
unexpectedly. Peggy, feeding the two Gordon setters that Lee and she used for
quail hunting, was in the Lodge yard before sunset. She romped alone, as Lee
himself was dressing.
Of a sudden her screams cut the
still air! Without her knowledge, ten foot pseudopods — those flowing tentacles
of protoplasm sent forth by the sinister occupant of the pool — slid out and
around her putteed ankles.
For a moment at first she did not
understand. Then, the horrid suspicion of truth, her cries rent the air. Lee,
at that time struggling to lace a pair of high shoes, straightened, paled, and
grabbed a revolver as he dashed out.
In another room a scientist,
absorbed in his note-taking, glanced up, frowned, and then — recognizing the
voice — shed his white gown and came out. He was too late to do aught but gasp
with horror.
In the yard Peggy was half engulfed
in a squamous, rubbery something which at first he could not analyze.
Lee, his boy, was fighting with the
sticky folds, and slowly, surely, losing his own grip upon the earth!
IX
John Corliss Cranmer was by no means
a coward; he stared, cried aloud, then ran indoors, seizing the first two
weapons which came to hand — a shotgun and hunting knife which lay in sheath in
a cartridged belt across hook of the hall-tree. The knife was ten inches in
length and razor-keen.
Cranmer rushed out again. He saw an
indecent fluid something which as yet he had not had time to classify — lumped
into a six-foot-high center before his very eyes! It looked like one of the
micro-organisms he had studied! One grown to frightful dimensions. An amoeba!
There, some minutes suffocated in
the rubbery folds — yet still apparent beneath the glistening ooze of this
monster — were two bodies.
They were dead. He knew it.
Nevertheless he attacked the flowing, senseless monster with his knife. Shot
would do no good. And he found that even the deep, terrific slashes made by his
knife closed together in a moment and healed. The monster was invulnerable to
ordinary attack!
A pair of pseudopods sought out his
ankles, attempting to bring him low. Both of these he severed — and escaped.
Why did he try? He did not know. The two whom he had sought to rescue were
dead, buried under folds of this horrid thing he knew to be his own discovery
and fabrication.
Then it was that revulsion and
insanity came upon him.
There ended the story of John
Corliss Cranmer, save for one hastily scribbled paragraph — evidently written
at the time Rori had seen him atop the wall.
May we not supply with assurance the
intervening steps?
Cranmer was known to have purchased
a whole pen of hogs a day or two following the tragedy. These animals were
never seen again. During the time the wall was being constructed is it not
reasonable to assume that he fed the giant organism within — to keep it quiet?
His scientist brain must have visualized clearly the havoc and horror which
could be wrought by the loathsome thing if it ever were driven by hunger to
flow away from the Lodge and prey upon the country-side!
With the wall once in place, he
evidently figured that starvation or some other means which he could supply
would kill the thing. One of the means had been made by setting fire to several
piles of the disgorged timbers; probably this had no effect whatever.
The amoeba was to accomplish still
more destruction. In the throes of hunger it threw its gigantic, formless
strength against the walls from the inside; then every edible morsel within was
house assimilated, the logs, rafters and other fragments being worked out
through the contractile vacuole.
During some of its last struggles,
undoubtedly, the side wall of brick was weakened — not to collapse, however,
until the giant amoeba no longer could take advantage of the breach. In final
death lassitude, the amoeba stretched itself out in a thin layer over the
ground. There it succumbed, though there is no means of estimating how long a
time intervened.
The last paragph in Cramer's
notebook, scrawled so badly that it is possible some words I have not
deciphered correctly, reads as follows:
In my work I have found the means of
creating a monster. The unnatural thing, in turn, has destroyed my work and
those whom I held dear. It is in vain that I assure myself of innocence of
spirit. Mine is the crime of presumption. Now, as expedition — worthless though
that may be — I give myself…
It is better not to think of that
last leap, and the struggle of an insane man in the grip of the dying monster.
