Chapter 7 - "The Locked Door"


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. 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 was being 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 white-haired man, noddding 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 Blue-Beard'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 acknowledgment of my complaisance. The main entrance
to the enclosure we 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 white-haired 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 white-haired 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 deck-chair 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, that 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 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
peculiarly furtive manner, quite unlike the frank stare of your
unsophisticated savage. Indeed, 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 brown 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 odd 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, to read which 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 that he deserved to be; but I still think that 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 who have once fallen under the overmastering spell of research.
He was unmarried, and had indeed nothing but his own interest
to consider.

I felt convinced that this must be the same man. Everything pointed
to it. It dawned upon me to what end the puma and the other animals--
which had now been brought with other luggage into the enclosure
behind the house--were destined; and a curious faint odour,
the halitus of something familiar, an odour that had been in
the background of my consciousness hitherto, suddenly came forward
into the forefront of my thoughts. It was the antiseptic odour
of the dissecting-room. I heard the puma growling through the wall,
and one of the dogs yelped as though it had been struck.

Yet surely, and especially to another scientific man, there was
nothing so horrible in vivisection as to account for this secrecy;
and by some odd leap in my thoughts the pointed ears and luminous
eyes of Montgomery's attendant came back again before me with
the sharpest definition. I stared before me out at the green sea,
frothing under a freshening breeze, and let these and other strange
memories of the last few days chase one another through my mind.

What could it all mean? A locked enclosure on a lonely island,
a notorious vivisector, and these crippled and distorted men?