Page:Magician 1908.djvu/281

 steady but extreme heat. Arthur’s gaze travelled slowly from table to table, and he wondered what Haddo’s experiments had really been. The air was heavy with an extraordinary odour: it was not musty like that of the closed rooms through which they had passed, but singularly pungent, disagreeable and sickly. He asked himself what it could spring from. Then his eyes fell upon a huge receptacle that stood on the table nearest to the furnace. It was covered with a white cloth. He went up to it and took this off. The vessel was about four feet high, round, and shaped somewhat like a washing tub, but it was made of glass more than an inch thick. In it was a spherical mass, a little larger than a football, of a peculiar, livid colour. The surface was smooth, but rather coarsely grained, and over it ran a dense system of blood-vessels. It reminded the two medical men of those huge tumours which are preserved in spirit in hospital museums. Susie looked at it with an incomprehensible disgust. Suddenly she gave a cry.

“Good God, it’s moving!”

Arthur put his hand on her arm quickly to quieten her and bent down with irresistible curiosity. They saw that it was a mass of flesh, but of some strange, horrible flesh unlike that of any human being; and it pulsated regularly. The movement was quite distinct, up and down, like the delicate heaving of a woman’s breast when she is asleep. Arthur touched the thing with one finger and it shrank slightly.

“It’s quite warm,” he said.