Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 1 (1925-01).djvu/159

158 I have been trying for months to obtain possession of the person of some criminal condemned to death, that I might subject him to my theory as his dying breath fled, bearing with it his soul—that about which all men theorize, but which none have yet seen or conceived of as have I."

"The idea is tremendous, Filippo. What have the authorities done about it?"

"They refuse to assist me, I cannot tell them all that I desire to do, naturally, or my rivals would try to get ahead of me. Their stupid, petty jealousy! Quanto è terribile!"

"Exactly what do you wish to do, and how is this bell to serve you?" inquired the doctor, a puzzled series of lines drawing across his forehead.

"I have observed, caro mio, that the vaporous soul of the lower animal is so much lighter than the ether around it that it withstands the pull of gravity and rises, swaying with whatever currents of air are in the atmosphere, always to a higher level, where it dissipates into invisibility.

"I have been trying to possess myself of a living human being whose life was useless to the world, that his death might be made of transcendent value through my scientific knowledge. I constructed this crystal bell for a wonderful and stupendous purpose. It is intended to hold the tenuous wraith of the subject of my experiment.

"The valve above, open at first, will permit the air to escape at the top of the bell as it becomes displaced by the ascending essence of the dying man's soul. Then, when I pull the chain, thereby closing the valve, the soul would be retained by its own volatile nature within the bell, being unable to seek a lower level."

"Filippo, you astound me!"

There was something more than astonishment in the doctor's face, however, as his eyes searched the countenance of the professor sharply.

"My idea is indeed awe-inspiring, caro dottore. Your wonder is very natural," said the professor graciously.

"It must be trying to have to wait so long for a suitable subject for your experiment," ventured the doctor, with a side glance.

"Ah, how I shall love and venerate that human being who furnishes me with such a subject!" cried the professor fervently.

A deep sigh followed closely upon his words. The curtain hanging before the doorway was pushed to one side, as Elena Panebianco walked slowly into the room.

"How you will gaze upon that imprisoned soul!" cried she, with a passionate intensity that startled the doctor anew, as he turned his regard from her husband to her. "If it were a soul that loved you, how happy it would be to know that your entire thoughts were centered upon it, within the crystal bell! To see your eyes always fixed upon it, as it floated there within!"

She leaned weakly against the dissecting table, and her great eyes, dark with melancholic emotion, stared wildly out of her thin, fever-flushed face.

"Tu sai tmpossibile!" cried the professor, "What tragic jealousy is yours, Elena! A jealousy of things that do not as yet exist!"

LENA did not reply. She loved too deeply, too passionately, too irrevocably. And the only return her husband made was to permit her assistance in his laboratory work. Her eager mind had flown apace with his; not that she loved the work for itself, but that she longed to gain his approbation. To him the alluring loveliness of her splendid body was as noth-