Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 1 (1925-01).djvu/20

Rh

INCLAIR stirred slightly, and his eyes opened. Once more his brain was beginning to function dimly, and be had a vague sensation of being closed in. He made to move his hand and discovered that he could not. His head felt as if it were rigidly held in a vise.

Slowly, as conscidusness came back to him, he became aware of his surroundings. He remembered entering the doctor's laboratory. Then the sudden blackness had come. He saw now that he was still in the laboratory. He supposed he had fainted. That no doubt accounted for the sensation of being bound. He became aware that he was sitting upright in a large, hard chair. He could not see the doctor.

Slowly, as if testing his faculties, he tried to turn his head. He felt as if something was pressing his head down, and discovered he could not move it. A new dizziness swept over him. Visions of sudden paralysis flickered through his brain. With an effort he regained control of himself. At least he could move his eyes. That was something, anyway. At this point he caught sight of his hands, which were lying along the arms of his chair, and he discovered that iron bands encircled his wrists and that these bands were fastened by a chain to the arms of the chair. Utterly at a loss, he tried to move his feet, only to learn, after moving them about six inches, that they were similarly fastened.

He closed his eyes, attempting to shake off what he supposed must be the nightmare of a dream.

At that moment he heard a step. Opening his eyes again, he discovered that Dr. Ainsworth had come round in front of him and was watching him smilingly.

"Ah, conscious again, I see," Ainsworth remarked in a tone of satisfaction. "Quite comfortable, I trust?"

Sinclair made a motion to pass his hands over his eyes and was reminded again that his hands were fastened. He looked stupidly at the other man.

"What has happened?"

The doctor gave a little chuckle and stood for a moment longer looking down at him before he answered.

"A little experiment. Just a little experiment."

He turned away and came back with a mirror, which he held up before the younger man.

Sinclair looked, and saw his head crowned with a metal cap, to which were attached strange-looking wires.

"I don't understand," he muttered. "I fainted, didn't I?"

Again the doetor laughed his curious, satisfied laugh.

"Not exactly," he said. "No, not exactly. I'm afraid I must plead guilty to having put something into your coffee."

Sinclair would have shaken his head in bewilderment, but his head was secured, as he had noticed in the mirror, by a vise attached to the back of the chair.

"I don't understand," he repeated. "Please explain what has happened. Why am I fastened like this?"

The doctor had laid aside the mirror and now stood facing the young man in the chair. Behind him, lone rows of labeled bottles and phials formed an appropriate background, together with instruments of which Sinclair could not guess the use.

The doctor's manner was now that of a lecturer addressing his class.

"I shall have to take your mind back some time," he began. "You will no doubt reeall hearing that very interesting little story of a German captain and his captured spies, who were given the choice, you will remember, of going to a known certain death or of meeting a fate the nature of which remained a mystery."