Page:Weird Tales v02 n01 (1923-07-08).djvu/22

Rh almost at my side on the floor, inert and deathlike.

As I crawled from under the heavy table Wier’s former wife entered the room. She spied him; became a demon! Stealthily she approached him. Others came after her. She fell upon him, tore at his throat; scratched his face; sank her teeth in his flesh

One by one her companions joined her, and only Love—blind, illusioned Love—fought for the beast. As I watched in a trance of terror, horrified, yet unable to prevent, Wier lost all human shape

Retribution!

The study grew constantly brighter. Smoke filled the place. The costly velvet drapes were blazing columns of flames. The study was growing unbearably hot, too.

With a shock, I realized my danger—a new danger, no less awful than the one from which I had just escaped. Flaming bits of wood and cloth fell about me. I rushed into the room where Wier had kept his puppets confined. No hope there; no windows, no doors.

I flew back to the fiery inferno and dashed about despairingly. I could not find the door!

Despair! Then hope, as Wier's words came back to me—"by simply having a trap underneath"—the twelfth sarcophagus!

I ran to it and shoved. It would not budge. Time after time I tried it, but with no success. The heat was scorching in its intensity, and the drapes were now roaring to the floor, masses of flame. The victims of Wier's flagrant crime were still fighting over him, indifferent to the heat. If one of the curtains should fall on me

I gave one mighty heave with the sudden strength of despair, The sarcophagus tottered, and fell. The panel upon which it had been resting came up with it, revealing a black rectangular hole. I staggered on the edge a moment, dizzy with exertion. Then I plunged into the blackness.

AYS PASSED before I regained my faculties—days in which I seemed to be forever falling. But it was many months before I fully recovered from the shock. It was not until then that I was told that lightning had struck the dome of Wier's home and set it on fire, and that firemen had stumbled on my body by merest chance. All of Wier's unfortunate victims perished in the sombre room of the black velvet drapes and the twelve sarcophagi. Perhaps it was for the best

But never will I, come what may, forget those few terrible hours when my emotions, the castles of my mind, were almost taken from me.

UR OLD PROFESSOR, Sven Borgen, has become famous almost over night," I remarked, glancing up from the morning paper. "You remember him, don't you, Pat?"

"Sure," returned McKane, lazily flicking an imaginary speck of dust from his burnt-orange tie. "The Swede who used to lecture on psychology at G. W. I. during our last year there. He was bow-legged and had a cast in his right eye. Erratic nut, what? We used to call him Bug. What has he done now? Proclaimed himself emperor of Wuzu or eloped with his grandmother?"

"Nothing of such international concern," I said. "But he appears to have gotten himself in the limelight just the same. A few days ago it became known that he had perfected an operation for grafting the brain of an animal in the cranium of another animal of the same species, in much the same way, as I understand it, that living tissue and bone are grafted on human beings."

"Ah!" rejoined McKane, and yawned. "What is Consolidated Steel quoted at this morning?"

"His experiments have been successful to a degree almost past belief," I continued, ignoring his question. "The paper says that out of fifty operations performed on dogs and other small mammals only two proved fatal. These operations, the account continues, have been performed chiefly on living animals, but in one case at least the brain of a live dog was grafted in the cranium of a dog killed by concussion of the brain. The dead dog was brought to life."

"Tough on the first pup," Pat commented.

"Although Borgen's experiments have been confined to animal subjects," I resumed, "he was recently granted permission by the Swedish authorities to experiment with incurable patients in an asylum for the insane, but on the very day the story was given out to the papers—which, by the way, are playing it up big—he was run over by street car and instantly killed."

"Lucky devil," said McKane, without much interest. "If he had lived he would have ended his days in a dippy-house. Brain-graft? Pooh! The man had ants in his attic."

"I don't know so much about that,” I rejoined. "The paper says—"

"Bunk!" McKane interrupted rudely.

"The paper says," I continued doggedly, "that he—"

"Piffle!"

"You are wrong," interposed a quiet voice behind us. Piffle' is scarcely the word. The story about Doctor Borgen in the morning papers is quite true. I happen to know the facts in the case."

I turned my head sharply and gazed at the speaker. He had stopped directly behind my chair and was gazing over my shoulder at the paper spread out over my knees.

He was a tall man of uncertain age and nationality, although there was an elusive something about him that suggested the Scandinavian. He had a saturnine face the color of old parchment, a hawklike nose, and a pair of glittering blue eyes that appeared greenly iridescent when one gazed into their depths. He was dressed in a shabby black suit of clothes, wore a slouch hat pulled down over his forehead, and a well-known brand of cigarette hung from between his thin red lips.

An unprepossessing person, in short, and yet, strangely enough, one who at once roused my interest.

"And who the devil might you be?" asked McKane, looking him up and down with an insolent eye.

"I beg your pardon," returned the stranger, without embarrassment, "I