The Professor's Last Experiment

Front matter

BY S^^iNLEY AND KITSON STEWART. LONDON : SWAN SONNENSCHEIN AND CO., PATEBNOSTER SQUARE. Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Ayleebury. CONTENTS. CPAP. PAGE I. LOOSE LINKS IN THE CHAIN OF EVIDENCE . . 1 II. A MYSTERIOUS VISITOR ..... 4 III. A YOUNG PHYSIOLOGIST . . . . .12 IV. A STRANGE HINT OF DANGER . . . .23 V. TOO LATE ........ 31 VI. A DOCUMENT PUT IN EVIDENCE . . . .40 VII. THE VICAR AND THE VIVISECTOR . . . .48 VIII. THE TESTIMONY OF THE LETTER . . . .62 IX. FROM AN ANTEROOM OF THE LABORATORY THE LETTER CONTINUED 7G X. THE EVIDENCE OF THE PROFESSOR'S NIECE . . 85 XI. MR. STONYCROFT AND DR. LEE WRIGHT . . .97 XII. THE MAN WHO POSTED THE LETTER . . .106 XIII. "GET ME THE GREY OVERCOAT" .... 115 ■XIV. CONCLUSION . . . . . . .124

Chapter I. Loose Links In The Chain Of Evidence

The public quickly forgets the most extraordinary cir cumstance which is not kept persistently and skilfully before it. The greatest mystery or the cruelest wrong awakens only a brief attention, unless it is to the interest and in the power of some one to keep attention alive by new detail and further discovery. The police ordinarily perform this office ; but when the police fail the public is content to forget. This was the case with a recent event, which served for a nine days' wonder, and then dropped out of the public papers and the memories of men. I refer to the mysterious death of the well-known Professor Altenstein in his own laboratory. He has since been regarded as a martyr to scientific zeal and to his indifference to personal danger. He is supposed to have been killed by a baboon which he had long kept in his establishment for the purpose of experi ment, and with which he had imprudently on this occasion attempted to deal alone.

He had just dismissed his ordinary paid assistant, and it was one of the eccentricities of this celebrated man I that he rarely invited any of his colleagues to assist in his important experiments. Thus it was that he had no one to help him against the attack of the infuriated. animal, and no one to be witness of the exact manner of his death. The attack must have been sudden, because there was no evidence of any violent struggle having taken place. A second assistant, who was at work in a room not far off, heard no cries for help of any sort. Creatures did sometimes — so this man testified — cry out under his master's hands, but he would have recognized his master's voice immediately ; and he was in this case certain that there was no cry uttered at all, either by man or animal. Death appeared to have been instantaneous.

Only a slight discoloration was visible on the Professor's forehead. The animal escaped, and for some days the inhabitants of the neighbourhood lived in dread of violence at its hands. Timid people expected — every night for at least a week — to find a cunning monkey, enormous in size and ferocious in aspect, concealed under their beds or crouching inside their wardrobes; and even the police expected the asylum of the creature to be presently revealed hy a new act of violence. These beliefs were not in accordance with the evidence of the assistant, who declared that the animal was gentle enough when let alone ; but they were supported by the rumours already current, and by the undoubted fact that the Professor had always used extraordinary precautions to protect his visitors from its ferocious temper.

Nothing, however, of the sort predicted happened ; and the creature was at last supposed to have come to its end in some obscure manner. The terror died out ; the rumours faded away ; and the event was not connected with the disappearance of the Pro- LOOSE LINKS IN THE ~2HAIN OF EVIDENCE. 3 fessor's niece, which took place shortly afterwards ; nor yet with an insignificant case of burglary occurring about the same time. To the public these were isolated incidents ; but the links binding them together fell accidentally into my hands, and I shall therefore give a full account of the whole affair as far as I know it, leaving each reader to form his own conclusions. The first document which I have to put in evidence is a letter addressed to the Royal Society by the Rev. Miles Stonycroft, with whom I had some acquaintance, and who more than once — he is Unfortunately not now alive — con versed with me on the events which followed it.

Chapter II

A MYSTERIOUS VISITOR. " The Rev. Miles Stonycroft to^ the Royal Society of Great Britain. " Ge>7tlemen, — Circumstances altogether unprecedented and unexpected have put it in my power, and have made it my duty, to lay before you a series of extraordinary facts. Fortunately these facts have not to be accepted on the word of your informant alone. They can be verified by scientific observers. It is my desire, and the desire of the remarkable person who is now my guest, that every detail of his equipment, credentials, and abnormal powers or developments, should be studied by accurate observers trained to examine and to record actual phenomen.:. " It is with this end in view that I now address you, inviting you, and indeed praying you, to appoint a commission of scientific men to visit my house, in order to make the acquaintance of the strange individual whom I shall there introduce to them, as well as to investigate the various facts and statements which we (that is to say, myself and my guest) are prepared to lay before them.

In order that you may have some idea of the circumstances which you are requested to consider and report upon, I will briefly relate the manner in which they came to my knowledge. "I am the Vicar of Oking, Lintshire, in which quiet spot I have spent the last twenty-five years of my life. Among other studies, that of astronomy has long been a solace and delight to me. I suffer from insomnia, and it is my frequent habit to take a midnight stroll round my garden before endeavouring to obtain sleep. "On the 23rd of December last, at 12.15 in the morning, I was walking on the vicarage lawn. The night was dark and cloudy ; no stars were visible ; but a slight frost covered the ground, and perfect silence prevailed. " Under these circumstances I was astonished to perceive a bright object, which I took at first for a meteor, passing across the face of a cloud.

The appearance of this object was astonishing to me for various reasons. In the first place, it was travelling with unprecedented slowness ; in the second place, it was amazingly near, having a low hanging cloud for its background ; in the third place, it did not shine with one uniform glow, but sparkled as though emitting light at various points of its surface. " The slowness of its progress enabled me to observe it at my leisure, and I soon perceived that the strange object was neither shooting across the atmosphere on an independent course nor falling straight to the earth's surface. It was descending obliquely in a line which pointed towards myself. I watched with the most intense curiosity as it increased in apparent size without increasing in velocity. The bright points of light which it emitted dazzled me and confused to my eyes its form, but this I observed to be more bulky than I had at first supposed.

The manner of its approach suggested so evidently an intelligent intention that I waited with deepening interest until it had dropped gently on the lawn a hundred paces or so from me. At this moment the twinkling lights went out, all except one, which appeared to shine from the centre of the now dark and stationary mass. I approached the object (which seemed to me about the size of an ordinary garden summer house), and as I did so a doc. opened in its side, and a flood of brilliant light was poured about me. The quality of this light was peculiar; but I had little time to spend on the consideration of it, because from the open door there stepped forward to meet me a person who struck me as a man — but not an Englishman — of medium height and intellectual appearance. The brilliance of his eyes and the intensity of their expression drew my attention from the rest of his face, and I barely noticed at the moment the singularity of his dress, which I may describe as a long, loose cloak reaching nearly to the ground.

" As he drew nearer the intensity of his gaze became unpleasant in a way which I did not understand, and the discomfort in my mind seemed to be instantaneously communicated to his ; he stood still and looked at me with the air of a man rebuffed or disappointed. In another moment I perceived that there was pity as well as disappointment in his look, and perhaps a little kindly contempt. It was as if he had approached me with pleasure as an equal and found himself compelled to condescend to an inferior. " I addressed him with courtesy, imagining him to be a cunning aeronaut travelling in some newly invented apparatus. He answered me by the same strange and intense look, and was again visibly disappointed when I repeated my question as to his errand, and demanded to know whether I could serve him in any way.

" He took me then by the arm with a gentle and apologetic politeness, and, leading me to the door of his very curious car, seemed to invite me to enter and examine it. Inside the car, I may briefly state, I found no single thing quite like anything I had seen before, yet the unlikeness was only of a sort one might expect to find in the implements of a country newly discovered to us, but highly civilized in its own way. The compactness and ingenuity of the arrangements for securing warmth and comfort, and, as I afterwards found, light, air, and food, were very remarkable. Into their details, I hope, gentlemen, that you may be shortly able to examine for yourselves. The force by which the whole machine is propelled through space is so admirably adjusted as to be easy of management ; the mechanism by which it is controlled and directed is simple in the extreme ; but I understand that it took more than a hundred years of scientific experiments and investigation (after its discovery some centuries ago) to utilize and thoroughly control this force ; and that it required fifty years of exhaustive effort to store and compress the necessary quantity for this expedition.

"You will already perhaps have inferred, gentlemen, that my guest — my honoured and admired guest — is not an inhabitant of our globe, but a traveller from another sphere, a visitor, indeed, — astounding as the statement may at first seem to you, — from the planet Mars. Whether our own earth contains the elements of the marvellous force which has brought him here, I cannot venture to say. More competent investigators will soon be able, with his assistance, to determine this important fact. They will also, I trust, examine into his methods of renewing and storing air, condensing and preparing food. In this way we can ascertain whether his journey may be reversed, and, as he fondly hopes, communication established between our two worlds. I fear that, in our present condition, the shortness of our lives, and the comparative coarseness of our appetites, would serve as unconquerable barriers to such undertakings on our side.

My visitor is astonished at the quantity of food I devour, and amazed at the crudeness of its quality ; yet I am a small and somewhat fastidious eater. He himself touches nothing except a biscuit-like substance of his own pro viding. A few crumbs of this contain, so he says, sufficient food to support a strong man in health and comfort for several days. " I may confess that when I understood him to explain to me, by reference to my maps of the solar system, that he belonged to the planet Mars, I doubted first his sincerity and then his sanity ; but I have since become as convinced of his sound intelligence as of his candid nature. I do not ask you, gentlemen, to accept my conviction as your own, but fairly and without prejudice to come and examine his apparatus and himself. I have travelled in his car for a short distance, and I have enter tained him in my house for three months.

His knowledge and intelligence put my own to shame. It requires a man more learned than myself to fully appreciate his acquirements. "In general appearance he much resembles our own race. His hand particularly is not unlike a human hand, but much more supple, firmer in touch, and stronger in grasp — a more perfect instrument altogether. His body is covered by a soft down of a uniform golden colour. The most abnormal of his physical developments is usually concealed by the loose cloak which he is accustomed to wear. When the open sleeve fell back over the shoulder it revealed to me the most marked physical difference between his race and ours, a difference in which, I venture to say, he has all the advantage. I will not particularize further, but leave you to discover it for yourselves. " One of the reasons why I have delayed so long to com municate with you is the difficulty I at first experienced in conversing with him.

He is not accustomed to the interchange of ideas by means of speech. He can, on the other hand, read my thoughts when he looks into my eyes, and I think clearly. This is, he informs me, a method so expeditious and complete, that the clumsy medium of articulate words has been abandoned by his people in their conversation with one another. Never theless, my visitor is highly sensitive to musical sounds, and has described to me various perfectly novel instru ments in use among his people. " By this wonderful people, so he tells me, a visitor from us has been long expected and desired. They hoped — jealousy being unknown among them, and learned beneficence being apparently their prevailing character istic — that we might be more advanced in scientific knowledge than themselves, and so be the first to succeed in an attempt to' establish communication between the two worlds.

The attempt has been made on their side before this. Several centuries ago an ancestor of my guest, inferiorly" equipped for the expedition, set out on a journey to our earth and was never heard of more. But who shall say that he did not reach it ? What would have been his fate, if he had done so in less enlightened ages ? Would he not have been regarded (since he must have arrived in such an extraordinary manner) as an emis sary of the devil? And (unable to speak our language and explain himself) would he not most certainly have perished miserably ? It was the various considerations arising from this thought which caused me to persuade my new friend, even after we had learnt to understand one another perfectly, to remain so many weeks my guest without revealing his story to any one else. My servants and neighbours imagine, I believe, — but I have a character for reserve, and no one has asked questions, — that my visitor is a harmless lunatic or eccentric, of whom I am taking benevolent charge, and who arrived here in the darkness, his ' garden-house ' (as they call the car) having come with him as luggage.

He has applied himself to the study of our language, and can now speak it tolerably and write it with fluency. The fact that he at length converses instead of making signs hagiven rise to the rumour of his recovery. I was unwilling to expose him, highly educated as he is in his own way, to the curiosity even of our scientific men, while he remained at an apparent disadvantage in being unable to give intelligible expression to his thoughts. Now that he can explain difficult points, answer questions, and exchange information, there is no further reason for delay. His extraordinary giftremain, and his extraordinary possessions. These merit a most respectful examination. I should suggest, then, that a thought-reader (such as Mr. Irving Bishop), an astronomer, a physiologist, a chemist of note, and such a philosophic observer as Professor Huxley, Professor Tyndall, or Mr. Herbert Spencer, should be among the men of science who come to welcome and investigate.

I do not purpose to reveal to the world at large the extraordinary character of my visitor until this can receive the testimony of men of fame and learning, such as I hope you will send to me. Vulgar wonder and curiosity are only embarrassing and injurious in an affair of so much importance. Besides, my friend's remarkable develop ments, mental and physiological, can be better explained by specialists than by myself; so can the extent of his knowledge and the originality of his resources. " Hoping to receive soon a reply on this subject from your august body, " I am, gentlemen, " Your faithful servant, " Miles Stonycroft."

Chapter III

A YOCNG PHYSIOLOGIST The vicarage of Oking stood beside its church in the midst of green fields. The village of Oking, which was ten minutes' walk from the church, and screened from view by a group of old elms, could boast its small general shop, its blacksmith's shed, and its postal and telegraph office. Two miles further on was a collection of houses calling itself a town. This had its own railway station and its own local paper, The Rigtown Chronicle, of which I was the editor. My acquaintance with Mr. Stonyxroft was at this time rather slight. I had reported a concert or two which had taken place in his school, and even a few sermons which had been delivered in his church on special occasions. He had always been polite to me, and I had more than once had a cup of tea or a glass of wine in his house.

Later I knew him better ; but that was when he was sad at heart, dissatisfied with the world, uncertain about himself, and glad to talk to some one who would listen sympathetically. At this time he was already elderly, probably over sixty years of age ; but he looked younger, and he looked well. Age overtook him suddenly a few years afterwards ; it did not seem to have kept step with him on his way through life, but to have waited in ambush, as it does for many men, and overwhelmed him all at once with its sadness and infirmities. He was a busy man at this time, and satisfied with life and his position in it. He believed himself to be fairly useful there ; and from his quiet parish he even contrived to speak a word occasionally to the greater world outside. He was interested in natural history, and sent notes of curious facts to various papers; he had also published a book on bird hfe, which was well received, and ran through a second edition.

His methods of observation were old fashioned, and he probably believed himself to have dipped deeper into modern science than he actually had done ; but his manner was always modest and pleasant ; he listened respectfully to those whom he had any reason to respect. He was a bachelor, and, though he visited much in his parish (where there were no rich people), he lived a very quiet life in his own house, giving up all his leisure to his studies, which again were probably less important than he imagined them to be. His servants at this time consisted of an old housekeeper, who directed affairs from the kitchen, and who was too much used to the ways of her master to make any talk about them, and a young girl, too giddy and full of her own interests to have any power of observation worth counting upon.

Mr. Stonycroft never had visitors who stayed with him merely for the pleasure of society, but he had often a solitary guest whom he entertained out of kindness. It was therefore no astonishment to his poor neighbours to hear of the presence of a stranger in his house, a stranger more eccentric than usual, who was reported to be silent to the last degree, and to keep as much out of the way of the servants as possible. He walked in the garden in the dusk of evening or when it was moonlight, and he never even went to church. But Mr. Stonycroft's religion, sincere and deep for himself, was gentle and tolerant to others. He had once entertained in his house for three weeks a young dissenting schoolmistress, whose health had broken down over her work, and to whom he offered hospitality and country air.

Every Sunday she walked two miles to the town to attend the Methodist chapel there ; and she never received even a friendly remon strance from the Vicar on the subject. I never myself saw the supposed Marsman, though I went to the vicarage at least once during his residence there. I knew that Mr. Stonycroft had a visitor, and that the visitor was supposed to be very odd indeed ; but I knew no more. The oddness was probably the reason why Mr. Stonycroft kept him there so long. They spent a great deal of time together, shut up in the study, looking over books and papers and maps, but they were never permitted to be disturbed at this occupation by any other visitor. The orders on this point were inviolable. It is evident that a communication from such a man as Mr. Stonycroft could not, however extraordinary its nature, be passed over without notice.

His position was too well known, his character too much respected. What he stated was not altogether an impossibility ; opinions at that time leaned towards the probability of some of the planets being inhabited by creatures not unlike ourselves. He was most likely the victim of a clever impostor ; but the thing demanded looking into. Therefore he received a polite letter, stating that three learned gentlemen — Professor Barnett, Professor Tongley, and Dr. Lee Wright — were willing to come to the vicarage to meet his visitor, and investigate into the reality of his extraordinary claims. They were all strangers to him, and not perhaps of the highest rank in their own depart ments ; but he felt that he had every reason to be satisfied with this response to his request. After a short preliminary correspondence had taken place the youngest of the three men went over to Oking alone to make final arrangements for the interview.

The time of his coL leagues was supposed to be very precious, and he himself was full of zeal and willingness to be of service. His name has since become known to the world in connection with one of those tragedies by which science loses so many of her boldest spirits ; he was then at the beginning of his career, with a consciousness of power, but perhaps with some uncertainty as to the direction in which that power had best be used. He called himself a physiologist, and he had been at one time a pupil and assistant to a celebrated scientist, Professor Altenstein. This learned gentleman was not an Englishman, but he had English connections, and was settled in London. He was as great an enthusiast as Dr. Lee Wright, but his enthusiasm was for science alone, and not — as was the case with the younger man — for science and humanity combined.

It is not for me to express here any opinion on the subject of vivisection itself, for vivisection was the Pro fessor's chief occupation. He found in it a delight which apparently had no drawbacks. What to him was the agony of a creature writhing under his knife ? It touched him only when it provided a fact to be noted — such as the heightening or lowering of temperature. What were the significance of his victim's miserable cries ? They afforded only an interesting evidence of sensibility, of heightened or lowered susceptibility to pain. He was, in this respect, at least, the typical physiologist described by Claude Bernard, himself a great vivisector, who spoke of his terrible occupation with an enthusiasm bewildering and shocking to ordinary peoc'". But, as if to explain this, he told the world a physiol. twas "no ordinary man."

" He does not hear the animal _. ■-. 'es of pain. He is blind to the blood that flows. He sei. nothing but his idea, and organisms which conceal from yim the secrets he is resolved to discover." Such a man was Professor Altenstein. There are evil and cruel men in every calling ; but there are, on the other hand, some occupations which will end by making a good man cruel. The original loftiness of his purpose is no safeguard when once he has entered upon a pathway so steep and narrow that there is no room for mercy to travel with him, and a part of his conscience— an impor tant part — must be left behind as he clambers onwards in pursuit of knowledge. " An experimenter," so said a well known vivisector to the Royal Commission on Vivisection, " has no time, so to speak, for thinking what will the animal feel or suffer."

Professor Altenstein certainly never wasted his time in such a way. I do not suppose that he would have been a good man if occupied in any pursuit whatever; he was too egotistical and unsympathetic. Whether his habitual work would not tend still farther to harden his heart, and to lessen his sense of responsibility to all living things standing in the road of his intentions, is a matter of opinion. With Dr. Lee Wright it was another affair. He was young, hopeful, eager to achieve ; hut he was happier when following a good leader thau when taking a road for himself, and his ambition, though large, was not altogether self-centred. His conscience was still in sensitive communication with the social conscience around him. He was aware of responsibilities in alb directions ; and he was, in this respect, altogether unlike the Professor, who had devoted himself to one idea so long that a part of his brain and a very large part of his better nature were necessarily atrophied.

When these two men disagreed and separated no one was astonished ; it was rather to be wondered at that they had held together so long, since their views of life were on many points contradictory, and their temperaments altogether different. Nevertheless, two rumours of the cause of the separation went round : one, that the younger man bad objected to the methods of the elder iu his laboratory, where experiments were conducted on living creatures ; the other, that the Professor had dis missed his former pupil for making love to his niece, Christina Marshall. The girl was an orphan, and her uncle was her guardian and her only near relative. Whatever the cause of the difference may have been, there was no actual quarrel ; Dr. Lee Wright remained on very friendly terms with the Professor, and was permitted to see the Professor's niece whenever she was in London, which was not very often.

It was surmised, from the Professor's conduct in this matter, and from the way in which the younger man spoke of it, that there was the half promise of an engagement between the young people, when the lady should be old enough to make it desirable. Those who knew the girl and liked her were glad of it. Her position in her uncle's household was a lonely one ; the surroundings were melancholy; he himself was not a lovable man. Yet she was said to be very fond of him, and to look up to him as wonderfully great and clever. Dr. Lee Wright had also been for a long time much attached to him. The silent obstinate power of the Professor had attracted one who was as yet chiefly remarkable for his brilliant indecisiveness. There was a fine contrast between the two which leDt a charm to theh earlier companionship.

The Professor was morose and self-absorbed, ever hunting down some one idea with a deadly energy and determina tion. Those who did not like him called him brutal, secretive, and narrow. Those who admired him spoke of his silent enthusiasm and quiet determination. I never made his personal acquaintance ; but the character of the man is so important with regard to his possible part in the story I am relating, that I have been at great pains to discover all that I could about him. It is the same with Dr. Lee Wright, whom I once saw casually, and thought a fine type of the well-educated and well-developed young Englishman. I cannot positively prove what part these two men actually took in the circumstances which followed ; it is therefore advisable to know what part they were likely to take. If Professor Altenstein was secretive, Dr. Lee Wright had an appearance of great openness and candour ; and this made his action afterwards all the stranger and more damaging to his reputation : we do not easily forgive our friends the faults we have never suspected in them.