by Jerry eBooks
The windows of the charity patients’ building were barred like ours. Thinking myself more or less of a fool and my adventure a rather paltry one, I tried the door, more to assure myself of the impossibility of entering than for any other reason. To my surprise it was unlocked. In the lower hall, there was a single dim light, but the building was silent save for a subdued moaning from somewhere upstairs. The maniacs who formed Dr. Grimshaw’s more serious cases were usually making some noise of that sort, so I gave the matter no thought.
I was about to try the upper floor to see what I could observe through the peep-holes, when I heard the grating of a key in the lock at the end of the covered passage. The outer door was too far away to be attempted with any prospect of success. I must find concealment, and quickly. Fortunately a large clothes hamper stood in the hall. Into it I leaped, and by the grace of the gods, found it empty save for a couple of towels. Through its sides I could get a somewhat imperfect view of the hall, and I saw that the newcomers were three in number—Grimshaw, Voyna and a boy of about twelve, I should judge.
They passed me so closely that their clothes brushed my place of concealment, and they turned on the light in the room by whose door the hamper stood. I was unable to see what they were doing, but Grimshaw’s voice rose sharp and clear:
“You’d better be reasonable and take your medicine. It will relieve the pain.”
A second voice replied, “But I won’t take it, I tell you. I know what it is, it’s dope. You can do what you like; you made a midget out of me, but you ain’t going to make no dope fiend out of me.”
The voice was neither Grimshaw’s nor Voyna’s; I had heard both often enough. It must therefore belong to the boy, and then the startling connotation of the speech struck me—it was no boy but a dwarf or midget.
“You won’t take it, eh?” said Grimshaw, with a kind of suppressed fury in his voice, “I’ll show you!” and I heard the sound of a blow.
“No I won’t,” said the voice, rising near tears.
“Wait a minute,” (this was Voyna speaking) “That’s not the way, Grimshaw. You can’t bully these Americans. Show him how much he will gain by it. Look here—you take the medicine the doctor is good enough to prescribe for you, and in a short time you will not only be well enough to be discharged, but we will find you a position in which you will make more money than you ever saw before.”
“You go to hell,” said the third voice (it had a singularly boyish timbre that touched me). “I won’t take your dope and won’t peddle your dope. Look at Tony Gasbotta. He’s peddling dope—” his speech was broken by the sound of another blow, and somewhere, one of the maniac patients began to shout.
“Shut the door, will you, Ben?” said Grimshaw, and that was the last I heard.
My muscles were cramped by the confinement, but I lost no time in escaping from the hamper and the building. I wondered whether they had been giving me drugs in my food; how many of the sanitarium’s employees were in on this business; and what lay behind all these sinister manifestations. “You made a midget out of me”—what could it mean.
I judged, however, that Sherman was honest enough, else he would have been admitted to whatever grisly secrets the charity building held. As to habitforming drugs in our food, I was not so sure, but it didn’t look like it, if they had to coerce the dwarf into taking the dope. And then, the whole thing might be the result of a maniac’s imagination.
I had no guarantee the dwarf was sane.
Nevertheless, I slept beneath the trees that night. I feared that I might run into Grimshaw or Voyna in the halls, and if they were actually engaged in any such shady business as it seemed, such an encounter would be dangerous to the last degree. In the morning I entered by the same way I had left the building, hid in the operating room again, and joined the crowd at breakfast, after which I went to rny room and destroyed the dummy. Just what to do was a problem, but I reasoned that Sherman would tell me better than anybody else what lay behind it, for even if he were not involved, he could add much corroborative information to what knowledge of the events I had. If he should prove one of the gang, then I must trust to strength and speed to escape.
That afternoon, during the exercise period, I told him the whole story. Kaye and Kraicki hung around and heard it too—somehow I couldn’t seem to get rid of them.
“My God!” said Sherman, when I had finished, “So that’s why . . .” and he stopped.
“That’s why what?” I asked.
“Why no one but Voyna is allowed in the charity wing or on the third floor of this building,” he said. “I always thought it was queer.”
“But are you sure they’re not putting drugs in our food?” I asked.
He gave a little laugh. “Hardly possible,” he said. “There are too many people here and too many visitors. No, that would be crude. Moreover, there are too many internes here. Someone would be sure to notice the taste. It is very characteristic.”
That wa? a relief, at all events. As to the question of whether Grimshaw and Voyna were actually engaged in the drug traffic, Sherman seemed not quite certain, but judged that the best procedure would be to certify me cured, get me out and let me return with search warrants and police and check up on that mysterious charity ward. Leaving the problem at that point, we went to dinner.
The table was unusually quiet that night, and I imagine it must have grated on Kraicki’s rather frayed nerves. At all events, before any of us could check him, he burst out with—
“I know what’s the matter. They’re all mad at you, Dr. Grimshaw, because you peddle dope.” I slid a plate to the floor, where it broke with a crash, but it was too late—my action only served to emphasize the indiscretion of the speech. Grimshaw darted a sudden look at us, and making some excuse, left the table. Trouble was in the air.
After the meal, the doctor summoned Kraicki to his office. I knew things would very likely be stirring that night, so I did not even bother to undress; merely turned out my light, and waited by the door for what was coming.
Sure enough, along about one o’clock, the door creaked slowly open, and a hand holding a flashlight was extended through the aperture. I snatched the wrist, pulling the holder clear in and off balance with my left hand, at the same time striking out with all my force with the other hand. My blow struck full in the intruder’s face and he went down as though pole-axed. But Grimshaw had been fully forearmed. As the first man went down, a second gripped me by the knees, and when I bent to care for him, a third leaped on my back. I put up a good battle, but they were too many for me. They got me down and strapped tight, and not till then did someone turn on the light. I saw Grimshaw standing over me, dabbing a blooded mouth with his handkerchief.
“So!” he said, and I could not but admire the man’s calmness. “You have delusions of persecution. You imagine I am trying to give you and other patients cocaine. I am afraid my treatment has not been altogether successful in your case. You will have to take another treatment—a long one, Mr. Doherty.” He looked incredibly benignant. I began to speak.
“Come, come, don’t excite yourself. I’m going to give you something to quiet your nerves,” he said, and flashed out a hypodermic with which he proceeded to give me an injection.
I lost consciousness under the effects of the drug, and when I recovered it was morning. I woke in a different room; it must have been on the third floor, the forbidden floor, for I could see the tops of trees beyond the barred window.
I was kept there for a long time; just how long I am uncertain for I lost all count of the hours. During most of the period I was in a straight-jacket, and once I was operated on, somewhere at the front of the skull, for I recollect my head being held firmly in a plaster cast after the operation, and an infinite feeling of nausea as the effect of the anaesthetic wore off.
Every day a rough looking chap fed me from a spoon, and every night Grimshaw returned to give me another hypodermic injection. I felt terribly ill and depressed all that time. In the mo
rning I would wake with a blinding headache that would last out the day, leaving me weak as a kitten. I began to develop hallucinations, too. The room seemed to grow perceptibly in size, and the strait jacket became looser.
One day, when I felt better than usual, I made an attempt to wriggle out of the now thoroughly loosened straight-jacket. It succeeded, and I lay still on the bed in a mood of profound self-congratulation. When Grimshaw entered I would rise and strike him to the floor—a poor revenge, but better than none. And there was always the chance of getting past the opened door, out and away.
But all my dreams came to nothing. I was so weakened by long confinement and pain that he handled me as though I were a child—and here, again, I noted a curious thing. He seemed at least a head taller than I; and I am a six-footer. How could that be? Drugs were the only explanation I could fit to it at the time.
The period succeeding this futile attempt to escape is all a haze for me, shot by macabre impressions. I remember once being taken out on the balcony for air, and once imagining that I saw Kaye on the next balcony, muffled in a straight jacket even as I was. But there could be no certainty, and the muffled figure did not speak. And the dreams!—the dreams! I imagined myself as light as a feather. Great giants wandered about my room with huge weapons in their hands; hideous creatures.
My first clear consciousness was when Grimshaw told us all about it. One night the evening meal was not followed by the usual injection and the morning brought the first surcease from pain in—God alone knows how long. I woke with my eyes on a ceiling that seemed miles overhead, and when I looked at the foot of the bed it appeared to have retreated to an infinite distance. The room was gigantic. . . .
Grimshaw came in a moment later. He carried a bundle in his arms, and to my wondering eyes, he looked fifteen feet tall. He came right over to the bed, and deposited his bundle there, and with infinite astonishment, I saw it was Arthur Kaye, that big man with the high forehead, yet small enough to be carried like a baby by a Dr. Grimshaw grown titanic in size. A few moments later the doctor returned with another bundle and then a third—and they contained Sherman and Kraicki, as the first had contained Kaye.
He looked down at us with a kindly smile for a moment, and then began to shout. His voice was so extremely loud and deep that I had no little difficulty in understanding what he was saying, but I set it down as nearly as possible:
“Allow me to congratulate you four gentlemen. You are the subjects of a classical experiment—one that will undoubtedly place me in the from; rank of the world’s endocrinologists, and will hand your names down to posterity.
“You, Dr. Sherman, will have already understood the nature of the experiment I have performed. To the rest I must offer a few words of explanation, suitable to their somewhat limited intelligences. There are certain glands in the body, gentlemen, which are called thyroid, parathyroid and pituitary glands. They are known as the ductless glands and have no obvious function. But it has been discovered that if the pituitary or thyroid glands of a young animal, say a sheep or dog, are destroyed, the animal will be a dwarf; in other words, these glands in some way unknown to most scientists, control the growth of the animal.
“Investigation has also shown that an injured pituitary or thyroid gland in the human individual produces equally curious results—giants, seven-footers seen in circuses, being the product of insufficient gland activity. Even in adults these glands are known to produce certain effects. Dr. Haussler has recorded how an abnormally active pituitary gland caused a man’s fingers to become short, wide and stubby, long after he was fully grown.
“These endocrine glands cause their changes by releasing certain substances into the blood stream, among them being various enzymes or yeasts, which by a complicated series of chemical reactions bring about the changes indicated. I have given my life to the investigation of these glands and their enzymes. It will gratify you, Dr. Sherman, to know that I have investigated over three hundred cases of dwarfism and giantism, making elaborate blood and X-ray examinations. In time I became convinced that a certain enzyme, which I call “Theta” was responsible for all known cases of dwarfism. I have isolated enzyme theta and found that a normally active pituitary body secretes and releases a counteracting enzyme to it, thus preserving the balance of the body. It then became a question whether I could produce artificial dwarfism by damaging the pituitary body and introducing enzyme theta by subcutaneous injection.
“Animals did not give satisfactory results. Hence I was led to establish the charity ward of this sanitarium and, for experiment, secured a number of feebleminded human specimens, whose absence would not be noted. I have succeeded in producing midgets as small as two feet ten inches in height by this means. Unfortunately it was impossible to release them into the world as normal midgets, the civilization of this country being so backward that scientific investigation of a man as an animal is actually punishable. Therefore I have introduced these midgets to the delights df cocaine and maintain my control over them by furnishing their supply of it.
“But with you gentlemen I decided to conduct the experiment on an altogether higher plane. You are already so familiar with the details of my business that I could not release you, even as cocaine addicts. Consequently, I have decided, by carefully graduating the dosage of enzyme theta, to produce in you a series of hyper-midgets. In the cases of the charity patients death always resulted from such attempts; but they were mostly in poor physical condition and their mental weaknesses were such that cerebral collapse supervened. You however, are not feeble-minded, with the possible exception of Mr. Kraicki, you are in excellent condition. You show none of the deleterious effects that have ruined my experiments with the charity patients, and I shall proceed until I have reduced you to a size at which you will no longer be dangerous or until your death puts an end to the experiment.
“Your chances of survival are greatly heightened by the fact that I have produced artificially a second enzyme, which I call enzyme omicron, to supplement enzyme theta. Both of these substances are secreted in small quantities by the hitherto little investigated gland located——
(At this point occurs the distressing lacuna in the manuscript, a fact doubly unfortunate, since it deprives us of the opportunity for a scientific check on the extraordinary statements of Dr. Grimshaw as reported by Jack Doherty. The other details of Mr. Doherty’s tale have been in part confirmed by subsequent research. A Pinkerton detective bearing the name of Dougherty was committed to the Grimshaw sanitarium in the early part of 1922. There was also a man named Arthur Kaye there at the same time, under treatment for dipsomania. The names of Kraicki and Dr. Sherman have not been traced. The deaths of Doherty and Kaye were reported by Dr. Grimshaw at widely separated intervals; that of Doherty in 1923, that of Kaye not till March, 1924. A Miss Millicent Armbruster did live at the address given by Doherty: the city records show she married a man named Kellett in October, 1922, after which all trace of her is lost.
When the story begins again, with the contents of the last capsule, it is evident that the experiment has entered its final phase and that Dr. Grimshaw had to a degree lost interest in his four patients. It begins as it broke off—abruptly in the middle of a sentence.)
—stumbled over a grass root and we had to stop for him. The grass was forest-like in its density, and if he had not waited I doubt if we would have found him again. The beetle escaped, and thus we missed a meal that night also. The garden was still too far away to be made in the dark and Kraicki was too done up to go much further; moreover once at the garden our problem would only be transferred, for we would have many wanderings to make before discovering anything small enough for our feeble efforts.
So we camped in a tuft of grass like Malays, taking turns at watching through the night. It was bitterly cold; the piece of bandage was so rough it rasped the skin and the three asleep had to use all the silk for coverlets. Every time I blundered into one of the grass stems it would drench me with icy dew, like a shower bath.
/>
In the morning Kraicki, always weak and unstable, became so feebly insistent on not moving before he had had food, that we fairly had to drag him along. An hour’s wandering brought us to a rotting twig that promised well as fuel. We pulled some of the decaying fibres loose and burdened ourselves with them. They would be handy to make a fire with, provided we ever found anything worth cooking over a fire. As for the method, there was always the possibility of striking a spark from a pebble with the piece of watch-spring Sherman had found the day before.
A little further along Sherman, who was then in the lead, shouted. We hurried up to find him standing over a June-bug, which was lying on its back, kicking feebly. I attacked the insect with a piece of watch-spring, but it was no good. His shell defied my best efforts and I received a nasty scratch on the back from his barbed legs as I tried to slay him. Sherman suggested we turn him over and work under the wing-cases, but I was afraid he would crawl away before we could accomplish anything, and our final decision was to build a pyre over him and cook him as he lay.
Striking a spark from a stone may be easy to those who arc familiar with the art; for me it was agonizing effort. When we did get our fire going, the heat excited so much activity, on the June-bug’s part, that it kicked over our pile of wood and we were back where we had started. After that Kaye and I hunted up a pebble of some size, and heaving together we managed to smash the animal’s head in. There were a few convulsive motions after that, but for the most part he lay still, and we managed to get the fire going in good shape.
The meat in the legs, just where they swell out before joining the body, is the best; not unlike crab-meat to the taste. Inside the body the meat was not so thoroughly cooked and very fat besides. Kraicki was the only one who would eat it.
