by Earl
The guard ran too, yelling bloody murder. Presently there was no one left in the room but an old, thin man with a square black case. He stooped and twisted a tiny knob at the side of his case. The mummy shards inside the glass case ceased their unholy dance and became inanimate debris. Smiling strangely to himself, the little old man shuffled out of the room, his right side weighted down with the black bag.
TWO hours later the sun was still shining as brightly on the two stone lions guarding the portals of the New York Public Library. A steady stream of people passed the graven images without a glance. An out-of-town tourist, however, stopped before one of them and examined its contours in small-town wonder. He took out his camera, focused it, and brought the images into the center of his finder. He was a large fat man and rested the back of the camera against his ample stomach.
Just as he was ready to make the snap, something moved. Remembering that he had ruined several other pictures by holding the camera against his sometimes treacherous stomach, which magnified every quiver of his obesity, he moved the camera slightly away. Again the image in the finder made an unaccountable movement. Annoyed, he glanced up.
His three chins folded together like an accordion as his lower jaw sagged loosely. His eyes bulged. For the stone lion was coming to life!
The stone seemed suddenly to have gained a fluidity that allowed it to move without splitting abruptly. The sculptured creature arched its back—so it seemed to the fat man’s frantic imagination—and snarled at him with lips drawn back. Then it wobbled and leaped down from its pedestal.
Screeching, the tourist threw his camera at the nightmare creature of stone and raced away.
Some few of the passing crowd had been glancing at the stone lion simultaneously. They had seen it tremble on its base, crack in several places and totter to the sidewalk, shattering in a thousand pieces.
A thin, cadaverous-faced man in a brown suit, who had been standing on the grass at the other side of the stone lion, stooped and twisted something on his black bag and then strode leisurely away, smiling queerly, sardonically.
LEE HACKETT turned a page of his newspaper. “Queer things happen in this world,” he thought to himself. On the third page some enterprising reporter with imagination had headlined MIRACLES SWEEP CITY! He had listed them—“The Dancing Mummy,” “The Slithering Rope,” “The Hungry Stone Lion,” “The Wandering Bicycle,” and “The Walking Clothes.” There had been several eye-witnesses to each incident so their authenticity was undeniable. No explanation was offered.
“Miracles, huh!” Hackett said aloud, “I’m from Missouri.”
He arose and crossed the room to his dresser, puzzling over the item. Then he shrugged and began whistling. He had a date that evening and couldn’t bother with so-called miracles.
Hackett tried to subdue his unruly hair with the hairbrush. His girl liked it slicked down as much as possible. Suddenly the brush seemed to writhe in his hand. Startled, he lowered it in front of his eyes. It was moving! The bristles were tangling and the wooden holder was slowly bending by itself. Hackett dropped the brush, gasping.
The brush fell to the dresser top on its back and, before the astonished watcher’s eyes, began digging into the wood it lay upon. In a short time the edges of the brush had merged into the surface of the dresser top. Then suddenly it was over and the brush lay once more quiescent.
Lee Hackett was not the sort to become panicky. Instead he reached gingerly for the handle and attempted to pick up the brush. It was rooted fast to the dresser top.
“Holy mackerel!” he said. “How will I explain this to my landlady?” He glanced at his somewhat pale face in the mirror. “Wait a minute. First of all I’ve got to explain this to myself!”
Hackett went through a process of ratiocination that convinced him an outside agency must have been responsible. The open window was the only possibility. Suddenly he remembered that just as the hairbrush had begun acting up, he had glimpsed a bright flash out of the corner of his eye.
He stuck his head out of the window and looked across the narrow courtyard. He saw the flash again, caused by the sinking sun shining on something bright within the open window directly across. A thin face withdrew into the shadows of a room.
“It’s that old crackpot doctor across the way,” Hackett told himself, half angrily. Without further ado, he left his room, went downstairs, crossed the courtyard and tried the door of the ramshackle old frame house.
Just over the door, a weatherbeaten old sign with faded gilt lettering said: “Dr. George Henry, Physician.”
The door was locked. Just as Hackett was about to knock a bolt grated and the door swung inward on squeaking hinges. Beyond the fact that Dr. Henry lived alone in the house and was some sort of recluse experimenter, as well as a physician, Hackett knew nothing of the man now confronting him.
Dr. Henry was short and thin, unhealthy of complexion, sunkenchested.
“I saw you coming,” he said calmly. He coughed hollowly before he went on. “Come in and I’ll explain about your hairbrush.” There was a saturnine grin on his thin lips.
“The hairbrush itself is unimportant, but I do have a certain amount of curiosity,” said Hackett, his anger evaporating. He introduced himself. “It’s the first hairbrush I’ve known that acted as if it were alive.”
“Alive?” echoed the wizened old doctor. “Perhaps you aren’t so far wrong!” He laughed shortly and led the way up a winding staircase whose bannister was thick with dust.
On the second floor hallway two doors were open. From one came the twittering of little animals—guinea pigs. At the second door the old doctor stopped, motioned Hackett inside. The Doctor snapped on an electric light.
Hackett was surprised to see a rather modern-looking laboratory. Most of the apparatus was unfamiliar to him but he sensed it was a biological workshop with its microscopes, large glass-lined oven and rows of jars filled with cultures. There was also some electrical apparatus. The affair resting on a table near the window looked like a common storage battery with a strange mirror attachment at the end of it.
The emaciated doctor pointed to this and Hackett saw that the mirror was in a line with his own window across the courtyard.
“With that instrument,” said Dr. Henry, “I caused your hairbrush apparently to come alive, more or less as a whim. And partially as a whim, but more as a test of the instrument, I created the miracles the papers have exploited—the ‘Hungry Stone Lion’, ‘Dancing Mummy’, and the others.”
DR. HENRY waved a thin, delicate hand.
“It was quite easy to perform these ‘miracles’. This battery fits nicely in the square black case next to it, with a hole in it for the switch. The connecting hose I had hidden beneath my coat, and the projecting lens was tied to my chest, also hidden by my coat when buttoned up. In each case, I simply stationed myself at the proper angle, snapped the switch and allowed the focused beam to play upon the object desired.”
“Beam? What sort of beam?” queried Hackett, his curiosity thoroughly aroused. “Some beam of energy that destroys matter?” he hazarded.
The old doctor’s eyes glinted oddly as he answered.
“Yes, and no. It won’t destroy matter, but it is a beam of energy—of life-energy! Your first guess was right, that your hairbrush was alive!”
“I can’t quite swallow that, Doctor,” Hackett said slowly. “Inanimate things can’t display life.”
“What is life?” asked Dr. Henry rhetorically, eyeing his visitor with a faintly amused expression. “It is a dynamic equilibrium maintained in a unitary, semi-isolated system—which means that life has the ability to motivate certain vital functions. But that doesn’t say what life is, any more than saying electricity runs a motor explains its true nature.”
Hackett realized the little, shrunken man before him was not the unkempt crackpot he looked. There was a keen, scientific brain behind those drawn, ascetic features.
“Well?” he prompted.
“
Life is just one thing,” stated Dr. Henry, leaning forward a little. “Consciousness.” The consciousness of existence. So-called animate, living matter is different from non-living matter only in realizing its own state of being. The living cell—which is the unit that makes up all life in its grosser forms—is aware of its existence—has consciousness. Yes, every amoeba, paramecium and algae-cell knows it is alive. Every crystal, colloid, crystalloid and lump of amorphous matter does not know it exists. Therefore they are not alive!”
“But what about the miracles in the paper?” persisted Hackett. “Or my hairbrush!”
“Some other time—some other time.” Dr. Henry’s voice had become queerly flat, toneless. He looked tired and worn after his speech. He smiled wanly at his visitor’s alarm. “It’s nothing. I’m not in the best of health. The incident of the hairbrush—interrupting you in the act of smoothing your hair—should remind you that you have an engagement for the evening, perhaps with a young lady?” Hackett grinned and flushed. “That’s right! But Dr. Henry, I’d like to hear the rest of it.”
“Come in tomorrow evening, then,” nodded the old doctor, obviously pleased. As Hackett left the room, he saw the tired eyes close as Dr. Henry leaned back in his chair. Obviously, thought the younger man, the old chap was on his last legs. He felt vaguely uneasy about him, but consoled himself that he would find out more about him the next evening. He spent the night listlessly, thoughtful.
THE next evening found Hackett eagerly climbing the stairs that led to Dr. Henry’s second-story workshop. When he was finally seated, Hackett noticed that the old doctor was highly gratified that he had come. Then he asked the question that had been mulling in his head all day.
“Dr. Henry, what does a person lose when he loses his life?”
“Ah, you’ve been thinking about it!” the old physician chuckled. Then he became serious. His eyes became filled with the same gleaming light they had shone with the evening before.
“You’ve struck the nail on the head. What is that strange difference between a living body and one that has just died? They are chemically and physically alike, yet the one moves and breathes and is alive, while the other is inert and dead.
“It is not sufficient to say that the heart has stopped beating and the blood ceased circulating, for they are simply manifestations of life, not life itself. What has passed out of the living body and made it a corpse? Well—I don’t know either!”
Lee Hackett stared. “B-But I thought—”
“No, I don’t know that ultimate secret,” continued Dr. Henry. “But I have come closer, I believe, than any other person in the world. I have called it ‘consciousness’, and that, I maintain, is its true nature. But it would take me another lifetime, perhaps, to prove—”
He broke off then, as though he had said too much, and began again. “The life-energy I produce is stored in that battery. It is a strange sort of battery. It has plates of raw, colloidal leather instead of metal. Its solution is a saline liquid closely approaching the composition of blood. The leads that go through the protecting hose are of catgut. The convex mirror is of highly polished bone!”
His haggard face became lined with sudden bitterness. “Twenty years ago I was a respected, rising physician and biologist. Then I was hounded from the profession for certain unorthodox theories about life. I had money enough, but barely enough, to retire here and pursue my researches free from their criticism and hindrance. Here a certain measure of success has come to me.
“I have proved that the life-force is a separate, distinct energy not to be confused with life itself. In plain words, the living organism is a vehicle for a mysterious energy which is different from electricity, gravitation or any other known energy. Just as electricity can be stored chemically and transmitted along metallic wires, this life-energy can be stored chemically by materials duplicating those of life, and can be transmitted along catgut wires. Finally, it can be radiated as a beam, like heat or radio waves.”
The old doctor shuffled to the window and put his hand on the bone mirror at the end of the battery.
“I call this my life-battery, for it contains life! The pure essence of life, as a glass holds water. It is a very powerful energy in the concentrations I’ve succeeded in storing. When I projected it across the courtyard and made it impinge on your hairbrush, you saw the result. The hairbrush became alive! That is, it simply became conscious of its existtence.
“Promptly, it began to display the symptoms of life as we know it. It moved. When you dropped it, its wooden handle began to coalesce with the wood of the dresser-top—it was ‘eating’ ! However, it carried on only the most primitive of such life operations, and only while my beam touched it. When it was withdrawn, it again became dead and inanimate. It was not the ideal receptacle for life-energy, as is the organic body.
it was with the newspapers ‘miracles’. I wanted to see just how powerful the life-energy was that I had stored in my life-battery. At the same time it amused me to think how people react, seeing certain traditionally inanimate things coming to a horrible life. The mummy you read about, dry and old, shook itself to shreds when it became ‘alive’ and obeyed the impulse to move and get out of its prison.
“The stone lion, though of adamant rock, was able to utilize the same subtle forces that motivate living flesh—sun energy—to rear up. I actually saw it change shape. Perhaps the life-energy suffusing it is able to make the rigid molecules of stone become semi-fluidic. I don’t know. Many of these things are still a mystery to me.
“And so with the others. In each case the pure, unadulterated life-energy poured into inanimate matter, gave it consciousness, and made it come to ‘life’. They did not think, of course. They merely exhibited the most rudimentary of life’s phenomena.
Hackett, listened absorbedly, suddenly looked up.
“But where does this life-energy come from in the first place? How do you generate it?”
“Shrewd young man,” murmured the old doctor. He shook his head slowly. “That is something I do not care to explain!” A strange expression of fear lurked in Henry’s eyes as he finished.
Lee Hackett suddenly noticed a singular thing. The twittering of the little animals in the room across the hall was absent. Yesterday he had heard it continuously.
Dr. Henry stepped before his visitor. His eyes gleamed strangely.
“Let me confess now that I have you here for a purpose,” he said slowly. “I played my beam on your hairbrush last night to bring you to me. Somehow, having seen you many times, I felt you were the man I needed to help me in—”
A spasm of pain twisted the haggard face and Dr. Henry, clutching at his side, staggered back to a chair, aided by Hackett. The latter looked at him apprehensively.
The old doctor smiled weakly, but the pain in his eyes did not leave. “I am not well, as you can see,” he said hoarsely. “In fact, my hours are numbered. I am old and worn-out and my heart is very weak. Yet I want to live! I want to carry on my researches and solve more of the mystery of life. I know so little of it even yet—less than the physicist knows of the mysterious atom.”
His fate suddenly glowed.
“And I think I can live longer—perhaps another lifetime! What I want you to do is to bathe my body from head to foot in the beam of life-energy. It will supplement my weakened life-force, give me new strength, If it can wake the dead stone, it must be able to restore a fading life!” Hackett stared in petrified surprise. “But are you sure of it? Have you tried it out on your guinea-pigs?” The old doctor nodded.
“Yes, I’ve tried it. I’ve taken guinea-pigs at the point of death from disease or old-age, and restored them to vibrant life. What the life-beam can do for them, it can do for me! My boy, you must do this for the sake of science. The world will benefit greatly from it. And I must carry on my work, solve the mystery of—”
THE weak old eyes were wet with tears of pain and closed momentarily. The aged man breathed heavily. Hackett saw that the scientist was
marked for death. His thoughts wavered. Should he help snatch this doomed man from the jaws of death? It seemed unholy. But then, would it be any different than the physician who administered his medicine at the last moment to save a life for future years?
Hackett squared his shoulders purposefully. “All right,” he whispered grimly. “I’ll do it!”
The old man directed Hackett to bring the life-battery to the other side of the room, and showed him how to manipulate the mirror for proper focus. Then he removed all his clothing, explaining that the cloth would absorb a certain amount of the energy uselessly. Bony and flat-chested, bluish veins standing out on his fleshless skin, the old man tottered to the couch next to the table on which the battery stood and stretched out full length.
Under Dr. Henry’s instructions, Hackett fastened a stethoscope to his chest. It was attached to a pulse-meter on the table. The instrument registered his heart-beats in the swing of a needle motivated by a vibrating diaphragm.
“It should be enough in an hour,” muttered Dr. Henry. “Perhaps I will need several treatments on different days. We shall see. All right, my boy. Turn it on and remember to keep the mirror about three feet over my body at all times.”
Nervously, Hackett snapped on the switch of the life-battery. No visible or audible indication of the beam of life-energy came to him, but as he slowly moved the projecting mirror along, the flesh in its wake seemed to stir to new life. It turned pink.
Dr. Henry relaxed with a deep sigh, closing his eyes. His breathing became regular and a faint smile touched his pallid lips. It Seemed to be doing him good.
“Dr. Henry!” Hackett called softly, wondering if he had gone to sleep. Apparently he had, for he made no answer. The youth shrugged and continued to ply the mirror slowly along, from head to toe and back again. He watched the pulse-meter on the table and saw that the old doctor’s heartbeat was slowly going down from its abnormal high of over a hundred.
