GRILLO, THE MISSING LINK
THE ALMOST HUMAN GORILLA
Has Every Function of Man but Speech
Habitat: West African Coast
Now that was really odd. It was the first thing, Eustice Annesly reflected, that he had been able to bring to mind which could be connected in any way with his hallucination. The recollection of that grotesque, manlike creature, skulking in one corner of the cage, was very distinct. Its long, hairy arms, its yellow-fanged, red-gummed, leering face, its huge, hairy chest were identical in appearance with the apparition he had just seen in the mirror. In his mind’s eye he could still see it, just as it had appeared when it walked to the bars of the cage and stood erect on its hind legs, looking vacantly out at the gaping crowd.
But what had taken place after that? Again he concentrated on the past. There had been a swarthy, black-moustached Italian sweeping that portion of the floor which lay between the platforms and the railing which kept back the spectators. The latter had — he had — yes, he had carefully deposited his coat on the railing near Eustice Annesly while he prepared to work underneath the cage with his long brush. In his eagerness and curiosity to catch a better glimpse of that African simian, Annesly had pressed forward to the railing. Accidentally he had dislodged the coat. It had slipped to the floor. And then —
A blinding flash. A roar. Thousands of twinkling lights, followed by darkness — black, utter, impalpable — which closed quickly in on him. And that, therefore, had been the point where the thread of consciousness had parted.
But how — how — how in the name of all that was sensible, all that was coherent, all that was rational, had he come to find himself in such a weird situation as this? Oh, it was all so absurd, so impossible! He must have an enormously high temperature, he concluded, and therefore be delirious. But would no one ever come and explain matters? Was there no doctor in the place that could — ”
The door of the room swung open and an elderly man entered. He was somewhat stooped. His chin was covered by a bushy black beard, flecked here and there with grey, and his twinkling black eyes were framed in heavy, gold-rimmed eye-glasses. It was plain that he was a doctor or a surgeon, for he wore a surgeon’s long white apron and carried a shining stethoscope hanging loosely around his neck. At his heels trotted a younger man, with sleek black hair deftly parted in the middle, and with features strongly resembling those of the older man. Like the first, he, too, wore a long white apron.
Quickly he closed the door and turned the key in the lock. At once Annesly burst out:
“In the name of God, doctor — if you are a doctor instead of the keeper of a madhouse — what is the meaning of all this? Where am I? What is the explanation of this monkey skin that I am buttoned in? Why am I strapped here in bed?”
The older man looked toward the younger one.
“You see, Boris,” he said, “your father’s theories were correct. It can be done. The hypoglossal nerve was the last to join. He speaks.”
“Ah, father,” replied the man addressed as Boris, speaking with a faint accent, “I have done you a gross injustice all along. I apologise. I salute you, father, as the greatest brain surgeon of the twentieth century. At last you have — ”
“Stop this infernal palavering,” Annesly shouted. “and loosen these straps. What have I done that I should be fastened to my bed like a raving maniac? Am I — ”
The older man raised his hand. “Do you solemnly promise that you will be sensible — and quiet — and that you will attempt no violence whatever if I release you?”
“Promise?” Annesly retorted angrily. “Certainly I promise. But there is no need of your exacting such a promise from me. I am Eustice Annesly, an electrical engineer of the Underground Railways power station. I am — ”
“No,” interrupted the younger man. “Eustice Annesly — or nearly all that was mortal of Eustice Annesly — was buried in Brompton Cemetery just seven weeks ago to-day.”
CHAPTER XLVII
THE EXPLANATION
“BURIED?” stammered the individual who had just informed the doctor that he was one Eustice Annesly. “Eustice Annesly — buried. Myself — buried?” He laughed loudly. “Come, come, my dear sir. You’re a poor joker. But tell me the truth; I’m waiting for it.”
“I told you once,” the younger of the white-aproned figures returned coolly, “that Eustice Annesly was — ”
“Hush, Boris,” broke in the bearded man. “He is our patient — do not lose sight of that fact. You must not excite him. Bring up two chairs.” He glanced down at the bed and its occupant. “I will try to explain, Mr. — er — ah — well, my friend, I am going to address you as Eustice Annesly, for after all, a man is indisputably that which thinks for him. And I want you at all times to consider yourself Eustice Annesly, for if you allow yourself to think otherwise, Heaven alone knows what disastrous effect it would have on the integrity of that vital part of you which is, after all, Eustice Annesly. Remember that, my friend, after you have heard all you are to hear; never allow yourself for a moment to consider yourself other than he, for that way lies madness.” He paused. “You see — Eustice Annesly, so far as all bodily intents and purposes go, is dead. And you — well — you are, in body at least, one Grillo.”
“In body — Grillo?” gasped the patient in the bed, listening to this strange half-explanatory, half-apologetic peroration. “Good God, doctor, you are not trying to tell me that — that I am Grillo, the monkey-man? Surely not that — not that. Oh, how could such a thing — You must explain. You must! And release me,” he begged.
The older medical man strode quickly to the bedside, and, with three sharp snaps of the steel buckles, flung the straps off the body there held down. Annesly — or at least he who had just received the dumbfounding advice that he should continue so to consider himself — drew himself stiffly up to a sitting posture in the bed, involuntarily shuddering as he caught sight of his arms — long and shaggy. Then he gazed, wide-eyed and fearful, toward the man who was to tell him something that he dreaded; dreaded and yet did not understand. The two medical men dropped into the chairs. Then the elder asked:
“Do you remember where you were when you lost consciousness?”
“Yes, Dr. — Dr. — ”
“Michaelovitch,” the bearded man put in. “Dr. Andrev Michaelovitch.”
“Yes, Dr. Michaelovitch. I had attended Scarnum’s American Circus at the big new Aldwych Hippodrome in the attempt to forget an unhappy love affair that was spoiling all my days and nights. I was standing in front of a cage which held a great hairy gorilla.” Annesly paused and fell to weeping. “Oh, doctor, doctor,” he broke forth, “don’t tell me that in some unaccountable way I have — have become that beast. It’s all a horrible delusion on my part, isn’t it?”
The bearded man made no denial or affirmation of this statement. So Annesly wiped his eyes on the corner of the sheet and went on desperately: “And, doctor, I was standing near the cage, watching the — the — thing. A black-moustached fellow — evidently an Italian — was sweeping in front of the cage. He placed his coat on the railing. Accidentally I dislodged it. As it fell to the floor a blinding flash took place, a fearful, roaring noise began in my ears — and that’s all I can remember.”
“Poor, poor fellow!” the bearded man commented, looking at his patient with eyes in which kindness and pity were plainly visible. “Poor, poor fellow!” he repeated. “You have stated things exactly as they occurred. I know that you cannot realise the pity I have for you — how I feel for you. And I am afraid, too, that after I have finished you will hate me instead of admitting that I saved your life. But the explanation you must have, for it is due to you. Now pay close attention.
“Boris here, my son, and I are surgeons, both graduates from the University of Moscow, Russia — although thirty years apart. You will note that we speak English — almost perfectly. For thirty long years I have made a speciality of the technique and theory of brain operations; Boris here i
s already following in my footsteps. But what, you wonder, are we doing in your country? That is a question which must surely appear to you. In answer to that let me say merely — present political conditions in Russia. And that, I think, will explain sufficiently why Boris and I left that country just two years ago. We came to your Liverpool. And from your great throbbing city of Liverpool we travelled on to London.
“My friend, to a man, or to two men, in fact, who have made their living for a number of years either by being called into consultation on serious brain injuries, or by operating on the human cranium for such, as well as brain tumours, it proved no easy matter to gain a foothold in London. Securing permission to remain in your country was but an infinitesimal part of the battle. We had no professional reputation, no acquaintances, no hospital connections. Brain injuries, brain tumours likewise, are comparatively rare, and Harley Street seems to have a monopoly of those which do occur. So had we endeavoured to remain in our special field only, either starvation or the reduction of our capital to zero would have resulted. And so finally, after talking it over, we used our capital to build and equip this tiny emergency hospital off Trafalgar Square. We — ”
“Oh,” Annesly broke in, a light dawning suddenly on him “this is the Charing Cross Emergency Hospital, then?”
“Yes,” answered the medical man quietly. “Not the Charing Cross Hospital in King William Street, but the Charing Cross Emergency Hospital in the Strand — a private institution, depending for its upkeep solely upon the chance accidents that happen in the busy down-town section of London. We take care of many surgical cases here, for they come in to us at the rate of four or five a week. People whom we help at a critical moment for them, as a rule pay us. A few, of course, are not able. At any rate, ethically — and financially — we have made good. So much for that. And now let me return to my explanation.
“On the night of April 3rd we received a ‘hurry call’ to the Aldwich Hippodrome by telephone; some sort of an explosion had taken place. Although Boris usually acts as ambulance surgeon, I, too, sprang into the ambulance that night, for I realised that we were perhaps confronted with an unusually shocking situation. In less than four minutes we had reached Aldwich, and a moment later the Hippodrome itself. There we were excitedly informed by Mr. Scarnum, the American manager of the circus which had opened there, what had occurred. A terrific explosion — according to the testimony of a number of spectators — had taken place barely an instant after a young man had dislodged a coat from a railing. The owner of that coat, an Italian porter employed by the circus, was fatally injured.”
“So at this point,” Dr. Andrev Michaelovitch went on, “I shall interrupt my narrative in order to tell you briefly of that Italian’s dying confession, made through an interpreter and in this very hospital two days later. In that confession he declared that he had joined the show at New York for the express purpose of killing or injuring Scarnum, the wealthy American owner and manager, against whom he had a personal grudge. And for this reason he had carried a dynamite bomb with him for days, clear across the ocean, in fact, awaiting his chance. He knew that his chance would come on the opening night in London, for Scarnum always personally inspected his exhibition on each opening night. And this night the fanatic Italian was all in readiness, the bomb with its delicate triggers in his right-hand coat pocket. But in the excitement of affairs he had thoughtlessly removed that coat. A spectator in front of the cage of Grillo, the ‘missing link,’ had accidentally knocked it off from the railing where it hung. It exploded — with fearful effects.
“Most of the onlookers fortunately suffered only minor injuries. But the man who had dislodged the coat, as we later discovered by letters in his pocket, was a Mr. Eustace Annesly, an employee of a plant of this city which supplied current to the Tubes. Oh, my friend, he was fearfully, terribly mutilated. Both arms and a leg were blown completely off. Had it not been for the fact that a level-headed doctor in the audience had immediately stepped in and ligated the opened arteries of the poor injured body, the man, Eustace Annesly, would not have lived even long enough to be brought to our Charing Cross Emergency Hospital. But now let me describe the effects of the explosion on the cage containing Grillo, erroneously known as ‘the missing link.’ That cage was splintered into matchwood. The iron bars were distorted and twisted in every direction. And one of these bars, broken in the middle, had pierced the skull of Grillo, with the result that the animal, although absolutely unscathed so far as its body was concerned, was injured in a vital spot, the brain. It was an exceedingly valuable animal, you may be sure, and its American owner, eager to save its life, begged us to take it to the hospital in the ambulance. Knowing that I would be interested in the case, Boris needed no urging. Thus it fell out that poor Eustice Annesly, trembling on the brink of death, along with the gorilla in the same condition, was put in the ambulance and driven as swiftly as possible up the Strand to this hospital.
“Now, my friend, Eustice Annesly was doomed. Had he lived, his life would have been nothing less than a hell to him, crippled and deformed beyond all description. As for the gorilla, it was sinking rapidly; if it died, however, it meant merely the loss of a valuable animal to Scarnum, the American circus owner. So here was a chance, a Heavensent opportunity, to make an experiment the making of which had long been the dream of my life. I am going to describe that experiment to you — but I fear that it will be exceptionally difficult for me to make it comprehensible to one not versed in surgery. So if I use scientific terms which are not wholly understandable, then you must pardon me. I will do my best to render it plain to an unscientific mind.”
CHAPTER XLVIII
A CROWNING SUCCESS
“BEFORE I proceed,” the doctor said, “may I ask if you have ever read of how Dr. Alexis Carrell, of France, during the Great War, ten years ago, transposed the arm of a French private to the stump of a French General?”
The man in the bed nodded wearily.
“Then you are, of course, aware that by careful technique in stitching together the blood-vessels and the nerves of an organ to a body in which that organ never grew, Nature causes a complete reunion of the tissue.
“Well,” Michaelovitch went on, “let me proceed to describe in brief certain salient and basic anatomical facts about the human brain. That organ, as you may not know, governs the different muscular systems of the human body — and likewise takes impressions from the various impression localities — by a simple system of a single spinal cord, and twelve pairs of nerves known as the cranial nerves. The superficial origins of all these cranial nerves and that one great nerve, the spinal cord — in other words, the points of emergence from the brain — are found in the ventral surface of that organ; and by an intricate process of branching and rebranching they ultimately form the great nervous system.
“Now some of the fibres of these cranial nerves and this cord, these trunk lines, as I might call them, are purely sensory; that is to say, they receive impressions only. Others are motor, which means that they actuate with motion the different muscular systems of the body by means of their infinite branches. And some of them are even both motor and sensory. Running quickly over the twelve pairs of cranial nerves, they are respectively: the olfactory, the optic, the oculomotor, the trochlear, the trigeminal, the abducens, the facial, the auditory, the glossopharyngeal, the pneumogastric, the spinal accessory, and the hypoglossal.
“Now, regarding the blood supply of the brain; suffice to say that the large arteries of the neck and of the spinal cord unite at the base of the brain to form a complete arterial circle which surrounds the pituitary body and the optic chiasm. In other words, the blood supply of the brain is connected to the blood supply of the body by a close group of vessels, all of which enter in company with each other at the tiny lower orifice of the skull known as the occipital foramen. So much for that. I daresay I weary and confuse you.
“Why not, I have always asked myself, could not a human brain be transposed from the body of o
ne man to that of another? I, Dr. Andrev Michaelovitch, have for years maintained that the thing was possible under the following conditions: first, that a substitute for the cerebro-spinal fluid could be found and injected below the brain membrane, the dura and pia mater, immediately after the operation. Only with the proper substitute could the anastomosis, or joining up of blood-vessels and nerve trunks, be furthered by Nature. Second, that the optic nerves of the new brain were joined to the optic nerves leading to the retin of the eyes; the auditory nerves to the nerves leading to the tympani of the ears, and so forth all through the twelve pairs of cranial nerves. And third, that the blood-vessels of the transposed brain were connected without error to the blood-vessels leaving the spinal cord of the body, which was to constitute its new abode, artery to artery, vein to vein. Under these conditions why would not all-wonderful Nature permit the healing, the union, to take place? Ah, my friend, I, Andrev Michaelovitch, have absolutely demonstrated the truth of my theory. But I digress. Let me continue:
“Coming back in the ambulance that night, I made a quick examination of the mutilated body of Eustace Annesly and the body of the simian. I found, as I already told you, that the brain of Eustice Annesly was uninjured — while the body was fearfully mangled; that the brain of the simian was mutilated — and its body was unharmed. Quickly I disclosed my plan to Boris.
“While the bodies were placed on the double operating-table I quickly killed a pair of white rabbits which I had been keeping for experimental purposes; then I withdrew in a sterile syringe the spinal fluid which I had counted upon to further the union of nerves and blood-vessels. But ah! — that is the secret of my success — I mixed with that spinal fluid a certain organic compound. When the name of that compound and its proportions in the mixture are published in my book a year from to-day, cranial surgery will become revolutionised. Completely so. But again I digress.
Sing Sing Nights Page 24
