Sing Sing Nights

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  “With the two bodies in our tiny operating-room, we drew down the shades and locked the doors. Both of the victims were unconscious; hence we required no prying nurse to adminster an anaesthetic. Now, my friend, had it been twenty years ago, the operation would have been utterly impossible. In those days the old operation of craniectomy was exceptionally slow and tedious.

  “But to-day we have what is known as the electric trephine saw — a circular blade revolving many thousand times per minute by means of a tiny motor attached to the handle, and provided with an adjustable guard which allows the saw blade to cut only through the bone and not to cleave the brain membrane lying directly below. So much for that.

  “In less time than it takes to tell it, Boris was working upon Eustice Annesly, I upon the gorilla. I first made a number of radiating incisions in the scalp, and laid it back in long strips, each strip pinched at the base with a steel clamp to prevent undue haemorrhage. Then, by means of one of our electric trephine saws, I cut quickly through the skull, travelling along a line which crossed the forehead and dropped down and around the base of the head. I was then able to remove the dome of the cranium, together with the entire rear almost to the spinal column, all in one piece. It remained a comparatively simple matter to remove the terribly mutilated brain, although I was forced, of course, to ligate the blood-vessels of the spinal cord to prevent haemorrhage from that source.

  “And by this time, Boris, with the use of another trephine saw, had rather clumsily exposed the brain of the man, Eustice Annesly. I then stepped in and removed it, using the most extreme care in detaching it from its connections with Eustice Annesly’s eye sockets, spinal cord, and other points. From that time on I had no assistance. In fact, I was forced to work in such close quarters that I greatly feared my technique would prove ultimately to be a waste of time.

  “My friend, I cannot go into details about that transposition. You could not understand the difficulties which I encountered. Enough to tell you that within exactly one hour I had joined the brain of Eustice Annesly to the body of Grillo, the monkey man — at every main nerve and blood-vessel. Below the dura mater I had injected a quantity of my combination of rabbits’ spinal fluid and — But — ah! — that, of course, is my own secret. I had replaced the huge, irregular cup of bone — now trepanned by Boris at the point where it had been fractured by the cage bar — on the remaining portion of the skull, fastening it securely in place by four silver plates and their tiny silver screws, all of which had been first sterilised by boiling and then kept in a solution of boric acid. And, lastly, I had drawn back the strips of scalp and sewn them together, with drains between each strip. It now remained to be seen what the result would be.

  “You — a combination of the body of Grillo, the monkey man, and the brains of Eustice Annesly — lived. You lay motionless for days and days. With the exception of Boris and myself, not an employee of the hospital knew but that you were merely Grillo — for to this moment neither of us has ever breathed a word of that operation. After a few days of coma, and then a further week of artificial feeding, you ate automatically from a spoon. A day after that you opened your eyelids. Come a later time when you moved your limbs in response to the stimuli of pin-pricks. We perceived with astonishment that, one by one, the muscles were gradually falling under control of the new brain; that the brain centre governing each muscle had an unimpeded path for its energy currents; that, in other words, the human cerebrum and cerebellum were able to govern perfectly the body of the creature most nearly human anatomatically. You are aware, no doubt, that the gorilla has no tail. It would be interesting, a very interesting experiment, to see whether the brain of Eustice Annesly were able to govern or control an entirely new organ. But that we cannot ascertain.

  “And so, day by day, we watched your recovery to health and strength with painstaking minuteness. But as you grew stronger and stronger you seemed to be in a daze mentally. Could it be possible, I asked myself again and again, that the monkey tongue was not susceptible to the impulses from the speech centres of the human brain? Or had the hypoglossal nerve, governing the tongue muscles, failed to unite? Or had I, in the course of the operation, in some way damaged the speech centre, that region including the cortical area of all the convolutions which enter the formation of the fossa of Sylvius? I tell you we were puzzled.

  “And to-day, as Boris and I entered the hospital together, we were informed that our strange patient, Scarnum’s monkey, had risen from bed and attempted to wander away — and that three of our porters had been compelled to choke it into insensibility and strap it down. Immediately we entered the room, with the result that at last we heard speech from your lips — speech which we had looked for so long and so hopelessly. That is all.”

  CHAPTER XLIX

  AN OFFER OF EMPLOYMENT

  THE doctor had finished. A thousand thoughts whirled through the mind of Eustice Annesly — that mind now imprisoned in the body of a simian. Unable for a minute to utter any sort of a reply, he lay there dimly wondering what life could mean to him now that he was no longer in human form. But the more he tried to think on the matter the more strange, terrible, overwhelming it all became. During that short space of time, which seemed like ages to him, he feared that he would go mad.

  He pressed the palms of his hairy hands to his equally hairy head and struggled to think — to gain some conception of this new order of things which must persist until his death. Dr. Michaelovitch had saved his brain — the brain of Eustice Annesly — yes. But he had imprisoned it hopelessly for life in the hideous body of a gorilla.

  So what had he gained? Life? But life — life — what must such a life be to the personality, the mentality, the physical side of Eustice Annesly? How could he ever adjust himself to it? As to that, however, time alone could tell. So after what seemed hours of soul agony, he answered the man who had explained matters so painstakingly to him:

  “Dr. Michaelovitch, I cannot thank you for saving my life. I cannot grasp the situation as yet. I cannot realise it all in this short space that I have had time to think about it. All I know is that it would have been far kinder to Eustice Annesly to have allowed him to die in entirety that night of April 3rd.” He stopped, overcome by his own feelings. Then he raised himself up in the bed. “In your own scientific enthusiasm you believe that you have saved a life, but” — and his voice raised to a high pitch — ” you are a murderer, Dr. Michaelovitch, a man who has murdered another man’s soul!”

  To his surprise, however, two great tears welled up in the medical man’s eyes, and in a low voice the latter replied to his accusation:

  “You are wrong — totally, totally wrong. Above all else, it is the surgeon’s duty to save life — or to prolong it. Grillo, the monkey man, and Eustice Annesly, the engineer, were sinking rapidly to death, one with an uninjured body, the other with an uninjured brain. It was my duty to save one life from the two — and that was what I did. To any man with a fair, rational mind, I did the right thing. And I feel that some day you will think the same. But, apart from all consideration of medical ethics, you forget, my friend, my duty as a surgeon to science itself. Within a year from to-day I shall have in the Press a book that will cause nothing less than a tumult among the surgeons in your country and America. And I shall then ask you to come forward with your testimony and substantiate my claims. That book, containing an exposition of my own peculiar variations in operative technique, as well as the secret formula for my artificial cerebro-spinal fluid, will make possible operations never dreamed of at the present day.” He paused and then added: “Will you not try to look at the matter from my point of view?”

  For several long minutes Eustice Annesly — for so he had just been advised to consider himself, and so he intended to do as long as sanity held out — pondered. After all, he reflected, why harbour resentment and hate against this surgeon? In the medical man’s estimation he had done what was best. And surely there would be some niche in the world that the new Eustice An
nesly could occupy with happiness to himself and use to his fellow-beings. So he thrust out a hairy paw. A look of relief came over Michaelovitch’s face as he seized it and clasped it firmly.

  “I’ll try,” said the patient. “But I have an instinctive fear that I shall fail to be in accord with life from now on.”

  And Eustace Annesly was right. For his existence, through many long months to come, proved to be only a burden, a miserable, unhappy one for him.

  His recovery to health and strength was rapid after his interview with old Dr. Andrev Michaelovitch and the latter’s son, Boris Michaelovitch. Each day the former visited his bedside and talked Jong and earnestly, trying to reconcile him to the fate to which he had been doomed by the act of a fanatic Italian. But he noticed, however, that on the second day the medical man ordered the mirror to be removed.

  Often during the long, tedious afternoons he lay back in his bed and studied his condition from the strict viewpoint of cause and effect, trying to convince himself that Sybil Mainwaring was wholly to blame. For had it not been on account of her refusal to marry him that he had attended Scarnum’s American Circus? And was it not at Scarnum’s Circus that he had met with such a horrible accident? But try as he might he could not blame her dear self for his present situation. All he could associate with his mental picture of her was longing, deep, heartfelt yearning, unceasing tenderness and love. And thus, by the peculiar mental action which causes each individual in life to blame someone for the calamities that disturb his life, he began to hate a man whom he had never seen, never known: Geoffrey Olford, Lord Olford — the Earl of Olford! — the one person to whose arms Sybil Mainwaring had turned.

  But one brief gleam there was to illumine his dark and gloomy thought; there was no one, neither mother nor father, brother nor sister, to bemoan the supposed death of Eustice Annesly in the explosion at the Aldwich Hippodrome. Thank God at least for that. No one need feel grief at his going, unless it be a cold, hard-faced spinster who kept a hostel in the West End, and she no doubt had long ago sold the last of his belongings that sat in the big front room on the second floor, overlooking Guildford Street and the morning flow of Royal Mail vans.

  As for Scarnum, he was to have more to do with that paradoxical individual before he left the hospital. Three days after his first interview with old Dr. Andrev Michaelovitch, a tall, flashily dressed man, radiating in every sartorial detail the atmosphere of America, wearing grey spats, a grey vest, a diamond pin of at least five carats in size, and a suit containing the most striking checks, was ushered into his tiny hospital room. After insolently staring down at Eustice Annesly for several minutes, he finally burst out:

  “Won’erful won’erful, won’erful! Beyond my under-standin’, that’s what it is! Old Dr. Mike, downstairs, has told me all about your case. I tell you our fortunes are made.” He jerked out a typewritten sheet of paper and a fountain-pen. “Here’s a contrack connectin’ you with the Scarnum shows at ten pounds a week. How does that strike you?”

  “No money could tempt me,” Eustice Annesly retorted from the easy-chair where he was convalescing, “to go on exhibition before a crowd of jostling, staring curiosity-seekers. So it will be quite useless for you to make any offers.”

  “Won’erful, won’erful!” the check-suited man replied, apparently undisturbed by the curt refusal of his offer. “That body — and hooman speech! Grillo — the talkin’ ape! With that advertisement we’ll tak Aemurrica by storm. My friend, I meant guineas instead o’ pounds. Is it a go?”

  Eustace Annesly’s only answer was a derisive bitter laugh. “You raise me ten shillings, eh, my good friend?”

  The peripatetic human cross-word puzzle from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean was nonplussed. “My friend, I was slightly in error when I mentioned the sum of ten guineas a week. In reality I meant twenty guineas.”

  “Absolutely useless,” returned Annesly angrily, for the self-confidence of the American showman in believing that he could induce him, Annesly, to sign his contract, grated on the very monkey ears that heard the offer.

  And so by degrees, Scarnum worked up to fifty guineas a week. And when Annesly sneeringly refused that last offer, a cold, hard look came on the showman’s face. He thrust one forefinger at his hearer and snarled:

  “You forget, my friend of the anymule kingdom, that, while your brain is your own, you’re usin’ a body which formerly belonged to me — the body of the original Grillo, for which I paid two thousand five hundred cold dollars from an African hunter. And furthermore, the body is worth exactly that amount to me. Either deliver it over or pay the cash. I’ve got you just where — ”

  “That will be enough from you, Scarnum!” calmly interrupted the elder Michaelovitch, who had entered the hospital room at that second. “I have the names of witnesses who heard you say, directly after the explosion, that if the monkey died his body would not be worth even one hundred dollars to you for taxidermic purposes. And since on the poor mutilated body of Eustice Annesly there was a wallet containing nearly thirty pounds, I herewith tender you twenty-one pounds of it — and I give you exactly three minutes to accept!”

  And Scarnum, old and wise to the devious ways of law accepted the money without further dispute, and wrote out a bill of sale giving to one Eustice Annesly full and unqualified possession of the body of Grillo, known as the “missing link.” But as he picked up his hat and cane and turned to leave the room, he looked toward Annesly and remarked, in a surprisingly friendly tone of voice:

  “Always remember, my friend, that the offer of fifty guineas a week in England or two hundred and fifty dollars a week in Amurrica stands good. I’ll warrant that you’ll not find the world so pleasant a place to live in — now that you’ve got the outward semblance of an anymule. And so I leave you, f’r the present. But I think you’ll come round to my views before many moons. Wire me collect when you’re ready to join. Our route’s in the English Carnival Review — an’ in Amurrica any telegraph office can locate Scarnum’s Show. Awr revore!” And he walked from the room.

  As time proved, Scarnum was right.

  On the day Eustice Annesly left the hospital, he departed in perfect friendliness with old Dr. Michaelovitch, but with a fixed determination not to return to that starting-point of his new life, no matter what befell. And although plans he had none, hope beat high in his heart that he would surely find some work in the world, some congenial occupation by which he could prove his use to mankind in spite of his dreadful handicap. But the events of the first day only turned that hope into a feeling of profound despondency.

  CHAPTER L

  A THING OUTCAST

  WHEN Eustice Annesly left the little Charing Cross Emergency Hospital, he carried in his pocket eight pounds, eleven shillings, and three pence, an amount sufficient to sustain an ordinary man in London for a month. He was completely clad in human apparel, wearing a black suitill fitting, to be sure, considering the grotesquely proportioned gorilla body which it had to cover, huge black shoes of the largest size that a Strand bootmaker could make, shoes which clumped and thumped at every step; a soft hat, and an immense pair of tan kid gloves. He also carried a light cane. But there was unfortunately no way by which he could conceal his hideous face, with its tufts of coarse fur, its sharp, protruding teeth, its tightly-drawn red lips, and its tiny piercing black eyes.

  As a result of this, no doubt, no sooner had he traversed a half-block along the Strand than a horse, drawmg a baker’s cart, caught sight of him, reared up on its hind legs, snorted, and dashed madly down the street, overturning the light cart and throwing out the driver. And in getting quickly away from that spot lest he be held responsible for the accident, he came around a bend into full view of another horse, which reared on its hind legs and then dashed madly up on the pavement, sliding down, light cart and all, the steps of the yawning entrance of a Tube station, from which the people poured out panic-stricken. Immediately, a tall bobby, helmet on righteous head, stepped over to him, and brandishi
ng his truncheon cried angrily:

  “Keep h’out of this district, you H’American side-show freak, you! You’ll ‘ave h’ev’ry ‘orse in Lunnon a-runnin’ aw’y. H’if the traffic gets tangled up on h’account of you, I’ll be takin’ you in, and you’ll be gettin’ a month in gaol ‘r fined ten pun’s. Wow — out with you!”

  So, without any argument, Eustice Annesly turned sadly away, beckoning a staring cabby, who listened wide-eyed at the curb to the conversation: for he had seen enough of London police to know that traffic in the heart of the city was their God. “Drive me to the East End — anywhere — set me down somewhere on — on a side street off — off Commercial Road.”

  The cabby, scratching his head, drove off with his strange fare just as a large crowd almost swamped the taxi. And seated back on its cushions, Eustice Annesly bowled through the City, out through Aldgate, and over to that part of London where a shabby, ill-dressed, horrible monstrosity such as himself would surely fit — the East End — the slums! As the cab at last came to a whining halt, he climbed out, tendering the cabby a pound-note and waving away the change. The latter, staring at the note and then at his fare, was off in an instant, probably lest the latter suffer a change of heart.

  And now Eustice Annesly walked slowly along Commercial Road, where bobbies there were none, and horses not in sight, at least at this point. He turned quckly down the first cross street, which was obviously thickly populated by people of the poorer class, with small dun-coloured brick houses crowding each other, and each with shutters that hung for the most part by one hinge. A group of children played in the street. Dogs frisked about them. All was peace and tranquility. Then a child looked up. He beckoned to his little companion. Then the entire group looked up. Terror! Panic! Every child in the group ran screaming and terror-stricken into the closest houses! And people stuck heads out of windows from all directions.