“Willing?” responded Eustice Annesly. “Willing? Is a man trembling on the brink of self-destruction willing to take a chance to remove the cause of his unhappiness? But I beg of you not to tantalise me with false hopes. How — how can it — Tell me what you mean by your question?”
“Simply this,” Andrev Michaelovitch replied, beckoning his visitor into a chair, and dropping into one himself. “Every now and then we see a patient — in most instances a man — brought into the hospital here, injured in such a way that he ultimately dies. A few of these cases are due to train accidents; others are due to bus and car accidents in London’s narrow streets; and still others are head and brain injuries, resulting from objects being carelessly dropped by workmen from the roofs of buildings; and, in one case, we had a skull concussion due to a piece of metal dropping from a plane heading for Croydon Aerodrome. However, as to the rate at which these accident cases are brought in, it varies greatly. Sometimes they arrive as fast as three a week. At other times we do not see one for a month or more.”
“Yes,” Annesly broke in eagerly, “and what bearing can this have on my case?”
“As follows,” Michaelovitch went on: “Suppose that some time in the future we receive a case of a fatal brain injury. Suppose that you have held yourself in readiness here at the hospital for an immediate ascension to the operating table. Suppose that I remove your brain — the brain of Eustice Annesly — from your body — the body of Grillo, ‘the missing link’ — and attempt to transpose it for the second time to the brain cavity of that victim, whoever he may be. I might fail. The operation is dangerous — highly so. It demands the most skilful technique. The chances are against its being a success — and I verily believe that without the injection of my artificial cerebro-spinal fluid, of which the formula is still known to me alone, it would be an absolute impossibility. At any rate, there is the proposition. Are you willing to submit to it? It rests entirely with you.”
CHAPTER LII
THE SHUFFLING OF FEET
FOR a moment Eustice Annesly gasped. Then for the first time did he realise what the sensations of a spirit doomed to the lower regions might be on seeing a chance of Heaven held forth to him. Finally he collected his wits.
“Oh, Dr. Michaelovitch,” he implored, “I’ll do anything — absolutely anything — to get even a chance to gain my freedom from the body of a gorilla. Even if you could transfer my brain to the body of a cripple — or an East Indian — that would be a thousand times preferable to my present condition.”
“I am willing to risk it for your sake,” Michaelovitch said. “We are taking a big chance. If I fail to join up the optic nerves properly, you will be blind. If the auditory nerves do not unite, you will be deaf. If the cells of the spinal cord fail to cohere to those of the brain matter, you may be worse than deaf or blind; in other words, you may be paralysed. Are you still willing?
“Absolutely,” the monkey-man affirmed. “Anything, anything but this — ” And with a gesture Eustice Annesly indicated his grotesque monkey body.
So that night he entered a bed in the Charing Cross Emergency Hospital — to begin the indefinite wait for a fatal accident which would provide him with an uninjured body. At times he was gripped by the desire to live, by the fear of risking his life on the skill and knowledge of one man alone — but always, when he thought of the circus days in America and his complete isolation from human-kind, he steadfastly determined to proceed with the project at all hazards.
One afternoon the telephone bell in the downstairs office rang loudly. A minute later he detected the clang of the electric ambulance as it whirled from the hospital. Not a quarter of an hour afterwards he heard the return of the same vehicle; and, shortly after, the shuffling of feet on the floor below — the shuffling noise always made by men carrying a stretcher. And as he lay there in bed, wondering what it was all about, young Dr. Boris Michaelovitch hurried into his room, wheeling the rolling platform that was used to carry patients to the operating-room.
“Quick!” he whispered. “Roll on! No time to explain. Every second is precious.”
Trembling, Annesly mounted the flat carriage and found himself, amid a chaos of conflicting thoughts, being rolled from the room on rubber-tyred wheels. A quarter of a minute later he was being wheeled into a tiny room, enamelled all in white, and with hundreds of glittering instruments in glass cases around the walls. Then he caught a glimpse of old Dr. Michaelovitch bustling about a table on which lay the body of a man partially covered with a sheet.
“Hurry!” the latter grunted to his son. “The ether cone — on your patient! Work fast!”
And, as young Dr. Boris Michaelovitch placed the ether cone to Eustice Annesly’s face, the man with the body of a simian dropped away into blissful unconsciousness.
Followed an eternity of blackness, punctuated at irregular intervals by faint glimpses of light, by ill-defined impressions of moving figures, and by the peculiar buzz-buzz of voices talking in subdued tones. And then after what seemed thousands of years of this half-consciousness, he opened his eyes one sunny morning and found himself in a narrow, white-enamelled bed, placed in a small room not greatly unlike the one where he had first awakened to a new life as Grillo, the ‘missing link.’ He blinked his eyes dazedly for a few seconds; then he became aware of the fact that Dr. Boris Michaelovitch was standing at the foot of the bed, looking sadly down at him.
He stared about himself, blinked for a few more seconds, and suddenly asked:
“How — how — how did the operation fare? Did it fail? Were we too late? Did — ”
Dr. Boris Michaelovitch crossed the floor swiftly, and presently returned, bearing a large hand-mirror which he thrust into the fingers of his questioner.
“Look!” he commanded. “Does it seem as though the operation had failed?”
Eustace Annesly stared at the mirror unbelievingly. Then a cry of delight broke from him, for he saw the face of a man — an actual human being — instead of the dreadful, hairy countenance of the gorilla. The face in the mirror had light yellow hair and clear blue eyes, and the skin was white and smooth and without a blemish. Although he had never personally fancied the extreme type of blondness in men, he lay back in the bed and fervently breathed the comment:
“Doctor, it seems too good to be true.”
The latter brought up a chair to the bedside.
“But it is true, nevertheless,” the young medical man said simply. “You will be shocked at what I have to tell you, though. My father is dead!”
“Dead!” ejaculated Annesly, rising on one elbow.
The physician raised his hand. “Yes, dead. But don’t excite yourself, for you are still convalescing from the last operation, which occurred just six weeks ago to-day. I’ll try to explain what happened, to the best of my ability. It seems that on that last afternoon — the afternoon on which, you’ll remember, I wheeled you to the operating-room myself — an unusual accident took place in Shaftesbury Avenue. The driver of a motor truck which carried an assortment of twisted and round steel rods intended for use in reinforcing concrete work in a new structure ascending there, lost control of his machine — with the result that it unexpectedly backed on the pavement. One of the projecting rods, however, squarely caught a passer-by. It forced his head tightly against the wall of a building, piercing his skull for a bare half-inch.
“A near-by chemist telephoned to us here, and we immediately sent for the victim. Father found, on examination, that it was a fatal case, for the brain was badly mutilated by the impingement of the steel rod. At his command I brought you speedily to the operating-room and put you under ether. While I was doing this, father was laying back the scalp of the injured man in long strips, and using the electric trephine saw in such a way that he could remove the upper and rear portion of the skull in one piece. This accomplished, he took out the injured brain entirely, preventing haemorrhage in the blood-vessels that were left by ligating them, exactly as in the previous operation. The
n he directed his energies to your own person — which at that time, of course, was the person of Grillo. Fortunately he did not have to delay matters in opening the cranial cavity of the gorilla, for as soon as the scalp was laid completely back the only procedure necessary was the removal of the tiny silver connecting-plates placed there seven or more months ago. Anticipating the possibility of having to do much work in a short space of time, father had had for several days a quantity of his artificial cerebro-spinal fluid in readiness refrigerated and sterilised. So the only difficulty that confronted him was the actual transposition itself of the brain of Eustice Annesly to the cavity of the unfortunate victim of the accident.
“It would only weary you, I am sure, if I were to describe the finer points of the operation. So I shall pass over them by telling you that after father had joined up artery to artery, vein to vein, nerve to nerve, and had injected a quantity of his compound, he merely followed the usual procedure: first, trepanning the hole in the skull caused by the impact of the steel rod; secondly, replacing the bone cup and fastening it to its base by the usual silver plates and inset silver screw; and thirdly, drawing back the strips of scalp and stitching them together, with tiny pieces of gauze between to act as drains. If you will raise your hand to your scalp you can feel under the hair a number of hard ridges where those strips have grown together again. Now is everything clear to you so far?”
“Absolutely,” Annesly assured him. “But — but the death — the death of your father. I don’t understand that.”
“I am coming to that. The nervous strain of the last operation was so severe on him that he took a walk that night along the Embankment in order to breathe in the fresh, cool air off the Thames and quiet himself down for a restful sleep. A piercing, sleety rain came up — a rain such as only London can provide! He was insufficiently clad to withstand the effects of it. Pneumonia, the nemesis of the older generation, set in. Within seventy-two hours he was dead. From that time on I took care of your case myself. One of the deplorable features of the whole thing, however, is that with father’s death there passed a secret of medicine that would have brought about world-wide changes in the art of brain surgery — for not a scrap of paper, not a line of writing, not a final word did he leave by which the formula of his artificial cerebro-spinal fluid could have been given over to the profession.” He rose from his chair. “And now for a few simple tests, that we may determine the degree of success of the operation.”
CHAPTER LIII
A VOICE OUTSIDE
THE doctor passed out of the room, but presently returned to the bedside, carrying a small glass tray on which stood a number of test tubes, each holding a glass stirring-rod. After opening what seemed to be a clinical notebook, he withdrew one of the glass rods and placed it directly beneath the nostrils of the patient.
“Sniff this,” he ordered, “and tell me what odour it gives forth.”
“Peppermint,” Annesly said, without any hesitation.
After making an entry in his notebook, the young doctor withdrew another rod and placed it between the patient’s lips. “What flavour?” he asked.
“Cinnamon,”
He then opened his surgeon’s white apron and held up the end of his necktie. “What colour is this?”
“Lavender,” replied Annesly.
“Good!” the physician commented. “The union of the cranial nerves, so far, is all satisfactory.”
Dr. Boris Michaelovitch then withdrew from his pocket his watch, which he held in turn to each of his patient’s ears. After their owner had assured him that he could distinctly hear its ticking, the medical man ordered his patient to roll his eyes, to raise his eyelids, to frown, to open and close his lower jaw, and to perform a host of other odd, muscular actions. When each test had been passed in an apparently satisfactory manner, Boris Michaelovitch smiled for the first time.
“An absolutely perfect transposition,” he announced. “Except for those long ridges on your scalp, no one could ever know that such a strange operation had been performed. It is remarkable — highly remarkable!”
“But how,” asked the man in bed finally, “am I going to assume the position in life which belonged to this man — this man whose body I now have? His name, his profession, his degree of education, his past, his friends will all be unknown to me. I shall get inextricably tangled up if I try to pretend that I am he. So what am I to do?”
“I have taken care of all that,” replied Boris Michaelovitch. “While you were still in the post-operative coma, his friends and relatives were allowed to see you only for a moment or so each. As you commenced to emerge from it, these visits have been cut down even to his closest family connections. And in the meantime I have not been idle.” Boris Michaelovitch withdrew a packet of papers from an inside pocket and held it up in full view. “I have here data which I have been collecting for several weeks. That data, which I shall place immediately in your hands so that you can study and familiarise yourself with it down to the finest detail, contains this man’s age, his name, the descriptions of his friends’ appearances, his connections, and dozens and dozens of facts and happenings of his past life. Fortified with that — and a reasonable amount of what the Americans call ‘bluff’ — you should be able to step from the hospital back to his position in life with but very few slips. Those slips, however, which are bound to crop up now and then in the future, will be overlooked by those who knew him and attributed to the effects of a supposed simple trepanning operation. Now take these papers and commence to study.”
The young physician paused, listening. A woman’s voice was plainly audible in the corridor, just outside the door of the room. Her words came in to the two occupants with startling distinctness:
“But you shall not keep me from him any longer,” she was saying tearfully. “For an entire week now I have been denied. I will — I tell you I will see him.”
Dr. Boris Michaelovitch immediately dropped the packet of papers to the floor and rushed quickly to the doorway. But he was too late. The door flew open. A woman swept swiftly across the room and dropped on her knees by Eustice Annesly’s bedside, flinging her arm around his neck and pressing her cheek snug up against his own.
“My dearest one, my dearest one,” she said, smiling through her tears, “they have saved you for me.”
For a few chaotic seconds he stared at the face which rested so close to his own — the face of a girl who had meant so much to him — the face of Sybil herself. Then he folded her joyfully into his arms, as the glorious, everwhelming truth burst upon him.
In that second brain-transposing operation he had secured the body of no other than Geoffrey, Earl of Olford — with the result that Lord Geoffrey Olford’s fortune of a million pounds sterling, Lord Geoffrey Olford’s title, and Lord Geoffrey Olford’s wife were now his for the years to come.
CHAPTER LIV
THE COMING OF THE DAWN
SOME time before Eastwood had reached the astounding end of his unusual story, the square open window of the death cell had changed its curtain from point-flecked black velvet to grey — shroud grey! Now, as he stopped speaking entirely, the grey began to be pierced by rays of orange-red. Krenwicz arose silently, stepped forward and snapped out the one bulb of the prison lamp. Now the four men sat in the semi-light, neither darkness nor day, like grey figures. The clock on the wall ironically struck the hour of five-thirty. Thirty minutes more to live! Far down the corridor could be indistinctly heard the sound of several voices, the muffled blow of a hammer, the clank of a wrench, the voice of a man saying: “Try and throw … that switch … in backward … tighten up the knee-pad connection.”
Not a word had been spoken in the square cell, and it was Krenwicz who, gazing fascinatedly at McCaigh, the Iron Man, who sat in the grey light immobile, unmoved, unshaken at the imminence of the fate which was now rushing with the speed of an express train upon two of them, broke the silence. His voice was forced, ghastly, shaky. His eyes no longer shone with the dancing de
vils of nine hours ago. They were now hollow, dead.
“Eastwood, your story — your story — was a most remarkable piece of fiction. I am glad that I — I — had the privilege of being your auditor, for you succeeded in carrying me completely out of myself in these — our last horrible hours.” He paused, passing a hand over his white forehead. “God, what a night it has been! Romance, Fantasy — ” He gazed across from him at the emotionless Iron Man who coolly tossed the smouldering stub of his cigarette into the cuspidor. Then, swallowing hard, the Russian added: “And now, I — I think you will all agree with me, we — we must ask Shanahan which of the three stories appealed to him most.”
Even as he had spoken, the white light of morning had spread itself through the tiny window, filling the lone room with a weird radiance. A chill feeling — a feeling as of being enveloped in semi-fog — seemed to wrap itself around the men assembled there. A beam of sunlight clambered over the sill and threw itself defiantly against the grey rugosities of the opposite wall. Shanahan opened his lips to speak, but stopped short. Voices, this time louder, more distinct, more authoritative, sounded down the corridor. Many feet. A second later the oaken door swung open, and in the opening, the grey-haired warden of Sing Sing at one side, a fresh-faced turnkey at the other, stood the same elderly man who had appeared there the night before. He stepped in. He beckoned Shanahan out. He waited a moment. The warden, with a courteous nod, and the turnkey with a jangle of his keys, departed up the corridor. The visitor was now quite alone. He advanced slowly into the centre of the open cell, and stood leaning against Shanahan’s chair. The three men noted his bloodshot eyes, his dishevelled hair, the lines of worry and age that had crept into his austere face.
Sing Sing Nights Page 27
