The Great Novels and Short Stories of Somerset Maugham

by W. Somerset Maugham

  ‘It would burn like tinder,’ he said.

  They went through the rooms on the first floor, and they were as empty and as cheerless. Presently they came to that which had been Margaret’s. In a bowl were dead flowers. Her brushes were still on the toilet table. But it was a gloomy chamber, with its dark oak, and, so comfortless that Susie shuddered. Arthur stood for a time and looked at it, but he said nothing. They found themselves again on the stairs and they went to the second storey. But here they seemed to be at the top of the house.

  ‘How does one get up to the attics?’ said Arthur, looking about him with surprise.

  He paused for a while to think. Then he nodded his head.

  ‘There must be some steps leading out of one of the rooms.’

  They went on. And now the ceilings were much lower, with heavy beams, and there was no furniture at all. The emptiness seemed to make everything more terrifying. They felt that they were on the threshold of a great mystery, and Susie’s heart began to beat fast. Arthur conducted his examination with the greatest method; he walked round each room carefully, looking for a door that might lead to a staircase; but there was no sign of one.

  ‘What will you do if you can’t find the way up?’ asked Susie.

  ‘I shall find the way up,’ he answered.

  They came to the staircase once more and had discovered nothing. They looked at one another helplessly.

  ‘It’s quite clear there is a way,’ said Arthur, with impatience. ‘There must be something in the nature of a hidden door somewhere or other.’

  He leaned against the balustrade and meditated. The light of his lantern threw a narrow ray upon the opposite wall.

  ‘I feel certain it must be in one of the rooms at the end of the house. That seems the most natural place to put a means of ascent to the attics.’

  They went back, and again he examined the panelling of a small room that had outside walls on three sides of it. It was the only room that did not lead into another.

  ‘It must be here,’ he said.

  Presently he gave a little laugh, for he saw that a small door was concealed by the woodwork. He pressed it where he thought there might be a spring, and it flew open. Their torch showed them a narrow wooden staircase. They walked up and found themselves in front of a door. Arthur tried it, but it was locked. He smiled grimly.

  ‘Will you get back a little,’ he said.

  He lifted his axe and swung it down upon the latch. The handle was shattered, but the lock did not yield. He shook his head. As he paused for a moment, an there was a complete silence, Susie distinctly heard a slight noise. She put her hand on Arthur’s arm to call his attention to it, and with strained ears they listened. There was something alive on the other side of the door. They heard its curious sound: it was not that of a human voice, it was not the crying of an animal, it was extraordinary.

  It was the sort of gibber, hoarse and rapid, and it filled them with an icy terror because it was so weird and so unnatural.

  ‘Come away, Arthur,’ said Susie. ‘Come away.’

  ‘There’s some living thing in there,’ he answered.

  He did not know why the sound horrified him. The sweat broke out on his forehead.

  ‘Something awful will happen to us,’ whispered Susie, shaking with uncontrollable fear.

  ‘The only thing is to break the door down.’

  The horrid gibbering was drowned by the noise he made. Quickly, without pausing, he began to hack at the oak door with all his might. In rapid succession his heavy blows rained down, and the sound echoed through the empty house. There was a crash, and the door swung back. They had been so long in almost total darkness that they were blinded for an instant by the dazzling light. And then instinctively they started back, for, as the door opened, a wave of heat came out upon them so that they could hardly breathe. The place was like an oven.

  They entered. It was lit by enormous lamps, the light of which was increased by reflectors, and warmed by a great furnace. They could not understand why so intense a heat was necessary. The narrow windows were closed. Dr Porhoët caught sight of a thermometer and was astounded at the temperature it indicated. The room was used evidently as a laboratory. On broad tables were test-tubes, basins and baths of white porcelain, measuring-glasses, and utensils of all sorts; but the surprising thing was the great scale upon which everything was. Neither Arthur nor Dr Porhoët had ever seen such gigantic measures nor such large test-tubes. There were rows of bottles, like those in the dispensary of a hospital, each containing great quantities of a different chemical. The three friends stood in silence. The emptiness of the room contrasted so oddly with its appearance of being in immediate use that it was uncanny. Susie felt that he who worked there was in the midst of his labours, and might return at any moment; he could have only gone for an instant into another chamber in order to see the progress of some experiment. It was quite silent. Whatever had made those vague, unearthly noises was hushed by their approach.

  The door was closed between this room and the next. Arthur opened it, and they found themselves in a long, low attic, ceiled with great rafters, as brilliantly lit and as hot as the first. Here too were broad tables laden with retorts, instruments for heating, huge test-tubes, and all manner of vessels. The furnace that warmed it gave a steady heat. Arthur’s gaze travelled slowly from table to table, and he wondered what Haddo’s experiments had really been. The air was heavy with an extraordinary odour: it was not musty, like that of the closed rooms through which they had passed, but singularly pungent, disagreeable and sickly. He asked himself what it could spring from. Then his eyes fell upon a huge receptacle that stood on the table nearest to the furnace. It was covered with a white cloth. He took it off. The vessel was about four feet high, round, and shaped somewhat like a washing tub, but it was made of glass more than an inch thick. In it a spherical mass, a little larger than a football, of a peculiar, livid colour. The surface was smooth, but rather coarsely grained, and over it ran a dense system of blood-vessels. It reminded the two medical men of those huge tumours which are preserved in spirit in hospital museums. Susie looked at it with an incomprehensible disgust. Suddenly she gave a cry.

  ‘Good God, it’s moving!’

  Arthur put his hand on her arm quickly to quieten her and bent down with irresistible curiosity. They saw that it was a mass of flesh unlike that of any human being; and it pulsated regularly. The movement was quite distinct, up and down, like the delicate heaving of a woman’s breast when she is asleep. Arthur touched the thing with one finger and it shrank slightly.

  ‘Its quite warm,’ he said.

  He turned it over, and it remained in the position in which he had placed it, as if there were neither top nor bottom to it. But they could see now, irregularly placed on one side, a few short hairs. They were just like human hairs.

  ‘Is it alive?’ whispered Susie, struck with horror and amazement.

  ‘Yes!’

  Arthur seemed fascinated. He could not take his eyes off the loathsome thing. He watched it slowly heave with even motion.

  ‘What can it mean?’ he asked.

  He looked at Dr Porhoët with pale startled face. A thought was coming to him, but a thought so unnatural, extravagant, and terrible that he pushed it from him with a movement of both hands, as though it were a material thing. Then all three turned around abruptly with a start, for they heard again the wild gibbering which had first shocked their ears. In the wonder of this revolting object they had forgotten all the rest. The sound seemed extraordinarily near, and Susie drew back instinctively, for it appeared to come from her very side.

  ‘There’s nothing here,’ said Arthur. ‘It must be in the next room.’

  ‘Oh, Arthur, let us go,’ cried Susie. ‘I’m afraid to see what may be in store for us. It is nothing to us; and what we see may poison our sleep for ever.’

  She looked appealingly at Dr Porhoët. He was white and anxious. The heat of that place had made the sweat break out on
his forehead.

  ‘I have seen enough. I want to see no more,’ he said.

  ‘Then you may go, both of you,’ answered Arthur. ‘I do not wish to force you to see anything. But I shall go on. Whatever it is, I wish to find out.’

  ‘But Haddo? Supposing he is there, waiting? Perhaps you are only walking into a trap that he has set for you.’

  ‘I am convinced that Haddo is dead.’

  Again that unintelligible jargon, unhuman and shrill, fell upon their ears, and Arthur stepped forward. Susie did not hesitate. She was prepared to follow him anywhere. He opened the door, and there was a sudden quiet. Whatever made those sounds was there. It was a larger room than any on the others and much higher, for it ran along the whole front of the house. The powerful lamps showed every corner of it at once, but, above, the beams of the open ceiling were dark with shadow. And here the nauseous odour, which had struck them before, was so overpowering that for a while they could not go in. It was indescribably foul. Even Arthur thought it would make him sick, and he looked at the windows to see if it was possible to open them; but it seemed they were hermetically closed. The extreme warmth made the air more overpowering. There were four furnaces here, and they were all alight. In order to give out more heat and to burn slowly, the fronts of them were open, and one could see that they were filled with glowing coke.

  The room was furnished no differently from the others, but to the various instruments for chemical operations on a large scale were added all manner of electrical appliances. Several books were lying about, and one had been left open face downwards on the edge of a table. But what immediately attracted their attention was a row of those large glass vessels like that which they had seen in the adjoining room. Each was covered with a white cloth. They hesitated a moment, for they knew that here they were face to face with the great enigma. At last Arthur pulled away the cloth from one. None of them spoke. They stared with astonished eyes. For here, too, was a strange mass of flesh, almost as large as a new-born child, but there was in it the beginnings of something ghastly human. It was shaped vaguely like an infant, but the legs were joined together so that it looked like a mummy rolled up in its coverings. There were neither feet nor knees. The trunk was formless, but there was a curious thickening on each side; it was as if a modeller had meant to make a figure with the arms loosely bent, but had left the work unfinished so that they were still one with the body. There was something that resembled a human head, covered with long golden hair, but it was horrible; it was an uncouth mass, without eyes or nose or mouth. The colour was a kind of sickly pink, and it was almost transparent. There was a very slight movement in it, rhythmical and slow. It was living too.

  Then quickly Arthur removed the covering from all the other jars but one; and in a flash of the eyes they saw abominations so awful that Susie had to clench her fists in order not to scream. There was one monstrous thing in which the limbs approached nearly to the human. It was extraordinarily heaped up, with fat tiny arms, little bloated legs, and an absurd squat body, so that it looked like a Chinese mandarin in porcelain. In another the trunk was almost like that of a human child, except that it was patched strangely with red and grey. But the terror of it was that at the neck it branched hideously, and there were two distinct heads, monstrously large, but duly provided with all their features. The features were a caricature of humanity so shameful that one could hardly bear to look. And as the light fell on it, the eyes of each head opened slowly. They had no pigment in them, but were pink, like the eyes of white rabbits; and they stared for a moment with an odd, unseeing glance. Then they were shut again, and what was curiously terrifying was that the movements were not quite simultaneous; the eyelids of one head fell slowly just before those of the other. And in another place was a ghastly monster in which it seemed that two bodies had been dreadfully entangled with one another. It was a creature of nightmare, with four arms and four legs, and this one actually moved. With a peculiar motion it crawled along the bottom of the great receptacle in which it was kept, towards the three persons who looked at it. It seemed to wonder what they did. Susie started back with fright, as it raised itself on its four legs and tried to reach up to them.

  Susie turned away and hid her face. She could not look at those ghastly counterfeits of humanity. She was terrified and ashamed.

  ‘Do you understand what this means?’ said Dr Porhoët to Arthur, in an awed voice. ‘It means that he has discovered the secret of life.’

  ‘Was it for these vile monstrosities that Margaret was sacrificed in all her loveliness?’

  The two men looked at one another with sad, wondering eyes.

  ‘Don’t you remember that he talked of the manufacture of human beings? It’s these misshapen things that he’s succeeding in producing,’ said the doctor.

  ‘There is one more that we haven’t seen,’ said Arthur.

  He pointed to the covering which still hid the largest of the vases. He had a feeling that it contained the most fearful of all these monsters; and it was not without an effort that he drew the cloth away. But no sooner had he done this than something sprang up, so that instinctively he started back, and it began to gibber in piercing tones. These were the unearthly sounds that they had heard. It was not a voice, it was a kind of raucous crying, hoarse yet shrill, uneven like the barking of a dog, and appalling. The sounds came forth in rapid succession, angrily, as though the being that uttered them sought to express itself in furious words. It was mad with passion and beat against the glass walls of its prison with clenched fists. For the hands were human hands, and the body, though much larger, was of the shape of a new-born child. The creature must have stood about four feet high. The head was horribly misshapen. The skull was enormous, smooth and distended like that of a hydrocephalic, and the forehead protruded over the face hideously. The features were almost unformed, preternaturally small under the great, overhanging brow; and they had an expression of fiendish malignity.

  The tiny, misshapen countenance writhed with convulsive fury, and from the mouth poured out a foaming spume. It raised its voice higher and higher, shrieking senseless gibberish in its rage. Then it began to hurl its whole body madly against the glass walls and to beat its head. It appeared to have a sudden incomprehensible hatred for the three strangers. It was trying to fly at them. The toothless gums moved spasmodically, and it threw its face into horrible grimaces. That nameless, loathsome abortion was the nearest that Oliver Haddo had come to the human form.

  ‘Come away,’ said Arthur. ‘We must not look at this.’

  He quickly flung the covering over the jar.

  ‘Yes, for God’s sake let us go,’ said Susie.

  ‘We haven’t done yet,’ answered Arthur. ‘We haven’t found the author of all this.’

  He looked at the room in which they were, but there was no door except that by which they had entered. Then he uttered a startled cry, and stepping forward fell on his knee.

  On the other side of the long tables heaped up with instruments, hidden so that at first they had not seen him, Oliver Haddo lay on the floor, dead. His blue eyes were staring wide, and they seemed larger than they had ever been. They kept still the expression of terror which they had worn in the moment of his agony, and his heavy face was distorted with deadly fear. It was purple and dark, and the eyes were injected with blood.

  ‘He died of suffocation,’ whispered Dr Porhoët.

  Arthur pointed to the neck. There could be seen on it distinctly the marks of the avenging fingers that had strangled the life out of him. It was impossible to hesitate.

  ‘I told you that I had killed him,’ said Arthur.

  Then he remembered something more. He took hold of the right arm. He was convinced that it had been broken during that desperate struggle in the darkness. He felt it carefully and listened. He heard plainly the two parts of the bone rub against one another. The dead man’s arm was broken just in the place where he had broken it. Arthur stood up. He took one last look at his enemy. Th
at vast mass of flesh lay heaped up on the floor in horrible disorder.

  ‘Now that you have seen, will you come away?’ said Susie, interrupting him.

  The words seemed to bring him suddenly to himself.

  ‘Yes, we must go quickly.’

  They turned away and with hurried steps walked through those bright attics till they came to the stairs.

  ‘Now go down and wait for me at the door,’ said Arthur. ‘I will follow you immediately.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ asked Susie.

  ‘Never mind. Do as I tell you. I have not finished here yet.’

  They went down the great oak staircase and waited in the hall. They wondered what Arthur was about. Presently he came running down.

  ‘Be quick!’ he cried. ‘We have no time to lose.’

  ‘What have you done, Arthur?’

  There’s no time to tell you now.’

  He hurried them out and slammed the door behind him. He took Susie’s hand.

  ‘Now we must run. Come.’

  She did not know what his haste signified, but her heart beat furiously. He dragged her along. Dr Porhoët hurried on behind them. Arthur plunged into the wood. He would not leave them time to breathe.

  ‘You must be quick,’ he said.

  At last they came to the opening in the fence, and he helped them to get through. Then he carefully replaced the wooden paling and, taking Susie’s arm began to walk rapidly towards their inn.

  ‘I’m frightfully tired,’ she said. ‘I simply can’t go so fast.’

  ‘You must. Presently you can rest as long as you like.’

  They walked very quickly for a while. Now and then Arthur looked back. The night was still quite dark, and the stars shone out in their myriads. At last he slackened their pace.

  ‘Now you can go more slowly,’ he said.

  Susie saw the smiling glance that he gave her. His eyes were full of tenderness. He put his arm affectionately round her shoulders to support her.