by Denis Hughes
“Of course he wasn’t guilty!” she said vehemently. “Do you think I don’t know he didn’t kill that poor girl?”
“Pity you couldn’t have proved it,” said Tern regretfully. “Come on now, I’ll take you home. We can pick up a taxi to share.” She walked beside him without further persuasion. There was a kind of crushed slant to her shoulders and head when they reached the main road with its brighter lights. He did not break the silence that grew between them. This girl had had a tough deal; she deserved something better. Tern remembered her clearly, remembered how she had insisted that her brother could never have killed anyone. Her photo had been on the front page of the yellow press more than once since Conrad disappeared. Sister of the wanted man! And all the time, despite questioning and subtle pressure, she had managed to conceal her brother, convinced he was innocent. Well, he might be for all that.
“He told me such horrible things about Brooking,” she said, breaking in on his thoughts. “It’s all too dreadful to believe, and yet…Oh what am I going to do?”
“Tell me about it,” he said. “I’m the original answer when it comes to trouble. The perfect substitute for a maiden aunt.” He grinned down at her. “How did you come to be in this neighbourhood at this particular time?”
“Something Greg mentioned before he slipped away. He said Brooking had got him into this jam and he was going to make him confess or help him get clear of the country. When I found he’d gone I came straight here. I was too late because the police were already on the scene. Then I saw you and you looked suspicious so I thought I’d follow you.”
“Glad you did. According to your brother, then, the guilty party is Brooking?”
She nodded. A taxi hove in sight down the lighted channel of the road. Tern took the girl’s arm firmly. She gave an address to the driver. Tern sat beside her in the darkness of the taxi, thinking. He already knew that Brooking was a liar. If Vivienne was to be believed, he was probably a murderer as well. If there wasn’t a story in this he would get himself the sack, but at least he might help her.
Neither of them spoke till the taxi stopped outside a tall gaunt house in a quiet backwater not far from the city. Tern remembered hearing that the Conrads, brother and sister, had inherited the place from their parents. As they went up the steps to the front door he noticed that the house was not in very good repair.
“Take a couple of aspirins and go to bed,” he advised. “I won’t come in, but I’ll meet you tomorrow morning—today morning, I mean. Where shall it be?”
She regarded him steadily for an instant, then named a place.
The taxi was waiting. Tern said: “Just one thing. Can you give me any idea in a few words why you think Brooking is the guilty man?”
Her latch key was in the Yale, turning. “Greg told me something I couldn’t believe,” she whispered hesitantly. “He said that Brooking was a worse monster than the thing they’d been creating between them. That’s all I know, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but…Greg said he was keen at first because it was a wonderful thing, but then Brooking killed that girl simply and solely because whatever they were doing needed fresh, living tissue.” Her eyes were wide, full of some nameless horror that defied expression.
Tern’s face was grim. He touched her arm gently, reassuringly. “Go to bed,” he whispered. “I’ve a lot of work to do before daylight. See you in the morning, ten o’clock. And thanks for…being friendly.”
She stood in the open doorway till the taxi was out of sight, seeing him wave, feeling strangely comforted. Had she known it she was going to need a considerable amount of comfort before very long. It was just as well that she didn’t know.
The taxi carried Tern to Fleet Street, where he paid it off. After the almost deserted streets through which he had come, his office was a hive of activity, contrasting oddly with the secret silence of the things that had gone before.
He wrote up a hurried account of Conrad’s movements during the night, ending with a hint that the wanted man would soon be arrested. The sub-editor scanned it, nodded curtly, glanced up at him. “Nothing more?” he said.
“Not yet. The night’s still young.”
“Something on your mind?”
“Maybe. The web-spinning habits of the spider for one thing. Worth studying, you know…”
The sub eyed him shrewdly. “You’ll get the weekly zoological column before long,” he grunted.
Tern grinned, went out and had a cup of coffee, then made his way back to Brooking’s neighbourhood. Spiders…He thought about spiders a great deal on the way. They wove webs in all sorts of odd places. Across windows, for instance. A web like that would take time to make. No spider could have woven it between the time of Conrad’s entry and exit and his own circumspect admission to the laboratory. Therefore Brooking had been lying to ‘Happy’ Dutch. Conrad was supposed to have left, but in view of what Tern had learnt from Vivienne it seemed strangely on the cards that Conrad had not left, that he would, in fact, never leave. Tern meant to find out for sure. He was also very curious about the work Brooking was supposed to be doing. If it entailed the murder of innocent people for the sake of their flesh—which was what Vivienne had implied—then it ought to be examined.
Using the alley approach again, he readied the office window once more. But the light was out now, and Brooking had apparently jammed the sash so tightly with a wedge that his efforts to enter were defeated. Swearing softly, Tern stood back and examined the rear face of the block more carefully. The window of the laboratory itself was also in darkness, but on the next storey up there was evidence of activity. A big window glowed from within, immediately above the spot where he was standing. And there was a convenient drain pipe….
Clinging precariously, Tern reached the level of the sill over to one side of the window. “And there I was, upside down with nothing on the clock!” he murmured to himself. “If I break my ruddy neck doing this the paper can pay me damages!”
He strained across, twisting like a monkey. With one hand firm on the drain pipe he was just able to peer through the window, only to find to his chagrin that his view was sadly restricted, consisting of little more than a section of the floor a few feet across seen through a gap at the side of the plastic curtain. On one edge of the visible zone was the corner of what looked like a large metal tank; on the other he could see a white bench on which gleamed metal instruments and various pieces of scientific paraphernalia. A second lab in fact, he realised.
Then without any warning the figure of Brooking, white-coated now, came into view. He carried an enamel tray or bowl in his hands, but Tern could not see what it contained. Instead his gaze was riveted on Brooking’s hands.
They were stained bright red. And there were smudges of red on his jacket too. The red was the red of human blood.
Tern almost lost his grip on the drain pipe in his efforts to see more of the room. He could just glimpse a chair on which a pile of male clothing had been dumped; and then the scientist occupied his attention again. The man was bending over the tank, the bowl and his hands out of sight as he worked with every indication of feverish haste. His back was to the window, blocking the view.
Tern muttered something uncomplimentary beneath his breath. His hands were aching now. In a moment or two he would have to get a better grip on the pipe and the sill. The muscular strain made his arm quiver violently. But so intense was his interest in what was going on in the room that he hung on grimly. Brooking had straightened up from the tank, wiping his hands on a piece of gauze. The light caught his glasses as he moved. The piece of gauze was red and blotched. Then Brooking walked away and out of range of vision. Tern would have given almost anything to have seen what was in the tank. He could see several insulated wires trailing over the edge of it, but what it held remained a tantalising secret.
He was wondering how to find out more when the drain pipe gave a grating protest and sagged away from the wall above him. His fingers scrabbled wildly to retain their grip; hi
s heart thudded painfully. Then he was falling as the ruptured pipe described a graceful arc in the darkness.
*
“While it’s fresh!” muttered Brooking. “It must be fresh!” He worked with feverish haste, his hands shaking a little, not with fear or horror at what he was doing, but with nervous tension and sheer fanatical excitement. It was almost done now! A few more minutes, half an hour at the most, and he would know whether or not he had succeeded. No man had ever attempted such a tremendous undertaking before. He would be the first to fashion life with his own amazing skill!
The surgical instruments clicked and flashed in the beam of the powerful arc lamp above his head. All that remained of Gregory Conrad lay stripped on the table, the soft hiss of running water washing away the warm blood from Conrad’s skull.
The brain was ready for total detachment now. A few deft strokes with a scalpel and the job was done. Brooking could not resist a cynical smile as he raised and transferred the grey mass to a clinical bowl. “I said I could use your brain, Conrad!” he sneered in a whisper. “You didn’t know what sort of a joke that was, did you?”
Conrad failed to answer. Unconscious till a few moments before, he had now ceased to breathe. Brooking had what he needed for his work. That was all that mattered.
Conrad’s brain was a normal one, no bigger or smaller than the brains of millions of other people. Brooking took it across the room to the galvanised tank, passing the chair on which he had tossed his victim’s clothing when he stripped his insensible body for the operation. The body would have to be disposed of presently, but that was a simple matter now that he had had time to work out the routine. If Conrad had not returned Brooking would have been compelled to find some other source of cerebral tissue, hence his readiness on Conrad’s timely arrival. Everything had fitted in like a pattern. And now the great work, the miracle of creation, was nearing its ultimate conclusion.
Coupling speed with skill, the scientist placed the brain in its final position. Delicate fibres were joined and sewn, the artificial structure of the bloated skull completed.
Brooking stood back for a moment, examining his handiwork with a critical eye. There was no room for error, even the smallest detail must be perfect. His eyes went from head to toe of the hideously grotesque figure in the tank. It floated sluggishly in a saline solution, the enormous ungainly head supported in a metal crutch. Conrad had never seen this thing at its advanced state of structure. He and Brooking had only been in the initial stages when the need for living tissue arose in the first place. That had been when the girl had died to provide what was needed. But now it was over. Before long, if Brooking’s skill had been good enough, the figure would live and breathe, move and perhaps even articulate. The scientist might have to teach it the rudiments of speech, but that would all be part of the work. A feverish eagerness seized him. With the brain cells knitted into the hideous cranium he could start the energizing process.
The figure bobbed slowly in the saline. From a socket in the centre of its queer, angular metal torso, a pair of wires ran to plug electrodes on either side of the short neck. In the saline solution the arms and legs seemed to be fashioned from blue coloured plastic substance, but the hands were those of a human being. Red coloured protective cuffs covered the join between the plastic arms and the figure’s wrists, while a brief pair of shorts of the same material protected the hips and groin. But it was the head and features which would have struck terror into the heart of anyone seeing it unexpectedly. That monstrous shiny skull, red veined and yellowed, was at least four times the size of a normal man’s head. The eyes were yellow, dead looking now, with blank blue irises tinged with red. There were no eyebrows or lashes, and the nose consisted merely of two gaping holes in the centre of the face, below which was a straight cut slit to form the lipless mouth. The whole effect was horrific, yet Brooking fairly crooned over the tank as he put the finishing touches to his masterpiece. Here, he told himself, was true creation, the outcome of months of work, the successful fusing of a robot with living human flesh.
Brooking drew a deep breath and glanced around the lab. Everything was ready. He took off his white coat and slipped on the jacket of his normal suit. A hurried wash at the sink rinsed away the blood from his hands. Then Conrad’s mortal remains were wrapped in a sheet and thrust out of sight in the cage of a small lift concealed in the wall of the room. Brooking was ready.
Returning to the galvanised tank, he connected the wires to a power circuit. His hands were unsteady; a beading of sweat stood out on his brow. His fingers closed on a big resistance lever, moving it across its segments with care, a pause between each as the current mounted in pressure. Every nerve in his body tingled as he watched the figure in the tank. A small figure, little bigger than a boy’s, with a monstrous head in which a man’s brain had but recently been put.
Electrolytic bubbles rose swiftly to the surface of the saline solution, the whole of the liquid content of the tank seemed to vibrate at high frequency. Brooking increased the current still further, his eyes darting to an ammeter on the switch board beside the rheostat.
Almost before he turned his head again there was a sudden convulsion in the tank, a gurgle of horrible breath, the vibration of Life itself. The stirring increased so that Brooking uttered a gasp of involuntary fear. But he knew he had succeeded now. The thing was alive! First one hand crept up over the edge of the tank, then it raised itself so that the awful bald skull gleamed wetly in the light.
Slowly at first, then with rapidly increasing strength, it raised itself more and more, turning its head and staring at him with terrible, soulless eyes. Its mouth was working in a jerky fashion, little croaking noises issuing from it.
Brooking released his hold on the switch handle and took a pace towards the tank. His body was shaking so badly with excitement that he could barely stand upright.
The humanesque figure croaked again, moving with clumsy stiffness till it stood on the floor in front of him, head back, staring at him with its hostile eyes.
“Welcome to Life!” said Brooking. He had to lick his lips before he could frame the words, so dry had his mouth become.
“Life?” echoed the figure. Its voice was thin, a shrill piping sound, incredible to Brooking’s ears. “You gave me life, did you? You made me!”
Brooking was suddenly and unaccountably afraid. He had brought this thing to life, yet had not expected it to talk and reason on its own. And now he was afraid.
“Why do you say that?” he stammered. “How did you know I made you?”
The thing did not answer at once, but started walking up and down the length of the room, strutting like a mechanical toy endowed with life. At the far end of the room it came to a halt and whirled about with unexpected swiftness.
“I know everything!” it snapped peevishly. “I know whose clothes those are on the chair; I know what’s in that hidden lift cage. I know a lot that would surprise you, Brooking. Now that you’ve brought me to life you shall suffer for it!” In a swift leap it sprang onto the bench, lightly and easily, to stand there pointing an accusing finger at Brooking.
Brooking cowered away, terrified of what he had done. But the shrill voice only went on and on till he barely listened to what it was saying. And with every second his fear increased, because he knew now that what he had fashioned with his own hands was a foul and vindictive creature of darkness, more dangerous than any human being, more of a peril to himself than Gregory Conrad had ever been. Yet this was Conrad’s revenge, for Conrad’s brain was in this monster.
CHAPTER 3
THE PERIL STRIKES
Jerry Tern fell awkwardly although the drop itself was not tremendous. His right leg shot through with burning fire as he landed on the lead roof, then the length of drain pipe struck him a violent blow on the back of his head and he lost interest. He remembered feeling vaguely surprised that the din of his crash had not roused the entire neighbourhood, Brooking included. In actual fact, however, the breaking
of the drain pipe and the noises that followed had not been overly loud. The lead roof on which he landed gave only a dull thud on impact, and up in the laboratory on the second floor Brooking was so deeply absorbed in his work that he noticed nothing unusual.
When Tern opened his eyes, however, he was not alone. In the gloom a large shape bulked beside him, the sound of its breathing heavy in the silence. He tried to shift himself, but the stabbing pain in his right leg reminded him forcibly of preceding events. The shape beside him gave a grunt.
“See what comes of snooping?” it said. “Why you chaps can’t leave it to the police I don’t know. No, don’t try to move; you might have broken something important.”
Tern gritted his teeth, peering sideways and upwards.
“Hiya, Dutch,” he muttered. “You would be the one to find me in this position! What gives?”
Inspector Dutch sat back on his heels, tipping his hat forward a shade and cocking an eye towards the lighted window above them. “That’s just what I’m going to ask you, son,” he murmured. “Better get you down first. Take it easy.”
Tern shook some of the ache out of his head and eased himself to a sitting position, flexing his right leg with the utmost care: It hurt like the devil, but wasn’t broken.
“I’ll make it,” he whispered grimly. “Just a twist, that’s all.” With the inspector’s assistance he reached the edge of the roof and lowered himself over, feeling with his feet for the packing crate below. In a moment or two he was sitting on the ground with his back against the store shed and the bulk of Dutch alongside him in the shadows. The pain in his leg decreased; his head still ached where the broken pipe had caught it.
Dutch said: “Look, Tern, I don’t know what you’ve been up to, but you’d better not conceal any evidence—it’s a grave offence.”
Tern thought quickly. “Like getting in through a window and not telling anyone about the spider’s web, eh?” he said.
