Very gingerly he pushed down the covers, and swung his long legs out of the bed. Shakily he walked to the window. Rolling tree-clad hills, bathed in sunlight, stretched away beneath his view. Where was he, anyhow? He went to the door of the room, and called down the stairs, not too loudly, “Hi, there!”
No one answered. He opened the door to a closet, found his clothes, and put them on. Then he essayed to descend the stairs.
In the living room he found a radio, turned it on, and sank exhausted into a chair. As the tubes warmed up, he caught, “and this alleged hero had been sincere, would he not have turned Steel Jeffers over to the Allied Generals? Would he have fled with the Dictator in a stolen car belonging to the State of Maryland? Would he have kept in hiding? Only traitors hide, my friends. Patriots do not fear the light of day—”
Loud handclapping. Then, in another voice, “You have just been listening to the Federal Radio Control’s debate on the subject: ‘Was Lieutenant Adams a patriot or traitor?’ And now for a news flash. The secret hide-out of Steel Jeffers has been found. Troops have surrounded it, and are closing in. This is the F.R.C. Network.”
Adams gasped. Surrounded even now? Closing in? With sudden resolution, he forced his fever-weakened body to stand. He must find and warn Steel Jeffers!
“Why, what are you doing downstairs?” asked a sweet feminine voice, filled with concern.
Adams wheeled. A young girl in a print dress and sunbonnet stood in the doorway. Her checks were smooth and unrouged. Her figure was delicately rounded. She took off her sunbonnet, and a wealth of brown curls fell about her high forehead.
“You are Helen Jeffers?” he breathed.
“Of course!” she exclaimed. “Who else?”
Helen! Alive and real! Helen Jeffers, as her brother Steel had promised him!
But even in his joy at finding her at last, he did not forget the ominous news which he had just heard over the air. “Where is your brother? I just got a news flash that the troops are closing in on us.”
“My brother Steel? Steel is dead,” she replied with a touch of sadness.
Adams sobered. “Did that State Trooper get him?”
“No, Jack.” Smiling sweetly, she stepped forward and placed her hands in his. “Let’s talk of other things, for Steel is safe from his enemies.”
“But, Helen! Here we are talking together as though we had known each other for years. And yet I’ve never met you. Never even seen you. Fell in love with your photograph. Did Steel tell you-?”
Helen Jeffers smiled whimsically. “We have known each other a long time, for I was the Dictator.”
“You!” Adams stared blankly.
“Yes, my brother Steel died on election day four years ago. He and James Dougherty and I had pledged ourselves to put through our program at any cost. I closely resembled my brother. And so James Dougherty conceived the fantastic idea of turning me into a man. We reported that it was I who had died. Then I retired to a shack in the mountains; and there two biological experts, Admiral Southworth and Franz Vierecke, injected a certain derivative of the hormone testosterone into my veins—”
“So that is what the letters ‘T-E-S-T’ meant on the little bottles!” Adams exclaimed.
The girl nodded, and continued, “This hormone made me to all outward appearances a man, and even made me ruthless.”
“I see,” said Adams grimly, drawing away from her.
“Don’t blame me too much,” she begged. “I did it all for the Cause to which my brother had been pledged, not foreseeing where dictatorship and the unprincipled ambition of my Secretary of State would lead me. Well, anyway, Franz Vierecke had worked with the great Ruzicka, when the latter discovered how to produce testosterone synthetically out of cholesterol.”
“But, if the method was known,” Adams interrupted, “then why all the mystery?”
“If the White House had bought large quantities of testosterone, our secret might have been suspected. Furthermore, different derivatives react differently, some even have the opposite effect from the effect which we wished. I myself discovered this to my horror, when doing some frantic experimentation on my own hook, during Admiral Southworth’s illness. So, the secret died with the Admiral and Vierecke, and my masquerade was at an end. Fortunately the sinister Dougherty did not long outlive them. Then I struggled on alone, a woman again, double-crossing even you, my only friend.” Her eyes fell.
Adams tried to hate her, but be could not. She had been no more to blame for it all than Trilby had been under the spell of Svengali.
“You poor girl!” he breathed, taking her in his arms. He kissed her as she clung close to him. Then gently he released her.
An hour or so later, after he had met Uncle Eph and Aunt Martha, and had had a shave, he and Helen sat hand in hand on the front piazza of the little farmhouse, gazing off over the beautiful rolling mountain view. And waiting, silently waiting, for what they knew was closing in on them.
Finally a cavalcade of cars drew up on the highway in front. Out of the front car leaped the fanatic Liam Lincoln, his black hair awry, his dark eyes flashing. “There’s the traitor!” Lincoln shouted, pointing a skinny finger at Adams. “Seize him.”
State soldiers poured out of the other cars, and cautiously approached the piazza. Also roly-poly Sim Baldwin, tall Phil Nordstrom, chunky Godfrey Cabot, and others of Adams’ old crowd. Even Giuseppe Albertino, the peanut man.
Studiously ignoring Lincoln’s inflamed words, Adams casually remarked, “Hello, fellows! Meet my fiancee, the girl whom I called ‘Mary Calvert’. Her real name is Helen Jeffers.” Adams chuckled. “I told you fellows that I’d get her in the end. And doesn’t this explain a lot of things, Liam, which were puzzling you? For example, why the Dictator gave her and me a pass out of Washington, and why I was so anxious to keep her identity a secret, until peace was concluded.”
Several of Adams’ pals laughed—a nervous relieved laugh.
Lincoln angrily thrust back his black forelock. “That’s all very well, but why did you steal the State car, and assault that trooper? You threw us off the trail for days and days!”
“Well, you see, Liam, I didn’t want to risk having a fanatic such as you butting in on my honeymoon.”
More laughter.
Liam Lincoln’s prestige was rapidly slipping. He made one last attempt to regain it. “Where is the Dictator?” he demanded.
Adams shrugged his broad shoulders. “How should I know?” he replied. “I can truthfully say that I haven’t seen or heard from Steel Jeffers since his sister Helen and I left the White House together on the day the Dictatorship ended.”
Author’s Note:
Ruzicka and Wettstein in 1935 succeeded in synthesizing the male secondary hormone, testosterone, from cholesterol. See Tice’s loose-leaf encyclopedia, The Practice of Medicine, vol. VIII, pp. 351 and 357.
Deansley and Parks in 1937 made the remarkable discovery that various testosterone derivatives act entirely differently from each other, not only in degree but also in kind. Some accentuate male characteristics; and others, strange to say, accentuate female characteristics, although this is a male hormone. Others accentuate either, according to the sex of the patient. See “Comparison of Testosterone Derivatives,” Biochemical Journal, July, 1937, p. 1161.
It is only a matter of time before the accomplishments of Southworth and Vierecke in the story will be duplicated in real life, perhaps by Drs. Vest and Howard, who are already working on the problem at Johns Hopkins.
The Sex Serum
H. O. Dickinson
(Wonder Stories, October 1935)
From the original introductory blurb to “The Sex Serum” reprinted from the October 1935 Wonder Stories:
What makes a male, and what makes a female human being? Science, so far, has not been able to solve the Mystery. It is known, however, that during the first weeks of conception, the human fetus (unborn child) is neither female nor male; it has the characteristics of both male and female. Only
later on the predominant sex begins to develop, and at birth the child is usually either male or female, but not necessarily always. There are even exceptions here, and not so infrequently it is impossible to tell whether the child is male or female because it may be both—the so-called hermaphrodite types.
Sooner or later, science will discover means by which it will be possible to change the human characteristics of sex at will. As a matter of fact, science is coming nearer to the solution every day.
You will find the present story—an entirely new solution in science-fiction—particularly absorbing, because there is no question that in the future it may happen. It is the first time that this subject has been used in science-fiction, and we congratulate our English author for having brought to us not only a novelty in science-fiction, but a masterful story as well.
Chapter I: The Manor House Murders
I think that my vanity is forcing me to write, although I know as I set down the words in this almost illegible handwriting at it will get no farther than the bottom drawer of my desk. Yes, it will be fortunate if it ends there, for I am a very impulsive person and the wastepaper basket is nearby.
But when I reflect, it seems hardly fair to myself and all those people who were cheated out of the answer to a first-class mystery. Consider too that eminent man, Sir John Norton. I think the satisfaction he would derive from this transcript would more than compensate him for the inconvenience caused by striking out at least one case from his latest volume; “Unsolved Mysteries of the Twentieth Century.”
I have read his fourth problem, “The Mount House Murders”, with a smile upon my lips and that aloof and superior feeling which comes to a man who knows the truth. And why should I not smile? It is the only reward I will ever obtain from my knowledge. For you do not realize that I am the only person alive today who knows the real solution of a crime which baffled, and is still baffling, a whole country… a unique position to be in, you will agree, and one that arouses any man’s latent vanity.
I have kept the secret for a long time now so that no one would suffer from the telling of it—not that I think it would be believed, but it will pass as another of one of the more fantastic and imaginative theories that have often been advanced as explanations of a mystery which has for so long defied logical solution.
And again, further excuse for my vain and babbling tongue. Unusual stories are the fashion these days when every normal plot has fallen the prey of the modern literary mass-production machine, dealt with as a cow does its cud—chewed, twisted, turned about, contracted, reversed, dished up in a thousand different ways, then swallowed in disgust. And now it turns, with despairing howls, to Frankensteins, freaks, and mummified horrors for its sustenance.
Do you remember the Mount House murders, non-existent reader? The strange disappearance of both Professor Neville, the famous biologist, and his daughter Jeanette? Then there was the finding of the dead and battered body of an old lady in Neville’s study and the half-dead body of a young man, since thought to be the Professor’s son, lying by her side.
Perhaps too you recall how young Arnold Gilmour, Jeanette Neville’s fiancee, wandered into the local police station with a mad look in his eyes and a week’s beard upon his face, muttering monotonously that he had killed a man.
It was in the quiet summer weeks when there was no news, and how the papers feasted on it. What a mystery! What a murder! There was no apparent reason or motive for it. The whole country waited with a pleasant thrill for the trial of Gilmour, hoping that the truth would come out. But it never did, and you could almost hear a national cry of rage and exasperation when a warden walked into the young man’s cell one morning and found him hanging by his braces from the barred window. Whatever his other crimes, they thought this most unsportsmanlike—not playing the game—and they received little consolation from saying he was mad.
There were many questions to be answered, and the theories advanced were as ingenious as they were far from the truth. But as Sir John points out in his book: “After careful consideration, there seems to me to be no sane motive for the murders. Any question of money we can rule out to a certain extent, for Gilmour had just previously experienced a considerable improvement in his financial position. And apart from this fact, the girl he was shortly about to marry was known by everyone to be the Professor’s sole heiress. The question of fading love or jealousy too can be ignored as it is obvious that Jeanette was devoted to him.” And where did the old lady come from? She had never been seen about Mount House before, nor had she ever been observed either in, or passing through, the village. The same applies to the half-killed youth. It was unfortunate that we could obtain no information from him. His life hung in the balance for many weeks and someone should have been rebuked for their carelessness in allowing him to disappear from the hospital one morning in the simple way he did. I regard this as most significant. The youth from his resemblance to the professor was thought to be his son, but it was never known that Neville had a boy, and neither was he ever heard mentioning any male offspring.
This bring us to a most important question: where did Gilmour dispose of the bodies of Professor Neville and his daughter? The police dug around Mount House for weeks, but not a trace of the bodies has been found to this day.
Sir John bemoans, “I have considered many theories to account for the above questions, but each one of them leaves many loose ends and only serves to make other points even more inexplicable. So, from the very small amount of evidence we have at our disposal, it is obviously foolish to speculate and I am afraid that it must forever remain one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the present century.”
No, Sir John! Even in that you are wrong. Your mystery is solved, but only on this white paper and in the confined space of my bottom drawer. And there, if you but knew, you could find it!
Chapter II: Determination
It all happened on a very fine day in June, and as Arnold Gilmour walked through the village on his way to the Mount House, he knew that life was good.
The sun caressed him; the clean sweet air exhilarated him. He smiled happily at the village children, and deplored his too self-conscious nature that prevented him from giving them pennies to buy the coloured sweets they so much coveted, with wistful eyes and small noses stuck against the little shop window.
His excellent spirits moved him to whistle with the birds when he had left the village behind him, and in all that flowering countryside he neither felt nor saw the slightest warning that the days of his young life were nearly over, almost before they had begun.
For Gilmour the day was of special importance, and it seemed only right that the weather should be in sympathy with him. He had worked and waited a long time for this hour. At last he was able to approach old Professor Neville with something that looked like solid achievement. Never before had he been in such a position, and so the old man had been able to keep him from the girl he loved. Keeping Gilmour’s poverty as his trump card, Neville selfishly played upon his daughter’s sweet nature and harped constantly upon his love and loneliness until Jeanette was becoming distracted between her love for Gilmour and that of her father. There was no doubt, Gilmour reflected, brilliant man though Neville was, when it came to his daughter he was mad, stone mad!
On every question but one, his manner to the young man was kind and fatherly. But often when Gilmour would timidly broach the question of love and marriage with Jeanette, the Professor’s attitude became bitter and mildly fanatical. He would ridicule the idea, and if pressed further, would mutter darkly of the tragedy of his life when he found that his child had been born a girl instead of a boy, and finally he would wind up with taunting Gilmour on his poor position and his inability to take and support her, until he had driven the young man into a very frenzy of achievement.
But now things were different, and Arnold smiled to himself when he thought of the last time he had been to the Mount House. Before he left, he had told Jeanette, not too hopefully, of his expec
tations in the near future, and to encourage him she had agreed to leave her father and marry him as soon as he succeeded.
This was a fortnight ago; he had not heard from her since, nor had he written. In his determination to succeed, he had been strong and silent. He had worked with a steady patience until he had amazed himself at his own strength of mind. But as he neared the Mount House, he knew that he was weakening. His love and the things he had done were burning him up with sheer suppression. He could restrain himself no longer. He must hurry to Jeanette and tell her of his cleverness, like a small boy running home from school with his first prize and knowing he will be rewarded with the fond and joyful adoration of his mother.
Then suddenly he controlled his impatience and decided on another course. He had held out so far, and he could hold out a little longer. He would follow up his luck with more. He decided to see Professor Neville first and boldly acquaint the old man with his intentions while his triumph was still fresh and giving him confidence. There was nothing he lacked now: he had both the love of, and the power to take the scientist’s daughter. He had spiked Neville’s guns; there was nothing he could object to, and if he did he would only open Jeanette’s eyes to the fatherly love that was merely stubborn selfishness.
Gilmour found Neville in his study deeply engrossed in peering down into his microscope, but he was immediately greeted with such benevolence and warmth of spirit that the young man felt most disconcerted. For a moment it took all the resolution out of him, for it is hard to be delivering fiery ultimatums to a man who is all friendliness and solicitude.
“Well, my boy,” said Neville, turning to his microscope after the preliminary greetings were over, “I am certainly pleased to see you about the place again; we’ve missed you these last few days, you know.”
Gilmour mumbled his thanks and tried to screw up courage enough to get down to business. He was feeling a slight backwash from his previous confident humor. There was something about this lean man with the cold gray eyes that scared him and made him feel very young and rather childish.
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