Dr. Dorp 01 The Malignant Entity

by Otis Adelbert Kline

  “The professor’s firststep, therefore, in this seemingly impossible undertaking, would be to analyze protoplasm. Assuming that he succeeded in reducing it to its basic elements his next problem would be to take similar elements and, through a process even more complex than the previous one, assemble and re-assemble them until they were capable of sustaining life.

  “Let us suppose that he did these things. Let us assume that he has succeeded in creating protoplasm. What next? We will say that he has taken some primitive form of life for a pattern, a moneron, perhaps, the most simple type of animal, consisting of a single cell of protoplasm. There still exists a difference between the moneron and the synthetically created cell. Chemically and physically they are the same, but the moneron is alive.

  “What is life? Broadly defined as we recognize it on this earth, it is a temporary union of mind and matter. There may be, and probably is another kind of life which is simply mind without matter, but we of the material world know it not. To us, mind without matter or matter without mind are equally dead. The moneron has a mind—a soul—a something that makes it a living individual. Call it what you will. The professor’s cell of man-made protoplasm has not. Can you conceive of any possible way in which he could, having reached this stage, create an individual mind or soul, an essence of life that, once united with his cell of protoplasm would form an entity?”

  “It seems impossible,” I admitted.

  “So it seems,” he replied, “yet it is only on such an hypothesis that I can account for the mysterious deaths of the professor and Officer Rooney.”

  “But I don’t see how a moneron or a creature remotely resembling one could kill and completely devour a man in less than two hours,” I objected.

  “Nor I,” agreed the doctor. “In fact I am of the opinion that, if the professor did succeed in creating life, the result was unlike any creature large or small, now inhabiting the earth—a hideous monster, perhaps, with undreamed of powers and possibilities—an alien organism among billions of other organisms, hating them all because it has nothing in common with them—a malignant entity governed solely by the primitive desire for food and growth with only hatred of and envy for the more fortunate natural creatures around it.”

  “If the professor did succeed in creating or discovering such a creature,” I said, “it is evidently in this house at this very moment. Unless it has the faculty of making itself invisible a thorough search should reveal its whereabouts, for having consumed two men it must be a monster of no mean proportions.”

  “That is true,” replied the doctor, “however, we have another hypothesis that is equally worthy of our consideration if we accept the premise that the professor created a living creature. Judging from his writings he spent a considerable portion of his time studying and experimenting in microbiology. Suppose he succeeded in creating a microscopic organism, and that organism had the power to reproduce its kind. If it reproduced by fission, that is, by simply dividing itself after it had attained a certain size, the only check to its increase would be death or lack of food. The more food it could obtain that much more rapidly would it and its descendants multiply. Countless billions of such creatures might occupy this room and yet be invisible without the aid of a compound microscope. There is ample room for a swarm of such creatures numerous enough to devour a man to float in the air above our heads without revealing its presence.” The words of the doctor affected me strangely. Involuntarily I looked upward, half expecting a swarm of man-eating microbes to descend and devour me. For a moment I was seized with a feeling of panic so strong I could scarcely restrain myself from leaping for the door. The fact that the sun had just set and dusky shadows were thickening in the room augmented the illusion. I crossed the floor nervously and pressed the switch beside the door. Instantly the place was flooded with blue-white light from a cluster of powerful globes depending from the middle of the ceiling.

  As I was recrossing the room my eyes fell on the contents of the glass-lined tank. I stared unbelievingly for a moment, then called Dr. Dorp.

  “What is it, Evans?” he asked.

  “The liquid in this tank,” I replied. “It has changed color. Something has turned it pink.” “The effect of the artificial light, no doubt,” he said, coming up beside me. Then I saw the expression of doubt on his face change to one of surprise and wonder.

  “You are right,” he exclaimed. “It has not only changed color but a still more remarkable transformation has taken place. When we noticed it this afternoon, the tank was a third full of the colorless liquid. This pink fluid reaches half way to the top!”

  A Drawer Filled With Bones

  HE tread of many feet sounded in the hall.

  Chief McGraw paused in the doorway, staring down at the blue-clad skeleton on the floor, a look of horror on his face. Behind him were four policemen in uniform.

  “Is—is that the skeleton of poor old Rooney?”

  McGraw asked. It’s too ghastly a thing to believe. “I’m afraid it is,” replied Dr. Dorp.

  The chief knelt and examined the star on the bagging blue coat.

  “It’s hellish, positively hellish,” he said, rising. “Do you know what killed him?”

  “We are working on a theory—” began the doctor, but was interrupted by the chief.

  “Theories be damned!” he snapped. “Work on your theories if you want to. This thing has gone too far. I'm going to get some facts'.” He swung on the four men behind him. “Search the house,” he said. “Look sharp for anything of a suspicious nature. An infernal machine, perhaps, or a blood sucking animal. There is a man-killer of some kind, human or otherwise, hidden in this house, and it’s our business to find it.”

  When the men. had departed he stepped over Rooney’s skeleton.

  “I’ll search this room myself,” he said.

  He did, with professional thoroughness, looking for hidden panels and sounding the walls, both in the open areas and behind the shelves, for hollow spaces. Then he began opening the drawers in a tall cabinet that stood in one corner, disclosing surgical and dissecting instruments of various kinds, an indexed set of microscope slides with some extra lenses, platinum dishes; porcelain drying pans, crucibles, glass rods and tubing, pipettes, rubber tubing and stoppers, rubber gloves and aprons, and other miscellaneous laboratory paraphernalia.

  The bottom drawer of the cabinet was quite large and deep. The chief cried out excitedly when he saw its contents.

  “Good Lord! Look at that!” he exclaimed.

  It was filled to the top with dry, white bones. “Nothing but the bones of small animals,” said Dr. Doi’p, picking up a skull. “This, for instance, is the skull of a dog.” Then, taking up another: “Here is the skull of a rabbit. Notice the characteristic chisel-shaped teeth. This one beside it once supported the be-whiskered countenance of a common house cat.”

  “What do you suppose he was doing with them ?” asked the chief.

  “It is my belief that they were brought here to be killed and devoured by the same thing that killed the professor and Rooney.”

  “And that thing is—”

  “At present, merely a shadowy theory, although it most certainly has an existence. There is a power in this house that is a menace to everyone under this roof—a malignant entity that destroys human beings in some mysterious manner unparalleled in the annals of science or human experience. This much we know, reasoning from effects. Reasoning from possible causes we are aware that the hobby of Professor Townsend was the endeavor to create a living thing from inorganic matter, and putting the two together it seems to me that the logical hypothesis would be that he either succeeded in creating a monster of a sort unknown to biologists, or discovered and developed unheard of powers and habits in a creature already known.” “If there’s such a thing in this house, believe me I’m going to find it,” said the chief, stamping out of the room.

  “Now that we have a few moments to ourselves,” said Dr. Dorp when McGraw had departed, “let us
conduct a search, or rather an inquiry on our own account. I perceive that we have a very excellent compound microscope at our disposal and am curious to examine the liquid which-has so mysteriously risen and changed color in the tank.”

  He took a blank slide from the cabinet drawer and a small glass rod from the table. As he was about to dip the rod in the liquid he uttered a low exclamation of surprise.

  “What’s up now?” I asked.

  “This amazing liquid has again become transparent,” he replied. “The red tint is gone.”

  He plunged the tip of the rod into the viscous liquid, twisted it slightly and withdrew it. Although the liquid seemed quite heavy it slipped from the end of the rod much after the manner of the white of an egg. After considerable juggling he succeeded in obtaining a small amount which he smeared on the slide. He then placed the slide in position and adjusted the microscope with a practiced hand.

  “Well,” I asked, after he had peered into the eyepiece for a full ten minutes, “what is the stuff, anyway?”.

  “Here, look for yourself,” he replied.

  What I saw in the field of the microscope appeared to be a mesh work or foam work of exceedingly fine bubbles or perhaps globules. Granules of different sizes' and shapes seemed imbedded in these globules and the whole was dotted at intervals with small white objects. While I watched several of these white objects seemed to dissolve and disappear. All of them apparently were endowed with life for I noticed that they expanded or contracted spasmodically and seemed endeavoring to push their way through the surrounding bubbles.

  “Seems to be a sort of foam,” I said, “with something alive floating in it.”

  “The foam, as you call it, bears a singular resemblance to the basic life principle, protoplasm, when seen under the microscope,” replied the doctor.

  “But those white things—” I began.

  “The white things," he went on, “are the living remnants of a complex organism that has been destroyed. They are waging an unequal and hopeless battle against assimilation by the globules that surround them. These faithful guardians of the organism when alive still fight, and will continue to fight the enemy until, figuratively speaking, the last man falls.”

  “But what are they?” I demanded.

  “Unless I am very much mistaken,” he replied, “they are—”

  His answer was cut short by the appearance of Chief McGraw.

  “Coroner and jury are downstairs,” he said tersely. “I suppose they’ll want your testimony. I’ll leave a couple of men on guard here if you want to come down.”

  “Let us go down to the study and complete our perusal of the professor’s manuscripts while the jury is in session,” said the doctor. “We can thus save considerable time and will be on hand when they are ready to question us.”

  We met Coroner Haynes and his jurors at the foot of the stairs. They were about to go up for an inspection of the laboratory and its gruesome contents.

  Dr. Dorp switched on one of the reading lamps and closed the door. Then he established himself in a comfortable chair with a pile of manuscripts and I followed his example. We found essays and articles on almost every subject pertaining to the transmission or generation of life. There were papers on anatomy, bacteriology, cell-structure, microbiology and embryology. There' were treatises on evolution, spontaneous generation, and the structures and habits of micro-organisms. A forceful and extremely impressive essay set forth the astounding theory that all life was merely a form of force generated from matter. The reasoning was, of course, purely analogical. The professor’s Contention, stated briefly, was that just as electricity, a force that is invisible and indefinable, is generated by the friction of particles of certain kinds of matter, so life is generated and springs into being when certain other types of matter come together in the right proportions and combinations.

  “What is your opinion of this theory?” I asked Dr. Dorp.

  “It is most cleverly put, but false because based on the false premise of the materialists that there are but two things in the universe, matter and force. They do not recognize the power that controls the force which moves the matter toward a fixed objective. That' power is mind. Thus, to them, all life and all mind are merely forms of force generated originally from inert matter.”

  “If the professor succeeded in creating a living thing from inert matter,” I said, “it seems to me that he has demonstrated his proposition.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he was experimenting with dead matter and not with mind or living creatures. There would be no mind or soul involved to inherit its being from a parent mind or soul. A new life entity would be generated, as it were, from matter which formerly contained no life.”

  “I think,” said the doctor quietly, “you would have stated the proposition more accurately had you said that a life entity—a mind without a body— had been induced to enter the body synthetically created.”

  Our discourse was interrupted by Chief McGraw, who informed us that we were wanted by the coroner.

  The Coroner’s Jury

  DR. DORP did the talking before the coroner’s jury. All the way through his testimony was negative. When asked if he had any idea what killed the professor and the policeman he replied that he had several ideas, but none of them would be worth bringing before the jury without more facts to substantiate them. I could see that his purpose was to get the inquest over with as soon as possible so we might continue the investigation.

  After due deliberation a verdict of “Death from cause or causes unknown,” was brought in and the coroner departed with his men.

  “Now that the inquest is over, what do you suggest?” McGraw asked the doctor.

  “My suggestion is that we immediately destroy the liquid in the glass-lined tank in the laboratory.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I am convinced that it is at least one. of the causes of the deaths that have taken place in this house.”

  “I suppose you have a good reason for your assumption.”

  “An excellent one, I believe. While you and your men were searching the house, Mr. Evans and I conducted a little investigation of our own. We put some of the liquid under the compound microscope and as we both saw the same things I am convinced that my eyes did not deceive me. Tell the chief what you saw, Evans.”

  I described the foam work, the granules and the white objects which appeared to be alive and struggling to escape.

  “All Greek to me,” said the chief. “What was it?”

  “The foam work with its accompanying granules closely resembled protoplasm, the basic life substance.”

  “And the white things—”

  “Were white blood corpuscles from the veins of a human being. They were the strongest of the human body cells to resist assimilation and consequently the last to succumb. The red corpuscles turned the liquid pink for a while but they had disappeared before we made our microscopic examination.”

  “Good Lord, why didn’t you tell me this before?”, demanded the chief. “Let’s go up and destroy the stuff now. Those two men up there might be killed any minute.”

  We found the two policemen unharmed and made our plans for the destruction of the substance in the-tank. Several demijohns of acid stood under the table and the doctor selected one nearly full of sulphuric acid.

  “Open the windows,” he ordered. “This is going to make a horrible stench.”

  Then he removed the rubber stopper from the mouth of the demijohn and I helped him hoist it to the edge of the tank. The searing liquid struck the heavy fluid in the tank with a hissing sound and bored into it like hot water poured in a snow bank. The jelly-like mass quivered slightly, and pungent, nauseating fumes arose to torment our nostrils.

  Then, suddenly, as if in horrible pain and awakened to the danger of its dissolution, the plasmic substance began to heave and billow toward the top of the tank with a movement suggestive of the writhing of a huge coiled serpent in its death agony. By direc
ting the stream of acid at the various peaks that arose we endeavored to keep it all washed down to a common level. Then a dozen peaks rose simultaneously and I noticed that one was capped with a round ball in the center of which was a black spot.

  “The nucleus!” cried the doctor excitedly, shifting the demijohn. “Pour it on the nucleus!”

  We were too late. The thing upreared itself with amazing speed and lopped over the edge of the tank opposite us. ..We dropped the nearly-emptied demijohn into the tank and rushed around to intercept it, just in time to see the ball containing the black spot separate itself from the stringy mass by which it was suspended, drop to the floor and roll under the table.

  An exciting chase of several minutes ensued. The thing darted, or rather, rolled from place to place with amazing rapidity. The tile floor was cracked in a dozen places by blows from the clubs of the two policemen who assisted us. At length we drove it into the corner beneath the lavatory and advanced in close formation. I had armed myself with a large spatula, the doctor gripped a heavy pestle, the two policemen had their clubs and the chief held his automatic pistol in readiness.

  As we drew close we moved with extreme caution, our nerves taut, our weapons ready to strike when the thing should make its dash for liberty. We waited breathlessly, but no movement came from the corner. I prodded the space behind the water pipes with my spatula. Still no sign of the thing we were after. Then I peered behind them and saw the reason—a hole an inch in diameter in the tile floor, probably drilled in the wrong place by a careless plumber and left unfilled because it was out of sight.

  When I pointed it out to Dr. Dorp he shook his head solemnly.