The lantern burned lower.
Pretorius was alone now, save for the silent occupants of the shelves about him. His isolation did not trouble him in the least. Cynical, indifferent to life and death, he was enthusiastic only in the matter of research. This subject, however, whipped his imagination to the point of madness, and he was entirely at a loss to understand how it was that Frankenstein, who had succeeded so far, could fail to pursue his crazy dream to the limit.
If only he could think of a way to force his hand!
Musing, Pretorius puffed out dense volumes of cigar smoke. They assumed strange shapes in the failing light.
‘Alone – I am still a pioneer,’ he muttered to the corpse that faced him. ‘I may fail at any turn. But with Frankenstein, whose creature still walks somewhere on this earth, to help me, ah, my pretty morsel, what a nuptial I could arrange for you!’
As though it heard and understood, the head of the corpse dropped forward. The Doctor’s eyes narrowed, then he laughed softly as he noted the cause.
A giant rat falling with a soft plop from the ceiling had struck the body on the shoulder in its passage, slightly dislodging it. Glancing malevolently at the Doctor with beady eyes, it scuttled across the flagged floor and disappeared.
Chuckling to himself, Doctor Pretorius sat back and blew another smoke-ring. Then he delved into his pocket for his watch. What a devil of a time the fellow was in coming, to be sure!
A creak sounded at the far end of the crypt. Surely that was he?
Pretorius prepared to rise, when suddenly it dawned upon him that the noise emanated from that part of the crypt farthest from the entrance. It could not, therefore, be his servant. It must be someone else!
For a moment his heart leaped, and a thousand superstitious fears inherited through the ages came to plague him. The next instant reason conquered, and he was his emotionless self again.
The sound was repeated. It was louder this time. To the Doctor’s straining ears it sounded like a heavy weight being cautiously lowered to the floor. It dragged slightly.
Slowly he turned his head. Then, with an exclamation of complete surprise, he sprang to his feet.
There, close behind him, its body almost completely out of a coffin, was the Monster. It had obviously lain hidden there all the time the two men had been working in the crypt. Slowly it swayed to its feet and lurched towards the Doctor.
It was to Pretorius’ credit that, after the first shock of surprise was over, he was unafraid. He regarded the creature coolly but warily. Indeed, a certain studied insolence crept into his voice as he addressed it.
‘Oh, I thought I was alone,’ he said airily. ‘Good evening.’ The flickering light from the dying lantern picked out the bones on the creature’s face. They gleamed yellow-white under the taut skin. Pretorius watched it guardedly as it drew a step nearer. For weeks it had been missing – who knew what subtle changes may have taken place in the man-made creature. Its next action sent the hair rising up on the Doctor’s prosaic head. It spoke.
‘Friend?’ asked the Monster. Its voice was harsh and sepulchral.
Pretorius took a grip on himself. After all, it was all perfectly normal. The Monster had been in the world some while now. It was natural that it should have learned to imitate human speech.
‘Indeed, I hope so,’ responded the Doctor, his brain beginning to work rapidly. He indicated a seat beside him. ‘Have some refreshment?’
Avidly the Monster swallowed the wine and food that Pretorius had brought for himself. It was a wise move on the Doctor’s part. It put the creature in a good humour.
Peering about it with curiosity, its gaze lighted on the corpse of the girl. It turned to Pretorius.
‘You make man, like me?’ it asked. There was a pathetic eagerness in its harsh notes.
Pretorius shook his head.
‘No,’ he replied, playing up. ‘Woman – friend for you.’
The Monster nodded, gratified.
‘Woman? Friend? I want friend, like me,’ it said.
The idea which had been simmering in the Doctor’s brain from the moment he set eyes on the Monster and learned that it could speak, suddenly fructified. Stroking his chin, he rose to his feet.
‘I think you can be very useful, my friend,’ he smiled. ‘You can add a little force to my argument, if necessary.’
For a moment he hesitated, then: ‘Do you know who Henry Frankenstein is?’ he asked. ‘And who you are?’
The Monster nodded.
‘Made me – from dead. I love dead – hate living.’
Pretorius chuckled.
‘You are wise in your generation,’ he answered. ‘Well, we must have a long talk, you and I. And then I have an important call to make. Perhaps Baron Frankenstein will not, after all, be so selfish as to refuse my request – when he sees you face to face.’
There and then in the blackness of the tomb – for the light had gone out long before they finished – Pretorius told the Monster about his plan to make it a mate, emphasising Frankenstein’s refusal and appealing for the creature’s co-operation. And when at last he stumbled up the steps into the graveyard above, it was with the knowledge that the Monster understood its part in his plan and could be relied upon to do its share well.
Immediately Pretorius made his way to the Schloss von Frankenstein. Despite the lateness of the hour, Minnie was awake.
‘I must see the Baron,’ declared the Doctor, pacing the hail. ‘Immediately.’
Protesting that her master and mistress were unable to see anybody, Minnie left him. But the clangour of the great door bell had alarmed Frankenstein.
‘What is it?’ he called from the library.
‘It’s that Doctor Pretorius again. He wants to see you,’ Minnie answered.
Frankenstein groaned and turned to his wife.
‘Then I knew it. Shall I never have any peace from the man?’ He went to the door and addressed Minnie. ‘Send him away. I won’t see him.’
Minnie turned, then she gasped. Silently the Doctor had come up behind her.
‘Good evening, Baron,’ he said pleasantly.
For a moment Frankenstein was too aghast at the man’s effrontery to say anything. His wife took command.
‘Dr Pretorius,’ she said icily. ‘I don’t know what your business at this time of night may be – but whatever it is it will have to wait. My husband and I are leaving almost immediately.’
Pretorius refused to be ruffled. He bowed with mock courtesy and turned to Frankenstein.
‘I think you know why I have come, Henry,’ he said with meaning. ‘If the Baroness will leave us a moment–’
Elizabeth and Frankenstein exchanged glances. He nodded and she gathered her wrap about her.
‘I will await you in my room,’ she told him, then beckoned to the waiting maid. ‘Come, Minnie.’
Alone, the two men faced each other.
‘I have completed by my method a perfect human brain,’ announced the Doctor. ‘It is living, but dormant. Everything is ready – for its.’
Frankenstein shook his head.
‘No!’ he said. ‘I won’t do it – that’s my final word!’ Pretorius smiled. Again there was a hint of the wolf in his expression. Slowly he crossed the library to the french window and beckoned.
‘I expected this,’ he said. ‘So I have brought my other assistant, who may persuade you to change your mind.
As if hypnotised, Frankenstein stared at the french window, which was gradually opening. Then, with a cry of fear, he fell back, hands outstretched.
The Monster, hideous creature of his own making, stood before him. With one massive hand it pointed to a chair. Its harsh voice filled the room.
‘Frankenstein – sit down!’ it said.
Pretorius began to chuckle.
‘Yes, there have been developments, you see. He can talk.’
Something in the creature’s malevolent leer as it gazed at him chilled the man who had made it. He called out p
iteously.
‘What do you want?’
The Monster came closer.
‘You know,’ it said.
Pretorius intervened.
‘He wants a woman – a friend – a mate. You’ll help us make one now, won’t you, Frankenstein?’
Dumbly the scientist shook his head. The Monster growled.
It advanced threateningly.
‘Yes – must!’ it ordered.
Frankenstein cowered under the upraised fist. To think that he had made this Thing – which was now commanding him as if It were master!
He appealed to Pretorius.
‘Get him out!’ he cried. ‘I won’t even discuss it till he’s gone.
Ponderously the Monster turned its head until it looked squarely at the Doctor. Back in the recesses of its brain it knew that there was something it had to do – something pre-arranged between them. Pretorius gave the sign. Stiffly the creature turned and marched back the way it had come. The french window swung wide as it passed through into the moonlight, its tattered rags flapping in the breeze – and with it went the stench of the tomb.
Ashen pale, Frankenstein wiped the sweat from his brow.
‘Now,’ said Pretorius with a grin, ‘let me explain my method and benefit from your experience.’
Frankenstein sat as though carved in stone, while the Doctor talked. Elizabeth meant more to him than anything in the world, and she had extracted his promise. If he agreed to this devilish proposal he knew that he might be loosing yet another murderer upon the world – who knew, if not in time – a race of murderers? Yet if he refused?
Pretorius was speaking.
‘I have, my friend,’ he was saying, ‘an excellent laboratory installed within a ruined tower high on a hill. It is not far from here. There we can conduct our mutual experiment in seclusion. I can assure you there will be no dearth of fresh bodies, for I have in my employ–’
He broke off, and his mouth slowly widened into that terribly wolfish grin. From somewhere above them a terrible scream had rung out. It reverberated down the castle corridor.
It came again. And again.
Frankenstein leaped to his feet, his face suddenly grey.
‘My God!’ he muttered. ‘That’s Elizabeth’s voice.’
The next instant he was racing up the great stone stairs.
At the head of the stairs he met Minnie. She was shaking with terror. Fear glared from her eyes and for a moment she could not speak. He seized her roughly.
‘What’s happened! Quickly! Tell me!’
The grip of his fingers brought back her courage, and she moistened her frozen lips. Then:
‘My lady!’ she moaned. ‘Oh, my lady – the Monster’s got her!’ With a trembling finger she pointed out of the window.
They crowded round it.
Scaling the wall of the courtyard as easily as if it were a ditch was the Monster. Even as they watched, it began to lope down the hill. The light of the moon threw its grotesque shadow after it like some great black demon dancing with fiendish glee. And from Frankenstein’s throat there rasped a despairing cry as the moon showed something else across the Monster’s shoulder – the body of a woman, slender and white and limp – the body of Elizabeth, his wife!
‘Now, perhaps, you will do what he asks,’ whispered Pretorius in his ear. ‘It is the only way to save her.’
It was true – and Frankenstein knew it. The only way to save Elizabeth was to throw in his lot with Pretorius and accede to the Monster’s demands.
The Monster wanted a mate. Very well, it should have one.
There was but one thing for which Frankenstein stipulated before he set to work, and that was to hear his wife’s voice that he might know she was safe and unharmed. To this Pretorius agreed.
Together they went to the ruined tower on the hill where the doctor had his laboratory. There Frankenstein was allowed to speak to his wife by means of a kind of telephone.
‘Elizabeth,’ he cried eagerly into the mouthpiece. ‘Are you safe?’
He could scarcely speak for the relief when he recognised her beloved voice answering him.
‘Henry! Yes, darling I’m quite safe – but oh! the dark and this dreadful–’
There was a noise at the other end of the wire. Frankenstein held his breath, straining his ears to listen. Her voice came again.
‘I’m quite near – in a cave. Come for me–’
It broke off with a gasp. Then, shrilling in his ear he heard the words: ‘Oh, God, it’s here! It’s here! Henry!’ Silence followed.
Distracted, Frankenstein shouted down the instrument. There was no reply. Impotent to do anything, he looked up and found Doctor Pretorius smiling sardonically at him.
‘My dear friend,’ murmured the doctor, ‘you surely did not believe Elizabeth’s gaoler would be so foolish as to permit her to betray her whereabouts? But rest assured, so long as you do what is asked of you she will come to no harm.’
Frankenstein knew when he was beaten. Subdued at last, he bent himself to his task.
It was not long before the scientist in him rose uppermost and he was working day and night at a bench littered with strange apparatus. Test-tubes, retorts, queer metallic globes and intricate dials, all had their part in fashioning what was to be the heart of this man-made woman.
And over him all the time, urging, encouraging threatening, stood the Monster.
A queer place was this ruined tower where Pretorius had his laboratory. It was shaped like a tall cone some hundred and fifty feet in height.
The laboratory itself occupied the ground floor, and the hollow tube of the tower leading to the starlit vault overhead formed a kind of lift-shaft. Strange and complicated machinery hung suspended from beams in the wall, or stretched trellis-like up to the castellated top of the building. The only lights were flares or arc-lamps.
Came the time when the current was applied and the mechanical heart began to beat. Pretorius bent his head exulting over the glass container, watching while the blood pumped steadily up and out. Suddenly, the heart fluttered and stopped.
With a curse, Frankenstein flung the contents of a bubbling crucible on to the stone floor and slumped into a chair.
‘We need another heart!’ he cried. ‘A human heart. It must be sound and young. Where can we get it?’
The Doctor and the Monster exchanged glances, then Pretorius went to the door.
‘Karl!’ he called.
A loutish misshapen brute appeared. Frankenstein recognised him as the Doctor’s most trusted servant. He began to explain.
‘What we need is a female victim of sudden death. Can you do it? There are always accidental deaths occurring.’
For a moment Karl hesitated, then the Doctor spoke and there was that in his eyes which made his meaning clear.
‘Yes, Karl,’ he nodded. ‘There are always accidental deaths occurring.’
The man withdrew.
And that night a youth was mourning his sweetheart and a new heart – a human heart – beat strongly in Frankenstein’s glass container.
For nine hours the small heart beat with the regularity of the normal. Excitement ran high. Taking it in turns, Pretorius and Frankenstein watched the indicator rising and falling; saw the blood begin to flow simply and easily through the valves.
At last it was decided that the time had come to transfer the organ to the waiting corpse. The vital stages of the experiment had arrived.
It was an occasion when the slightest slip might mean the undoing of all their work. The Monster had served its purpose. It had kept Frankenstein from prowling in search of his wife. It was now in danger of becoming something of a nuisance. Accordingly Pretorius drugged the creature and left it lying on its great straw bed.
What was needed for the successful completion of their task was a terrible thunderstorm. Then, claimed Frankenstein, the air would be full of electricity, which could be imparted to the corpse by means of a wire attached to two kites and passing through an
electrical diffuser.
Pretorius looking out of the window noted with satisfaction that such a storm was brewing this night.
‘We must work quickly!’ he cried, wheeling the stiff body under the bright lights of the arcs. Together they bent over it, cutting away the surgical bandages which swathed the entire figure. Soon it was ready to receive the heart.
Poising a scalpel above the breast the doctor made a swift incision and, his fingers working with all the deft skill of which he was capable, Frankenstein inserted the beating organ.
They worked in a tense silence until the deed was finished. The atmosphere grew clammy.
‘The storm is almost overhead,’ announced Pretorius presently, peering out of the window. ‘It will break soon.’ He turned almost affectionately to the figure lying still upon the operating table. ‘To think that within that skull,’ he murmured, ‘is an artificially developed human brain – each cell waiting for the life that is to come.’
A low rumble of thunder brought his sentence to a close. He glanced up the funnel of the high tower.
‘Are the kites ready?’ called Frankenstein.
‘Yes.’
‘Then send them up as soon as the wind rises. They must reach their zenith before they are struck.’
For some minutes longer they worked together, connecting the wires of the cosmic diffuser to the body on the table. Up on the battlements of the high tower, their shadows dancing grotesquely in the light of the paraffin flares, two men wrestled with the giant windlass which was to hold the kites when they cast off. A blue wave of lightning flickered over the mountain ridge to the south. Thicker and thicker grew the atmosphere. It felt like an immense blanket pressing down upon the world beneath.
Then came the first assault of the storm. A terrific clap of thunder which shook the valley. A vivid fork played wildly up and down the sky, and at the same time the rain began to fall.
Up the dark funnel of the hollow tower glared the white face of Frankenstein. Faintly his voice reached the men above the din of the storm.
Movie Monsters Page 14
