“Of course,” I returned. “Are you thinking of—”
“Let’s get going,” said Dr. Pelletier, heaving himself to his feet.
We started at once, the doctor calling out to his servants that be would not be back for one o’clock “breakfast,” and Stephen Penn who had driven us up the hill drove us down again. Arrived at my house we proceeded straight to Hellman’s cabin. Dr. Pelletier talked soothingly to the poor fellow while examining those ugly wounds. On several he placed fresh dressings from his professional black bag. When he had finished he drew me outside.
“You did well, Canevin,” he remarked, reflectively, “in not calling in anybody, dressing those wounds yourself! What people don’t know, er—won’t hurt ‘em!”
He paused after a few steps away from the cabin.
“Show me,” he commanded, “which way the Thing ran, that first night.”
I indicated the direction, and we walked along the line of it, Pelletier forging ahead, his black bag in his big hand. We reached the corner of the cabin in a few steps, and Pelletier glanced up the alleyway between the cabin’s side and the high yard-wall. The little toy house, looking somewhat dilapidated now, still stood where it had been, since I first discovered it. Pelletier did not enter the alleyway. He looked in at the queer little miniature hut.
“Hm,” he remarked, his forehead puckered into a thick frowning wrinkle. Then, turning abruptly to me:
“I suppose it must have occurred to you that the Thing lived in that,” said he, challengingly.
“Yes—naturally; after it went for my fingers—whatever that creature may have been. Three or four times I’ve gone in there with a flashlight after one of the attacks on Brutus Hellman; picked it up, even, and looked inside—”
“And the Thing is never there,” finished Dr. Pelletier, nodding sagaciously.
“Never,” I corroborated.
“Come on up to the gallery,” said the doctor, “and I’ll tell you what I think.”
We proceeded to the gallery at once and Dr. Pelletier, laying down his black bag, caused a lounge-chair to groan and creak beneath his recumbent weight while I went into the house to command the usual West Indian preliminary to a meal.
A few minutes later Dr. Pelletier told me what he thought, according to his promise. His opening remark was in the form of a question; about the very last question anyone in his senses would have regarded as pertinent to the subject in hand.
“Do you know anything about twins, Canevin?” he inquired.
“Twins?” said I. “Twins!” I was greatly puzzled. I had not been expecting any remarks about twins.
“Well,” said I, as Dr. Pelletier stared at me gravely, “only what everybody knows about them, I imagine. What about them?”
“There are two types of twins, Canevin—and I don’t mean the difference arising out of being separate or attached-at-birth, the ‘Siamese’ or ordinary types. I mean something far more basic than that accidental division into categories; more fundamental—deeper than that kind of distinction. The two kinds of twins I have reference to are called in biological terminology ‘monozygotic’ and ‘dizygotic,’ respectively; those which originate, that is, from one cell, or from two.”
“The distinction,” I threw in, “which Johannes Lange makes in his study of criminal determinism, his book, Crime and Destiny. The one-cell-originated twins, he contends, have identical motives and personalities. If one is a thief, the other has to be! He sets out to prove—and that pompous ass, Haldane, who wrote the foreword, believes it, too—that there is no freewill; that man’s moral course is predetermined, inescapable-a kind of scientific Calvinism.”
“Precisely, just that,” said Dr. Pelletier. “Anyhow, you understand that distinction.” I looked at him, still somewhat puzzled.
“Yes,” said I, “but still, I don’t see its application to this nasty business of Brutus Hellman.”
“I was leading up to telling you,” said Dr. Pelletier, in his matter-of-fact, forthright fashion of speech; “to telling you, Canevin, that the Thing is undoubtedly, the parasitic, ‘Siamese-twin’ that I cut away from Brutus Hellman last Thursday morning, and which disappeared out of the operating-room. Also, from the evidence, I’d be inclined to think it is of the ‘dizygotic’ type. That would not occur, in the case of ‘attached’ twins, more than once in ten million times!”
He paused at this and looked at me. For my part, after that amazing, that utterly incredible statement, so calmly made, so dispassionately uttered, I could do nothing but sit limply in my chair and gaze woodenly at my guest. I was so astounded that I was incapable of uttering a word. But I did not have to say anything. Dr. Pelletier was speaking again, developing his thesis.
“Put together the known facts, Canevin. It is the scientific method, the only satisfactory method, when you are confronted with a situation like this one. You can do so quite easily, almost at random, here. To begin with, you never found the Thing in that little thatched hut after one of its attacks—did you?”
“No,” I managed to murmur, out of a strangely dry mouth. Pelletier’s theory held me stultified by its unexpectedness, its utter, weird strangeness. The name, “Cassius,” smote my brain. That identical blood—
“If the Thing had been, say, a rat,” he continued, “as you supposed when it went for your fingers, it would have gone straight from its attacks on Brutus Hellman to its diggings—the refuge-instinct; holing-up.’ But it didn’t. You investigated several times and it wasn’t inside the little house, although it ran towards it, as you believed, after seeing it start that way the first night; although the creature that went for your hand was there, inside, before it suspected pursuit. You see? That gives us a lead, a clue. The Thing possesses a much higher level of intelligence than that of a mere rodent. Do you grasp that significant point, Canevin? The Thing, anticipating pursuit, avoided capture by instinctively outguessing the pursuer. It went towards its diggings but deferred entrance until the pursuer had investigated and gone away. Do you get it?”
I nodded, not desiring to interrupt. I was following Pelletier’s thesis eagerly now. He resumed:
“Next—consider those wounds, those bites, on Brutus Hellman. They were never made by any small, ground- dwelling animal, a rodent, like a rat or a mongoose. No; those teeth-marks are those of—well, say, a marmoset or any very small monkey; or, Canevin, of an unbelievably small human being!”
Pelletier and I sat and looked at each other. I think that, after an appreciable interval, I was able to nod my head in his direction. Pelletier continued:
“The next point we come to—before going on to something a great deal deeper, Canevin—is the color of the Thing. You saw it. It was only a momentary glimpse, as you say, but you secured enough of an impression to seem pretty positive on that question of its color. Didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said I, slowly. “It was as black as a derby hat, Pelletier.”
“There you have one point definitely settled, then.” The doctor was speaking with a judicial note in his voice, the scientist in full stride now. “The well-established ethnic rule, the biological certain in cases of miscegenation between Caucasians or quasi-Caucasians and the Negro or negroid types is that the offspring is never darker than the darker of the two parents. The ‘black-baby’ tradition, as a ‘throw-back’ being produced by mulatto or nearly Caucasian parents is a bugaboo, Canevin, sheer bosh! It doesn’t happen that way. Itcannot happen. It is a biological impossibility, my dear man. Although widely believed, that idea falls into the same category as the ostrich burying its head in the sand and thinking it is concealed! It falls in with the Amazon myth! The ‘Amazons’ were merely long-haired Scythians, those ‘women-warriors’ of antiquity. Why, damn it, Canevin, it’s like believing in the Centaur to swallow a thing like that.”
The doctor had become quite excited over his expression of biological orthodoxy. He glared at me, or appeared to, and lighted a fresh cigarette. Then, considering for a moment, while he inhaled a few preliminary pu
ffs, he resumed:
“You see what that proves, don’t you, Canevin?” he inquired, somewhat more calmly now.
“It seems to show,” I answered, “since Brutus is very ‘clear-colored,’ as the Negroes would say, that one of his parents was a black; the other very considerably lighter, perhaps even a pure Caucasian.”
“Right, so far,” acquiesced the doctor. “And the other inference, in the case of twins—what?”
“That the twins were ‘dizygotic,’ even though attached,” said I, slowly, as the conclusion came clear in my mind after Pelletier’s preparatory speech. “Otherwise, of course, if they were the other kind, the mono-cellular or ‘monozygotic,’ they would have the same coloration, derived from either the dark or the light-skinned parent.”
“Precisely,” exclaimed Dr. Pelletier. “Now—”
‘You mentioned certain other facts,” I interrupted, “‘more deep-seated,’ I think you said. What—”
“I was just coming to those, Canevin. There are, actually, two such considerations which occur to me. First—why did the Thing degenerate, undoubtedly after birth, of course, if there were no pre-natal process of degeneration? They would have been nearly of a size, anyway, when born, I’d suppose. Why did ‘It’ shrink up into a withered, apparently lifeless little homunculus, while its fellow twin, Brutus Hellman, attained to a normal manhood? There are some pretty deep matters involved in those queries, Canevin. It was comatose, shrunken, virtually dead while attached”
“Let’s see if we can’t make a guess at them,” I threw in.
“What would you say?” countered Dr. Pelletier.
I nodded, and sat silently for several minutes trying to put what was in my mind together in some coherent form so as to express it adequately. Then:
“A couple of possibilities occur to me,” I began. “One or both of them might account for the divergence. First, the failure of one or more of the ductless glands, very early in the Thing’s life after birth. It’s the pituitary gland, isn’t it, that regulates the physical growth of an infant—that makes him grow normally. If that fails before it has done its full work, about the end of the child’s second year, you get a midget. If, on the other hand, it keeps on too long—does not dry up as it should, and cease functioning, its normal task finished—the result is a giant; the child simply goes on growing, bigger and bigger! Am I right, so far? And, I suppose, the cutting process released it from its coma.”
“Score one!” said Dr. Pelletier, wagging his head at me. “Go on—what else? There are many cases, of course, of blood-letting ending a coma.”
“The second guess is that Brutus had the stronger constitution, and outstripped the other one. It doesn’t sound especially scientific, but that sort of thing does happen as I understand it. Beyond those two possible explanations I shouldn’t care to risk any more guesses.”
“I think both those causes have been operative in this case,” said Dr. Pelletier, reflectively. “And, having performed that operation, you see, I think I might add a third, Canevin. It is purely conjectural. I’ll admit that frankly, but one outstanding circumstance supports it. I’ll come back to that shortly. In short, Canevin, I imagine—my instinct tells me—that almost from the beginning, quite unconsciously, of course, and in the automatic processes of outstripping his twin in physical growth, Brutus absorbed the other’s share of nutriments.
“I can figure that out, in fact, from several possible angles. The early nursing, for instance! The mother—she was, undoubtedly, the black parent—proud of her ‘clear’ child, would favor it, nurse it first. There is, besides, always some more or less obscure interplay, some balanced adjustment, between physically attached twins. In this case, God knows how, that invariable ‘balance’ became disadjusted; the adjustment became unbalanced, if you prefer it that way. The mother, too, from whose side the dark twin probably derived its constitution, may very well have been a small, weakly woman. The fair-skinned other parent was probably robust, physically. But, whatever the underlying causes, we know that Brutus grew up to be normal and fully mature, and I know, from that operation, that the Thing I cut away from him was his twin brother, degenerated into an apparently lifeless homunculus, a mere appendage of Brutus, something which,apparently, had quite lost nearly everything of its basic humanity; even most of its appearance, Canevin—a Thing to be removed surgically, like a wen.”
“It is a terrible idea,” said I, slowly, and after an interval. “But, it seems to be the only way to explain, er—the facts! Now tell me, if you please, what is that ‘outstanding circumstance’ you mentioned which corroborates this, er—theory of yours.”
“it is the Thing’s motive, Canevin,” said Dr Pelletier, very gravely, “allowing, of course, that we are right—that I am right—in assuming for lack of a better hypothesis that what I cut away from Hellman had life in it; that it ‘escaped’; that it is now—well, trying to get at a thing like that, under the circumstances, I’d be inclined to say, we touch bottom!”
“Good God—the motive!” I almost whispered. “Why, it’s horrible, Pelletier; it’s positively uncanny. The Thing becomes, quite definitely, a horror. The motive—in that Thing! You’re right, old man. Psychologically speaking, it ‘touches bottom,’ as you say.”
“And humanly speaking,” added Dr. Pelletier, in a very quiet voice.
Stephen came out and announced breakfast. It was one o’clock. We went in and ate rather silently. As Stephen was serving the dessert Dr. Pelletier spoke to him:
“Was Hellman’s father a white man, do you happen to know, Stephen?”
“De man was an engineer on board an English trading vessel, sar.”
“What about his mother?” probed the doctor.
“Her a resident of Antigua, sar,” replied Stephen promptly, “and is yet alive. I am acquainted with her. Hellman ahlways send her some portion of his earnings, sar, very regularly. At de time Hellman born, her a ‘ooman which do washing for ships’ crews, an’ make an excellent living. Nowadays, de poor soul liddle more than a piteous invalid, sar. Her ahlways a small liddle ‘ooman, not too strong.”
“I take it she is a dark woman?” remarked the doctor, smiling at Stephen.
Stephen, who is a medium brown young man, a ‘Zambo,” as they say in the English Islands like St. Kitts and Montserrat and Antigua, grinned broadly at this, displaying a set of magnificent, glistening teeth.
“Sar,” he replied, “Hellman’s mother de precisely identical hue of dis fella,” and Stephen touched with his index finger the neat black bow-tie which set off the snowy whiteness of his immaculate drill houseman’s jacket. Pelletier and I exchanged glances as we smiled at Stephen’s little joke.
On the gallery immediately after lunch, over coffee, we came back to that bizarre topic which Dr. Pelletier had called the “motive.” Considered quite apart from the weird aspect of attributing a motive to a quasi-human creature of the size of a rat, the matter was clear enough. The Thing had relentlessly attacked Brutus Hellman again and again, with an implacable fiendishness; its brutal, single-minded efforts being limited in their disastrous effects only by its diminutive size and relative deficiency of strength. Even so, it had succeeded in driving a full-grown man, its victim, into a condition not very far removed from imbecility.
What obscure processes had gone on piling up cumulatively to a fixed purpose of pure destruction in that primitive, degenerated organ that served the Thing for a brain! What dreadful weeks and months and years of semi-conscious brooding, of existence endured parasitically as an appendage upon the instinctively loathed body of the normal brother! What savage hatred had burned itself into that minute, distorted personality! What incalculable instincts, deep buried in the backgrounds of the black heredity through the mother, had come into play—as evidenced by the Thing’s construction of the typical African hut as its habitation—once it had come, after the separation, into active consciousness, the new-born, freshly-realized freedom to exercise and release all that acrid, see
thing hatred upon him who had usurped its powers of self-expression, its very life itself! What manifold thwarted instincts had, by the processes of substitution, crystallized themselves into one overwhelming, driving desire—the consuming instinct for revenge!
I shuddered as all this clarified itself in my mind, as I formed, vaguely, some kind of mental image of that personality. Dr. Pelletier was speaking again. I forced my engrossed mind to listen to him. He seemed very grave and determined, I noticed.
“We must put an end to all this, Canevin,” he was saying. “Yes, we must put an end to it.”
Ever since that first Sunday evening when the attacks began, as I look back over that hectic period, it seems to me that I had had in mind primarily the idea of capture and destruction of what had crystallized in my mind as “The Thing.” Now a new and totally bizarre idea came in to cause some mental conflict with the destruction element in that vague plan. This was the almost inescapable conviction that the Thing had been originally—whatever it might be properly named now—a human being. As such, knowing well, as I did, the habits of the blacks of our Lesser Antilles, it had, unquestionably, been received into the church by the initial process of baptism. That indescribable creature which had been an appendage on Brutus Hellman’s body, had been, was now, according to the teaching of the church, a Christian. The idea popped into my mind along with various other sidelights on the situation, stimulated into being by the discussion with Dr. Pelletier which I have just recorded.
The idea itself was distressing enough, to one who, like myself, have always kept up the teachings of my own childhood, who has never found it necessary, in these days of mental unrest, to doubt, still less to abandon, his religion. One of the concomitants of this idea was that the destruction of the Thing after its problematical capture, would be an awkward affair upon my conscience, for, however far departed the Thing had got from its original status as “A child of God—an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven,” it must retain, in some obscure fashion, its human, indeed its Christian, standing. There are those, doubtless, who might well regard this scruple of mine as quite utterly ridiculous, who would lay all the stress on the plain necessity of stopping the Thing’s destructive malignancy without reference to any such apparently far-fetched and artificial considerations. Nevertheless this aspect of our immediate problem, Pelletier’s gravely enunciated dictum: “We must put an end to all this,” weighed heavily on my burdened mind. It must be remembered that I had put in a dreadful week over the affair.
The Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK™, Vol. 1: Henry S. Whitehead Page 11
