CHAPTER 1
“Here, Jenkins, take this animal!” And the body of the dog from which one foreleg had been cut away was thrown into the arms of the new laboratory attendant.
The dog was screaming wildly and some of its blood splashed upon Jenkin’s white smock frock and some into his no less white face. The great scientist Sir Charles Smith-Brown Bart. Dsc. F.R.C.S. etc., etc., was at work in his laboratory and his new attendant was assisting him.
It was Sunday morning and the Great Man was rather afraid he might be made late for church by the bungling slowness of his subordinate.
“Throw him into the trough, man, don’t stand there staring and clamp down his paws so that he can’t move, the three he’s got left anyway,” he added with a little chuckle. Sir Charles was always cheerful and pleasant at his work. Jenkins turned, lowered the dog into the trough on his back and taking each leg fastened it into the iron clamp provided on each side. The dog was screaming in agony and Jenkins’ fingers trembled as he did the clamps and turned his head away that he might not see the beseeching terror in the animal’s eyes. It did not seem right somehow. He had fed the little spaniel last night and thought what a jolly little beast it was, frisking round him, and caressing him with its soft nose and tongue. This Sunday morning’s work did not seem right to him, but then he was a new hand, only having been engaged last night and having had his duties described to him as “the care of animals.”
“Now then have you got him fixed?” asked the great man, coming up behind him, with a keen looking knife in his hand. With this he pointed to the dog’s head.
“Bind his jaws and clamp the head, that’s right. Now my friend--” the great man leant over the trough in which the dog lay rigid, helpless, extended on its back, its legs clamped to the sides of the trough, wide apart. Jenkins turned away and stared stolidly at the piece of bright blue sky that appeared above the frosted panes of the lower part of the window.
The dog unable to scream with its bound jaws could still moan and a groaning moan of direct agony came to Jenkins’ ears as the great man bent over the trough.
When he looked round he saw there was a great gash all down the chest and stomach, laying bare the inside, and in the open cavity the scientist was fumbling with both hands.
“There now that’ll do for the present,” he said cheerily as he withdrew them, covered with blood, and wiped them briskly on a towel, “I shall have to be off to church now or I shall be late.”
“And what about the dog, Sir?”
“Oh, I’ll leave him like that. I always do. Let ’em cool off a bit you know,” again the pleasant laugh. “Then I’ll have at him again after lunch.”
He was taking off his white smock in which he worked and revealed himself well dressed underneath. He walked to the wash handstand with its fine brass taps and washed his hands carefully. Then he went into the hall outside where his frock-coat and tall hat were hanging. Jenkins followed him eyeing him uneasily.
“Of course, Sir,” he began rather hesitatingly, “I’m new to this kind of work and p’raps I don’t understand it, but isn’t it a bit cruel?”
The great man had slipped on his fine well made coat over his large comfortable self and was just settling above his eyebrows his very polished new silk hat. He looked back pleasantly at the nervous, puckered face of his subordinate.
“My dear Jenkins you decidedly are new to it, very: but I trust you will improve in time.” He took off his pince-nez and held them lightly in one hand, as he was wont to do when addressing a class. “But I don’t like these signs of squeamishness. Now I’ll just ask you a few questions. You don’t know anything about Scientific Research do you?”
“No, Sir,” returned Jenkins humbly.
“Well, then,” pursued his employer genially, “you must remember Scientific Research is a very noble work and that’s what I am doing here, a very noble work,” he repeated, “read the daily papers, they are always saying so.” Here he waved his pince-nez airily and smiled.
Jenkins was not an adept at analysing sarcasm but as he looked at the smiling doctor and heard his pleasant tones, he had a vague idea that the big man was “making game of him.”
“Then another thing is its all for the benefit of humanity. Now remember that, Jenkins, because it’s a useful phrase, the benefit of humanity. I am working for the benefit of humanity. You must get that well in your head. All you saw this morning, all you will see here while you are with me is all for the benefit of humanity, see?”
Jenkins feeling himself confused and baffled by the smiling eyes and suave tones, tried to keep hold of his point.
“Still it is cruel, isn’t it, Sir?” he mumbled.
“Cruel?” repeated the Doctor with a shade of impatience. “Certainly _not_. Supposing it were cruel what an uproar there would be! You know what a lot of churches there are, all full of God-fearing clergymen, good holy men. Would they allow it if it were cruel? Of course not. They would denounce it in their sermons but they never say a word against it. They uphold it. To-day for instance all the London churches are full of these good men talking themselves hoarse, telling us all what we must not do, but you won’t find one saying we must not pursue our researches.”
“P’raps they don’t know what you are a doin’ of,” blurted out Jenkins and then paused alarmed at what his employer would think of his boldness, but Sir Charles only laughed gently.
“Oh, yes, they do,” he said. “We tell them often enough in our books and our medical papers. But they see the aim, my dear Jenkins, unlike you I am afraid. They see how noble, how important our work is. They see how important, how immensely valuable, how necessary it is, in fact, to humanity, to know that monkeys can have measles!” he broke off laughing and Jenkins felt again the big man was making fun of him. Sir Charles did not seem to mind now being late for church. He was amused at the poor simple ignorant fellow before him and he liked the feeling that he could confuse him with his big words and twist him round his finger.
Jenkins stood blinking for a moment in silence. The little spaniel’s agonised moaning came from the room behind him and filled his ears making a curious undertone to the light banter of the man before him. Sir Charles was a great believer in propaganda and never let go an opportunity of sowing the good seed. He was a little afraid that sooner or later an infuriated populace might turn against him and his colleagues and put a stop to those practices for which now they so meekly and conveniently paid: so seeing Jenkins still appeared somewhat obdurate he continued more seriously.
“Just think a minute. There’s the whole country! England! You love England, don’t you, Jenkins? Fought for it, eh?”
“Yes, Sir, I do,” replied Jenkins fervently. His whole face lighted up.
“Well, now England’s in the forefront of all humanitarian projects. Won’t have bull fights, stopped cock fights, sends men to prison for throwing a cat out of a window, would _England_ allow this work of ours to go on, if it were cruel? No she would stop it. Would she tax her people to give us little gifts of 500,000 pounds for Research if it were cruel? Certainly not. Are you a taxpayer, Jenkins?”
“I must be, Sir. We’re all taxed.”
“Just so. Then here in the laboratory you’ll have the satisfaction of seeing how your money is spent for you. Money, Jenkins, it takes money, the noble work. Sixty thousand animals more or less go through the laboratories every year in England. Expensive ones too, some of them: it takes money, _your_ money, see?” Here the doctor gave his victim a playful little dig in the side. “Now I really must run off. Don’t you bother your head about these things. Just remember what I say that England’s a splendidly humane country and couldn’t allow anything brutal to be done and don’t forget too how awfully important it is to know that monkeys have measles!”
Before his confused listener could make any remark the doctor had walked down the passage, passed through the door and banged it behind him.
Sir Charles walked down the road and across the straggling bit of waste ground that surrounded his laboratory, with a pleased expression on his face. One of his favorite experiments was to batter a dog to death slowly with repeated blows, making notes during the operation, of the time necessary to produce insensibility and the further time to produce actual extinction. It was always an interesting experiment to his highly scientific mind and he felt in some degree as if he had been practicing in the same way on Jenkins’ mind. He thought with a smile it would not take long in his laboratory to batter to death all Jenkins’ funny little ideas about cruelty.
Jenkins, left standing in the hall, remained there as if transfixed. He felt as if the whole thing must be some horrible nightmare and that he would wake up in a minute in his country cottage with the sound of clucking hens outside, instead of that awful moaning from the room behind him.
What sort of hell was this that he had dropped into?
You see Jenkins lacked a scientific education which enables a man to see that black is really white and so on. Jenkins was only just an average ordinary man so he must be excused if Sir Charles’ most beautifully kept and perfectly appointed laboratory with all the latest scientific appliances for giving monkeys measles and kindred noble work, appeared to him a hell.
How had he got into it?
Seeing by chance that scrap of paper and the advertisement that a man was wanted to take charge of animals, he had applied for the place, because he was fond of animals, and got it.
He had arrived last night and been shown his quarters. He had also been shown a room with four healthy happy dogs in it in kennels round the walls. He had been told to feed them and keep them clean which work he had joyfully accepted. The dogs had jumped round him in delight recognizing a friend and he had spent most of his evening with them, cleaning out the kennels which seemed to be old ones that had been used for many occupants before these four had been put into them. His work done he had passed through a passage with closed doors on all sides of him and up the long flight of stairs at the end of it, to his own two rooms, on an upper floor. These seemed cosy enough and he had slept well. In the early morning he had been roused by the unearthly screaming of a dog and fearing some accident had happened to one of his charges, he bolted down to the room where he had left them overnight.
Finding only three scared looking animals there, he had followed the terrible scream down the passage, opened the door that faced him and come straight in on the scene of one of the doctor’s scientific operations. Jenkins being unscientific failed to see any trace of beauty and nobleness in the work before him. He only saw a perspiring man in a blood stained smock holding a dog who was shrieking like a human person in the extreme of pain and terror. He understood nothing, he vaguely thought there must be some accident and his help was needed.
He rushed forward. “Oh, Sir--”
The scientist looked up. His face was working, his eye glaring.
“Damn you, you fool, what do you come here for when I’m at work? Get out. Get out!” he repeated as Jenkins did not stir. “And never come here unless I ring for you.”
Jenkins turned on shaking legs and got out of the room somehow, shutting the door tightly behind him. Then he walked down the passage to the room where the live dogs were, entered and shut that door too and stood with his back against it facing his charges. Yesterday they had jumped up to him. Now they stood still, looking at him askance. Their ears pricked listening to those frightful screams. Then he went into the middle of the room and sat down on a wooden chair and buried his face in his hands with a groan. He couldn’t yet make much head or tail of it all but one thing was certain. The man in the other room was cutting up a dog alive. A dog who had been well and happy last night. It had been taken from among these out of this room and by inference these others were awaiting the same fate. And they knew it: he stretched out his hands to them and after a time they came up to him; not as last night capering and joyous, but cowering and whimpering, sidling up to him pleading for a protection they felt by instinct he could not give. He had put his arms round them and so they sat grouped together the man and the terrified dogs listening to those horrible cries. He did not know how long he sat there but after a time a church bell clanged out a few harsh strokes and after that the doctor’s bell had sounded summoning him to his duties. Now the great man had departed and he was left in the hallway to think over his first lesson in applied Science.
Jenkins was not an educated man, but he had a good clear mind capable of adjusting itself to new situations. He was, besides, what we all understand by a good man. He had those simple sincere rules of conduct that make the useful citizen. He had his own very definite ideas of right and wrong and lived up to them. He thought it was right to pay your way, to help your neighbour whenever possible, to work hard and mind your own business. He thought it wrong to lie, steal or murder, to cheat or injure another in any way, or to abuse the helpless and the weak. That was his simple code and it had served him very well the 38 years of his hard-working life. He saw now chance had flung him into a place where what seemed to him scandalous infamies were carried on and his first impulse was to flee from it, as one would from any plague spot: make a clean bolt of it and forget that such a place existed. But he checked the impulse as cowardly. No, here he was suddenly up against something he did not in the least understand. It was his duty to try to master it and see what it all meant. He perceived very clearly that however gross the evil existing here it was one legally protected and upheld. He remembered he had once called in a policeman to stop a man beating a dog: nothing of that sort would avail here, that was evident. The doctor was quite confident and easy in his mind apparently and while the exterior of the place looked squalid and desolate situated in its ragged waste land, the interior was fitted up with every comfort and even luxury. Electric lights and lamps and telephones were in every room he had seen. Beyond the outlying position, there seemed no special secrecy or concealment about the place: No: somehow or other, he could not think how, but _somehow_ this man was _allowed_ to do what he was doing. Allowed as he had said, by the country, by the laws, by the church, by his fellows, to do these atrocities. His blood boiled within him. Again came the temptation to bolt but the thought of the animals held him. His fighting spirit was up but he could do nothing until he knew more about what sort of a hell he was in. He must explore. He walked down the softly carpeted hallway away from the door, towards the staircase end and opening the first door he came to at the side entered the apartment. It was long and narrow. No carpet here: on the floor only bare tessellated black and white tiles. There were windows high up in the walls: below these ranged against each side of the room were iron cages. The light fell coldly from above and there was a faint foul odour in the air that belied the appearance of aggressive brightness and cleanliness of the whole place. There was a row of iron cages on each side all down the long room and from these rose a continuous low moaning sound which seemed to chill his blood. He looked at the cages: each one was occupied by a mutilated or diseased animal: most of them turning, swaying and moaning in direst agony in their cramped quarters: others crouching motionless with staring eyes, frozen images of despair. Jenkins turned to the first cage on his right. It contained a retriever blinded in both eyes from the sockets of which oozed blood and matter. He was sitting on his haunches on the bare iron floor of his cage in which he could just turn round, that was all: the bars at the top almost touched his head.
Jenkins stopped and spoke gently to him. The dog raised his ears a little at the unaccustomed sound and threw up his great gentle glossy head with the most piteous long drawn howl that Jenkins had ever heard. Its accent of unutterable woe was such that no human voice could achieve. It said as plainly as words, “Oh, let me out of my prison house, let me die and escape.”
Jenkins eyes filled. He spoke again and put his hand through the bars and stroked the dog’s shoulder and the sightless face turned towards his hand and the dog’s hot nose pushed into it with another long drawn pleading howl.
Jenkin’s looked at the little white enamelled tablet beneath the cage and read:
“March 1st--Eyes removed.” The date was a fortnight back! With a sickening feeling half benumbing him, Jenkins passed to the next cage. Here was a ghastly creature that once had been a dog, staring with glaring eyes through the bars. It took no notice. It’s agony appeared to be so appalling that it was mute and rigid with it.
Jenkins stooped and read:
“Tumour (artificial) on brain. Experiment commenced February 15.” The next cage held a small spaniel puppy with a hugely bloated body that was twisting and writhing in every conceivable position. It’s tongue was hanging out, foam was pouring from its mouth, its eyes bulging from its head, it gave short scream of agony at intervals and threw itself against the bars of its cage.
Jenkins felt it was not mad. Out of the large protruding brown eyes looked not insanity: only terror and wonder at its own awful suffering.
Jenkins read on the cage:
“Virus introduced into stomach.” There was no date.
In the next cage the occupant lay at the point of death. It was a small dog: the floor of its cage was one pool of blood. Where one of its ears should have been gaped a huge hole from which blood was still running. Its head had been apparently bandaged. Its paws evidently tied together but in its madness of pain it had torn away its bonds. Now it lay still on its side. Its mouth open gasping, its eyes staring, too weak to move or cry. _Dying at last._
Jenkins read:
“Ear removed. New ear grafted. February 1st.”
A month and a half it had been there!
Jenkins crept on down the middle path between the row: feeling weak and cold as he went. Each cage seemed to him more horrible than the last. Of some the contents are indescribable. Beneath some ran the legend--“Starving Experiments.” And in these the dogs lay rough-haired, motionless, their bones almost through their skin, their eyes glazed and the dates ranged from January.
After the dog cages came cats, cats and kittens in all stages of mutilation with their small red tongues showing in their gasping mouths that let out faint little cries for mercy. After these, monkeys and here underneath Jenkins read:
Measles induced at various early dates.
He paused here looking at the suffering creatures, shivering and crouching on the bare zinc floors of their cells and his face grew strangely dark as he recalled the scientist’s smiling words: “It’s so beneficial to humanity to know that monkeys can have measles!”
His feet crept on again. He felt he could hardly move them but he determined to see it all. Other monkeys had suffered such frightful injuries he could hardly recognize what they were. Their wizened anguished little faces were pressed against the bars. They clung there whining and chattering. Some without eyes, some without ears, some with huge lumps in their throats that they continually pulled at with trembling paws. Then the cages ended. He had come to the end of the row and he saw in front of him a round zinc cylinder-shaped receptacle, just like in appearance the ash barrels seen in back yards. He noticed, however, this had perforated holes in the lid. He lifted this off and down at the bottom of the barrel lay a collie dog.
He called to it and it lifted its head apathetically and gazed up with dull eyes. It was very, very emaciated: just its coat seemed covering its skeleton. Jenkins put down both his arms into the barrel and very gently lifted the dog out bodily and set it on the ground. It lay just where he set it, crumpled up. Then he raised it and spoke to it. The dog apparently tried to respond and moved but as it got on its feet it turned and turned and turned in an endless awful circle. It could not do otherwise. Its head bent down at a queer angle, its legs quivering, its tail and ears hanging, its eyes lifeless, its bones sticking in places through its rough hair, it turned and turned on the same small spot of ground till it sank exhausted.
Jenkins read:
“Portion of brain removed. Interesting circular movement induced.” And the date was _two years before the present time_.
Jenkins straightened himself, the distorted creature crouching, silent at his feet.
“And this is _England_!” he said half aloud.
Impossible to cure, to help, to alleviate any of this suffering. Impossible to bestow the last boon of death on these sad helpless beings. For if he freed any of these, new ones would be put in their place.
With his heart heaving, and beating in a tumult of fury, he bent and very tenderly lifted the skeleton collie in his arms, held it for a moment against him and spoke to it gently. Then lowered it back into its awful prison house and replaced the lid.
Then shivering as if with mortal cold he dragged himself on a few paces to the end of the room where there was a small gas fire burning and an arm chair drawn up by it. He sank into this and put his hands to the fire. This was the doctor’s end of the apartment. A screen shut it off from the long line of cages. A square of warm carpet covered the bare tiles on the floor. A small table with some paper and-note books and a shaded lamp stood in front of the fire. Jenkins sat in the doctor’s chair listening to the moaning of unspeakable pain that filled all the air, low and desolate and hopeless, and shuddered.
When the feeling of physical illness had worn off a little, he rose to his feet and retraced his steps down the long avenue of cages. He could not bear to look at them again but kept his gaze resolutely in front of him. He knew he could do nothing to help the hapless tortured inmates. His duties were to clean out the cages and to feed and water and wait upon the healthy animals. He was not allowed to interfere with the animals under experiment. If he overstepped his limit by the very least he saw he would be thrown out at once and he was bent upon staying. He felt quite clearly he was face to face with some momentous evil that was vast and far-reaching and of which he could not read the meaning. He could not grapple with it for he did not fully yet understand what it was but he would be patient, he would be calm, he would be self-controlled, he would watch and study and wait and then perhaps he could do something. But infinite caution would be necessary: no rash step, no giving way to raging impulses of anger and indignation would serve him here nor help those tortured prisoners. “Who sups with the devil must have a long spoon” and he felt he was now the guest of the devil, indeed.
He got out of the apartment at last and closed the door after him. He went down the hallway and listened at the small laboratory door behind which he knew the dog was lying clamped in the trough. The moaning had ceased. There was no sound now. Jenkins crept on up the stairs to his own top floor rooms. Before commencing the flight he first noticed another door on his left which he had not opened. He read on it in passing on a small plate, Lethal Chamber. He dragged himself up the stairs and finally reached his own little rooms at the top: with which he had been so pleased the night before. Only the night before and it seemed he had lived through an age of misery since then. He entered his own little sitting room, bolted the door after him and then sat down at the table, his head in his hands, a broken man. His beliefs, faiths, ideals, were all shattered and fell from him leaving him naked and alone.
This was England; These things were done in England, allowed, approved of, and he had loved England, believed in it, fought for it. Did he love it now? No. Would he fight for it and offer his life again for it? No. He had believed in God. He had loved him. Not all the war and the suffering and the horror of it had shaken his belief in Him. Did he believe in Him now? Love Him? No. There could be no loving, good, all-powerful being who could look down on that laboratory and that man who worked there and not shrivel them both to nothing. A God there might be, but if these things pleased Him then He must be evil. If they did not please Him He must be as powerless as Jenkins himself to stop them.
Perhaps it was that. Perhaps there was a spirit of good but perhaps it could not work alone, perhaps it needed human co-operation. This was a new thought to Jenkins and it give a little light to the broken and dejected man.