CHAPTER 5

Three weeks had elapsed, three weeks of dreadful mental suffering for Jenkins and it had left its mark upon him. He was a changed man from the one who came strong and straight, clear-eyed and tranquil-minded from the country. He had grown pale and gaunt, he stooped a little, his clothes hung on him loosely. Those sleepless nights when the screaming of the animals in mortal agony rang through the whole house penetrating even to his top room and through his blocked up ears, were draining his strength little by little, but now his resolve once fixed and the determination to kill the doctor, clear cut in his mind, he was less unhappy than in those first days of astounded wondering, crumbling beliefs and uncertainty as to where his duty lay.

Now that the Right lay plain before him, he had only one anxiety--that his strength would hold out until his duty was done. He walled himself round with a solid reserve and kept his grim purpose before him night and day. He realised that he could do very little. He knew that when a whole nation has gone mad and determined to set up a horrible vice in its midst and worship it, one individual has little power to avert the madness. He had learned by now that there were these hideous laboratories all over London that the tax-payers of England were burdened to support them, that there were numbers of men afflicted with the same monomania as the doctor and whose work equalled in barbarity his though it could not exceed it. He knew all this, but in those horrible nights hearing the beseeching cries of the tortured animals below, he reasoned thus. Each of these scientific researchers is responsible for killing in agony a certain number of animals. He had heard for instance the doctor quote a French surgeon who boasted he had done to death eight thousand dogs in his laboratory. He argued, therefore, if he could remove even one of these dehumained human beings from the world, he would certainly save a few thousand helpless animals from torture and Jenkins felt that was quite worth while. Of what use was this silly semi-demented old man who sat in his laboratory dabbling in the blood of dogs or writing to the newspapers about ridiculous cures he had discovered, that when tried were found to be no cures at all, or mixing his filthy glycerine in order to cultivate his still more filthy germs in it? Jenkins, not being one of the befooled public, saw very clearly that men like this one were not suppressing disease but spreading it: that these laboratories were plague spots where not new remedies, but new diseases were invented and elaborated.

The doctor was quite mad, Jenkins was convinced of that and as there seemed no way of conveying him to an asylum where he belonged it would be well to remove him altogether from this world where he was doing so much evil not only to the animals but to Mankind.

Therefore waiting and watching for his opportunity Jenkins went quietly day by day about his work, suffering inwardly horribly for the poor mutilated animals he had to tend, but letting no sign of agitation or distress appear in his sedate and stoic manner. The doctor from time to time eyed him curiously noting with grim satisfaction the physical changes that had taken place in his hard-working attendant. He was quite aware that Jenkins was more or less against his work and felt pain in seeing the tortures of the animals, and therefore his evil mind delighted in forcing him to witness the most brutal experiments. Such as tearing out a dog’s eyes to transplant them to another or cutting out an ear by the roots and sewing it into the victim’s neck. He knew also that Jenkins saw through the whole farce and that he could not deceive his attendant as he did the easy going public, so he no longer pretended that these experiments had any use in them. At the end of a loathsome exhibition of suffering and torture which had especially gratified his perverted sexuality, he would turn his gloating face with its protruding eyes and saliva covered lips to Jenkins and dig him playfully in the ribs.

“Good work that, eh, Jenkins? Not exactly useful, but interesting, eh? Let’s say _interesting_,” and Jenkins, a wooden figure with a wooden face would stand there with the fires of just indignation burning him to death within and exerting all his mental and moral force to keep himself from striking down the fiend in front of him.

So the days passed for the two men, shut away from the world in their little building on the piece of waste ground by the common--playfully for the doctor who “loved his work” as he was never tired of informing the newspapers. He did indeed love his work and wallowed in its atrocity as a drunkard in his cups. It was the only true thing he ever said but that was true, he loved his work--painfully for Jenkins who thought each night he could bear his martyrdom no longer. But at last the end came.

Jenkins had had a peculiarly sickening afternoon: dog after dog had been taken: thrown in the vivisecting trough, wrenched and racked and torn, its nerves stimulated, red hot irons passed through its most sensitive parts and finally been thrown in shrieking agony into a corner. The doctor was enjoying himself, that he loved his work was very evident from his excited face, from which he occasionally wiped the sweat and then resumed his task with fresh ardour. Six o’clock struck and the doctor stopped.

“Done a good day’s work, I think,” he remarked. “Take ’em away, Jenkins, kill ’em if you like. I’ve done with them. I’ll have a fresh lot to-morrow,” and he waved his hand to the mangled heap on the stone floor in the corner from which long gasping shivering cries were rising. “I’m going out. Go upstairs and get your tea. I shan’t want you again till to-morrow.” With that he turned to his dressing room from which Jenkins knew he would soon emerge, calm, collected, bland, immaculate, the suave man of Science that he appeared in public.

Before getting his tea, Jenkins turned to see what could be done for the poor bleeding remnants of living beings in the heap. Alas, nothing but to quiet them in death. He bent over them despatching them as gently and as quickly as he could and in half an hour the last poor battered thing had expired. Just then the doctor came out smooth and sleek and genially smiling. Well dressed as always and holding a little paper in his hand.

“I’m thinking of making a few remarks to-night on the benefit of Vivisection. Some old faddists are getting up on their hind legs and saying it shouldn’t be allowed, so it’s best to give the public our usual little dose of talk.”

Jenkins, sick to death, just nodded and went on with his task of carrying out the dead bodies. Then suddenly as the lightning flashes the moment was upon him and the whole man’s spirit sprang to attention and every fibre within him quivered for action. On his way out the doctor paused by the door of the lethal chamber and Jenkins on his way back for another body, found him standing in the hallway sniffing delicately about him.

“There’s a queer smell here,” he remarked. “I don’t like it. Where does it come from?”

As he spoke he turned the handle, pushed open the door, of the lethal room, and--entered. Jenkins, the blood stinging in all his veins and a great light in his brain, moved forward. He was not conscious of movement, only of intention. Equally without consciousness of the action, his arm shot out, his lean fingers gripped the handle. The brain had had standing orders given it long ago and now the moment had come, like lightning it obeyed.

The heavy door swung to and clicked. It was shut and no earthly power could open it from within. There was no sound. Silence fell on the laboratory. The instant the door had closed Jenkins became a different man. The great deed for which he had lived night and day was done, swiftly and successfully accomplished. He held his head high. His heart swelled within him with a joyous sense of duty done just as when he had walked out of the enlisting office in August, 1914, a soldier proud to die for his country. So now if he had to die on the scaffold for this night’s work he would die proudly for he knew that the work was good. One liar, one duper of the public, one traitor to his country, _one_ monster of cruelty, if but one, had been put out of existence. A great flood of joy seemed to engulf him and he stalked forward to the pipes and tubes to turn on the taps that let in to the chamber the deadly gasses.

It was but the work of a few minutes, for the useful chamber was always kept in readiness by the doctor. It might be some unexpected visitor might call at the moment when an animal was screaming under the doctor’s fingers and then the quickest way to obtain silence was to throw it into the lethal room out of the way before the visitor was admitted. Of course if it were a man of Science such a precaution was unnecessary because he would understand that the piercing cries only meant his fellow worker was “loving his work” and pursuing it as usual but it might be an ordinary person who called and then ordinary people take a different view of these things and have to be humbugged accordingly.

Jenkins stalked to the tubes and turned the taps full on. There were no merciful air holes in this chamber arranged so that the air might mix with the burning gasses and the victim may be overcome by the mixed fumes instead of being choked and burnt to death. No, the doctor wouldn’t have air holes and when Jenkins had pointed out to him how twisted and contorted the bodies were that he had to remove pointing to the fact that a very painful death had been experienced, the doctor had gazed at him over his cigarette smoke with a mild reflective gaze for a few seconds and then had turned away without a word. The air holes had never been made and a grim smile hovered for a moment over the attendant’s impassive face as he turned on the gas and then walked away down the passage to the stairway where he sat down on the lowest stair ... waiting, while the minutes passed. Then suddenly the three dogs in the reserve room broke into loud and joyous barking. Jenkins listened astonished. He had never heard them do that before. No animal within those walls ever lifted its voice except to wail in agony. But now? Did they know their hideous persecutor was dead? Could they see the spirit passing? Animals have many higher gifts than man: many instincts, many powers that are denied to him; or that he has destroyed by his vices, which they are without. And their nearness to the spiritual world had often struck Jenkins before. This was extraordinary. He could hear them bounding and scuffling about in the room giving short sharp barks of joy. Jenkins first thought was to go in but with his hand on the door knob he paused. He had only just lately had their dead companions in his arms. He would go and take off his blood stained garments before meeting them, get rid of the scent of death which they would recognize so well but he had something to do first. He must put out of their long long suffering those poor unfortunates that awaited in the ghastly gallery the morrow’s torture. He switched on the lights and then entered the gallery, where the scientist had pursued the work he loved. Jenkins could not bear to meet the sad, glazing eyes that stared dully at him through the bars of those cruel cages. What would he not have given to have been able to restore the joyous healthy forms they had possessed before the Scientist had cut and beaten and mangled and starved them out of all resemblance to living creatures. But he was helpless, man can destroy but he cannot create an animal.

At last it was over. All life was extinguished and the many mangled forms lay stretched on the cold zinc floors of their cages where they had dragged out their existence of months and years of suffering. Jenkins gave one glance round: his hands and feet cold but his heart burning like a red hot coal within him.

“This place justifies me,” he thought, “if anything is needed, this place alone is my excuse.”

Then he switched out the lights and death and darkness reigned supreme in the place of agony.

Coming out into the hall, he heard the joyous voices of the living dogs and his face cleared a little of its gloom. He walked to the lethal chamber and turned off the tap. Then he hurried up to his own little flat and there soon had stove and lamp well alight. He washed and changed his clothes rapidly. It was wonderful how light and strong he felt. Some great pressure in the atmosphere was removed now that he knew that evil thing was safely locked in the chamber below. Where had the evil spirit gone? Jenkins did not know nor care. If it were about in the house any where still Jenkins was not afraid of it.

His conscience was so absolutely clear, his heart, his brain, all his instincts told him he was right, that he had done well. He felt certain that any decent man watching that fiend working day by day would have acted as he had done, if he had stayed his hand so long. Most men in his place would have jumped on the doctor and strangled him when he first realised what the so-called scientist really was. No good man who knew the truth would condemn him so his heart was light and he had no fear of the doctor’s ghost. He would have met it cheerfully and give it some straight talk had it ventured up the stairs.

But no ghost or spirit came and Jenkins hurried along over his dressing and then made his long belated tea. Then with an armful of dog biscuits and a great jug of milk he descended to the expectant four foots below.

The lights were burning and the place looked cosy and cheery enough. The lethal room was there solid and silent guarding well its secrets and the welcoming bark of the dogs hearing his footsteps resounded through the hall. Jenkins opened the door and immediately out bounded the dogs leaping up to and caressing him. He saw at once the difference in them. Up to now a horror and terror had seemed to brood over them: it was in the air of the whole place, never had they ventured before uninvited into the hall. What they smelt, what they heard in that accursed place had told them frightful things, though Jenkins had guarded them all he could from that knowledge.

Now they capered about the hall unrestrained and leapt up at Jenkins’ side as if acclaiming him and welcoming him as their master. Jenkins, too sad at heart for his frolicsome companion to wholly cheer, went into their room soberly and filled all their saucers to the brim and broke their biscuits with careful fingers. After all it was so little that he had done! Just one of these men stopped from their horrible work, only one out of so many. Yet little actions sometimes had widespreading results. He wondered sadly whether by the voluntary sacrifice of his life he could do anything, by giving himself up and telling plainly and boldly his whole story in the dock to judge and jury, would he accomplish anything? Would Judge and Jury listen and believe? No, he thought not, they would be just like the lady to whom he had restored the cat. A personal motive would be ascribed to him for his act and Judge and Jury would only listen to the crowd of scientists who would pack the court. They would tell the judge and jury that animals did not feel, that when cut up alive it was done with the greatest kindness that the vivisectors who were appointed to inspect these places would certainly not sympathise with vivisectors working these, that Sir Charles Smith-Brown, Dsc. M.D., L.R.C.P., etc., etc., was the kindest man that ever breathed, that he lived only to benefit humanity and all these lies would be believed and all this absurd nonsense swallowed and Jenkins’ plain truth set aside and Jenkins hanged. That would be all. As for the newspapers they would not report a word of what Jenkins said but only what the scientists said by whom they were paid. No to keep his life if possible and gradually try to disseminate the truth was the only way that offered any hope. There must be some thinking men and women in England. They could not all be maundering fools like those that sat in Parliament and babbled about “effective inspection of laboratories” by vivisectors and voted huge sums of money for cancer research, _i.e._, for infecting thousands of animals with cancer, for cultivating cancer, and thus spreading the disease through the length and breadth of the land.

No, he decided, slightly comforted, they couldn’t all be fools! There must be some common sense left in England somewhere. He must try to find it and appeal to it.

The dogs’ supper over, he let them out for a run and then proceeded on his rounds as usual to see all was closed for the night. There were some letters for the doctor in the letter box and these he took out and arranged carefully on the table under a green shaded lamp in the doctor’s own special little study, the door of which was just opposite the door of the lethal chamber on the other side of the hall.

He turned out all the lights and locked all the outer doors except the hall door which “the doctor would open with his latch key when he returned.”

Jenkins felt the value of knowing his story beforehand and he was from now on going to entirely forget that the doctor’s body lay in the lethal chamber. When it was eventually dragged out, it must be a surprise to him. He had been told by the doctor that the latter was going out and that he might go upstairs to his tea. That was at 6 o’clock. He had availed himself of the permission and gone upstairs leaving the doctor in the hall. He had not seen him since and when he came down he concluded that the doctor had gone out and not returned. That was going to be his story and he was going to act in every particular as if were a true one. So he ranged the letters carefully under the lamp tidied the doctor’s papers and left everything in order for his return.

At ten he went to the main door and whistled in the dogs, saw them to their beds with many caresses, then rather wearily sought his own.

But there was quiet and peace waiting for him to-night. No shrieks, no groans, the dead and the living alike side by side slept soundly that night in the laboratory.