CHAPTER 6

Six days had elapsed and the laboratory still stood silent without a master. Jenkins moved about in it silently as a ghost, doing everything exactly as he would have done had he expected the doctor’s return any minute. He had sent the three dogs down into the country by train to the man who kept an eye on his little cottage while he was away and who would look after them. Inwardly he was longing for it all to be over, longing to leave this accursed spot where he had gone through such horrible suffering. His work was all done there now. Every cage in the long corridor had been thoroughly cleaned out: the bars polished: the floor washed and the tiles of the corridor itself swabbed over and rubbed to a glistening cleanliness. The doctor’s rooms were kept swept and dusted and each day’s letters as they came in were ranged in neat order on his writing table, with a little space between each day’s group. The fires were lighted in the morning, the lamps lighted in the evening.

Jenkins waited up till ten o’clock each night. Then solemnly switched off the lights and retired. He was pale and gaunt but not unhappy now, as compared with his former days here. He had done what he could. It was not much but it was something, and perhaps work lay ahead for him in the future. Perhaps he could be instrumental in exposing this awful vice, this cruel murderous lust that called itself Scientific Research. He missed the three dogs enormously but here again he hugged himself with pleasure in thinking they were safe and out of the way.

It was just five on the Saturday evening and Jenkins was downstairs taking his tea in the dogs’ room where he kept now his little outfit for tea making, that he might be at hand to open the door. A ring came and he rose at once to answer.

“Sir C. Smith-Brown at home?” queried the thin-lipped young man who stood outside.

“No, sir.”

“Oh. When do you expect him back?”

“Any time, sir. He has not been in this week: not since Monday evening.”

“Really? I wonder where he is then. I don’t seem able to catch him anywhere. Did he say he was going into the country or anything?”

Jenkins shook his head.

“No, sir. He just left on Monday about six and said he wouldn’t want me again that day. I expected him next morning but he didn’t come and I haven’t seem him since.”

“Funny! You’ve been here all the time I suppose?”

“Oh, yes, sir, I never go out unless the doctor gives me special leave to.”

“Well, I’ll look up Dr. Jones and see if he’s there. Thanks, good night.”

The young man departed. Jenkins closed the door and went back to the dogs’ room where he reboiled his kettle and made himself another cup of tea.

“That’s the beginning,” he thought to himself. “Now there’ll be a disagreeable time I expect, and after that I’ll be free I hope,” and he smiled to himself as he thought of the rescued dogs waiting for him in the country.

Jenkins was right. The search for the doctor had begun. At nine thirty, a longer more peremptory ring sounded through the house accompanied by a knock. He went at once to the door. The thin-lipped young man was there but this time in company with a shortish rotund man who made up for his insignificant stature with great pomposity of manner. As soon as the door was opened he stepped over the threshold with a hint of defiance in his bearing as if he expected an effort on the part of Jenkins to keep him out and had determined it should be unsuccessful. Jenkins inwardly amused immediately stepped back having opened the door to its fullest extent.

“This seems a serious affair about your master,” began his visitor. “He is not at his house, he is not at his hospital, and you say he is not here.” There was the faintest accent laid on the “you say.” Jenkins looked gravely interested.

“When did you see him last?”

“Monday evening, sir, about six.”

“He’s not been back since, not even looked in, eh?”

“No, sir, I don’t think he could have. All his letters are here.” He stepped to the study door and threw it open, switching on the light. The neat cosy little room stood revealed very orderly. On the table under the green shaded lamp lay the doctor’s letters ranged in their little groups according to the day of their arrival.

The doctor’s chair was drawn toward the hearth, neatly swept up where a small fire burnt primly.

The two visitors peered into the room, the rotund Dr. Jones went up to the table and fingered one or two of the letters as if he hoped to gain information from them.

“Such an exact man, such a precise man, I can’t understand his going off like this for six days and telling nobody.”

He stared hard at Jenkins who returned his gaze with a slightly distressed expression but made no reply.

“Well, I think I and my friend would like just to look through the place,” Jones continued, his manner something between embarrassment and aggression.

“We should feel more satisfied you know and something might strike us as a clue to his disappearance.”

Jenkins assented at once.

“Do, sir, will you go round alone or shall I come with you?”

“Oh, you come along by all means,” Jones answered and the three of them came out of the study into the hall again. Jenkins opened the next door that of the cold long gallery where the agonized animals had suffered such hideous miseries. Here there were no fires: the air was deadly chill and still foul, or so it seemed to Jenkins, the electric light fell wanly on the white walls, the lofty arched roof and the cold glistening tiles of the floor.

Jones advanced. Then stopped short with an exclamation as his eye caught the long row of empty silent cages.

“What’s this? Got rid of his animals? Why that looks as if he knew he were not coming back! What do you thing of that Edward?” he addressed his companion.

“Looks like it,” he replied laconically.

“When did the doctor dispose of his animals?” asked Jones wheeling round upon Jenkins.

“He’d been using them up for some time, sir,” answered Jenkins, “and last week he said he’d finish with all he’d got and have a fresh stock in and I was to clean out all the cages and have them ready for a new lot.”

“Oh, he said that, did he?” returned Jones. “Hm--hm--hm. Well, let’s go on down to the end. See if he’s left a note or anything on the table.”

The three men filed down the cold long room to the end where behind the screen which helped to shut this part off from the corridor stood the doctor’s armchair close to the hearth. The heavy writing table was covered with papers all neatly piled and arranged. Everything was neat and in order all most carefully dusted. The large inkstand carefully polished and a tray of freshly nibbed pens awaited the doctor’s return. Evidently his servant had expected him back.

Dr. Jones looked disconsolately over the table. There was no note or letter there. The last thing apparently that the doctor had written was a chemical equation, drawn out on a half sheet of notepaper. This lay on the blotting pad, carefully preserved by the invaluable Jenkins.

Dr. Jones looked at it and then laughed. To those who know how to read the ciphers it represented a burning solution, designed to separate living flesh from living bone.

“Well nothing here, Edward, we’ll go upstairs,” and following Jenkins, upstairs they went. They tramped through the doctor’s comfortable little suite above, looking in cupboards and under the bed and finding nothing but order and extreme cleanliness everywhere.

After that Jenkins’ rooms were entered and searched but the simple furniture and narrow bed were soon looked over and under. The dog’s room, the bathroom, the landings the little coal cellar: they searched all most thoroughly expecting as it seemed to Jenkins to find the doctor’s body concealed somewhere and possibly swinging behind some door. Dr. Jones seemed to have jumped to the conclusion that it was a case of suicide.

“I can’t understand his stopping all his experiments and giving up all the animals like that,” Jenkins heard him remark to his friend. “Looks like suicide, ’pon my word it does.”

Their search yielded nothing however and at last with a curt goodnight to Jenkins they left, passing by the lethal chamber on their way out.

“Fools,” thought Jenkins as he closed the door after them.

After that there was no more tranquility at the laboratory. The bell was frequently being rung, people came to enquire, Jenkins was interviewed by various persons, asked the same questions over and over again and told the same lies in answer with commendable consistency.

The papers now had got hold of the story and devoted large spaces to the mysterious disappearance of the famous scientist. Reporters came to see Jenkins and to hear repeated the few simple sentences he could tell them. But to these reporters he added to his story accounts of the doctor’s doings and took the reporters in to see the vivisecting troughs and all the ghastly instruments of torture that are the stock in trade of the Scientific Researcher. But though they looked open eyed and open mouthed on these gruesome objects and wandered up and down the long gallery reading the incriminating labels on the empty cages never a word of any of these things appeared in their reports in the papers as Jenkins vainly hoped.

In talking to them, he naturally had to preserve the stolid indifference of manner that had been his mask so long and appear to think all this scientific atrocity in order and he could feel that even these light headed and unthinking young men shrank away from him in loathing. At such times Jenkins would feel a madness of longing to shake them by the hand and urge them to carry his message to the world but all this he crushed down. To show the least disapprobation of the doctor’s doings, to be anything but the servile laboratory attendant would attract suspicion to himself, perhaps fasten the noose round his neck. So he bore their evident contempt and disgust with himself as he had borne all the rest of his sufferings in that place without a sign and in their attitude to him he had a certain rejoicing. It gave a glimmer of hope for the future.

“Catch me giving a penny of _my_ money to Cancer Research after this,” he heard one of the men say to his companion as they went out and his heart warmed with hope.

Alas! the next morning in the very paper which had sent these two to report there was a glowing article upon the doctor’s work, his superb labours for humanity and all the rest of the unutterable twaddle with which Jenkins was by now so familiar. Days passed and still nothing was heard of the eminent scientist, the Press made all they could out of his disappearance, it was the favorite topic of the clubs and dinner parties. He had simply vanished and public interest and excitement skilfully fanned by the papers waxed and grew.

On the second Saturday after his disappearance just when Editors were thinking out a new headline, the favorite Possible Clue found to the Smith-Brown Mystery, having been rather overworked the end came abruptly.

At nine in the morning Jenkins opened the door to a small group of men led by a man in an inconspicuous uniform.

“I am a police inspector and have a warrant to search these premises.”

“Yes, sir,” returned Jenkins simply. There was nothing very new in that. “This is the doctor’s study sir,” he said, throwing open the door as he had done before for Dr. Jones.

The Inspector just glanced that way. Then he stepped up to the door on the other side of the hall.

“What’s this?”

Jenkins turned back to him.

“That’s the lethal chamber, sir.”

The Inspector put his hand on the handle, turned it and pushed the door. It resisted and as he pushed it more there was the soft heavy sound of some inert thing being moved within.

“Stand back, gentlemen, please,” he said as the little group pressed forward, and turned his electric torch into the black aperture made by the partially opened door. The white light gushed in and its broad streak fell on the large head and upturned face of the doctor. Mouth wide open as he died gasping, eyes bulging in a last grisley stare. There was a gasp of horror from the onlookers as they drew back, a sickly odour stealing out from the little room and enveloping them.

The Inspector seemed the only man unmoved. He ordered one of his men to support the door that it should not close and two others to follow him. Then he went in and the three of them brought out the doctor’s body between them into the hall and laid it down. It was horribly contorted as if the man had died writhing.

Jenkins turned away. He knew the look so well, just so all knotted with agony, had the poor little monkeys been when he drew them out from where they had huddled against the door or walls. The Inspector touched his arm.

“This must be very painful to you,” he said kindly, touched by the woebegone look of Jenkins’ gaunt wasted face.

“We do not need you for the moment. I shall have some questions to ask you presently but don’t stand here now. Go into the next room and sit down.”

“Thank you, sir,” replied Jenkins brokenly and went.

Nothing could have been better nor convinced the Inspector more completely of his entire innocence of any participation in the doctor’s death but it was not pose on Jenkin’s part. In truth, physically he felt he could not stand much more of nervous strain and mentally he felt actually crushed with grief, though it was not as the Inspector supposed for his master, but for the countless little victims that master had so wantonly destroyed.

After a time the Inspector came to him and examined him. He questioned him and cross-questioned him but Jenkins made no mistakes. His short simple sentences, his direct replies, his simple manner, even his wooden face all together produced the impression of a man, unlikely to do anything exceptional and original. He seemed to be the typical routine worker and wholly unconnected with the tragic event of his master’s death.

At the inquest a verdict of Death from Misadventure, the doctor having been overcome by the old gas fumes remaining in the unventilated chamber, was returned and Jenkins after his evidence was allowed to leave for his home, unsuspected and unopposed.

Down in his tiny cottage, one evening, before a blazing fire, where his three dogs lay extended in dozing comfort, sitting by the table with his pot of tea beside him, he was somewhat laboriously reading a dull newspaper until his eyes caught these astounding head lines:

New Crusade for the Churches. 1,000,000 pounds appeal. Science and Religion to co-operate.

Looking through the article he gathered that clergymen in all the churches were to preach to their congregations on the beauty and virtue of Scientific Research and raise a million pounds to be spent upon it. It was stated their scheme had the warm approval of the doctors. A little lower down he came on this paragraph:

“There is no more noble example of selfless service on behalf of humanity than the men and women engaged in Research work,” and a little lower down still these same men and women were described as “dedicated spirits giving themselves as instruments into the hands of God, that His Will may be done upon Earth.”

After reading this Jenkins sat back in his chair and remembered the doctor giving measles to his monkeys, filling cats with water till they burst and infecting healthy animals with cancer which never becomes human cancer and starving dogs to give them rickets.

“And the church now is going to help,” he muttered. “Good Lord and Good Lord and Good Lord--”

=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=

Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Inconsistent hyphens left as printed.