Dr. Kreener's Last Experiment

by Sax Rohmer

Dr. Kreener’s

Last Experiment

Author of “The Daughter of Huang Chow,” “The ‘Fu Manchu’ Stories,’ etc.

by Sax Rohmer

 

EXAMINE it closely,” said the man in the unusual caped overcoat. “It will repay examination.”

I held the little object in the palm of my hand, and, having stared for some moments, I touched it gingerly; whereupon my acquaintance laughed a short bass laugh.

“It looks fragile,” he said. “But have no fear. It is nearly as hard as a diamond.”

Thus encouraged, I took the thing up between finger and thumb and held it before my eyes. For a long time I looked at it, and, looking, my wonder grew. I thought that here was the most wonderful example of the lapidary’s art which I had ever met with, East or West.

It was a tiny pink rose, no larger than the nail of my little finger. Stalk and leaves were there, and golden pollen lay in its delicate heart. Each fairy petal blushed with June fire; the frail leaves were exquisitely green. Withal it was hard and unbendable as a thing of steel.

“Allow me,” said the masterful voice, passing a powerful lens to me. I regarded the rose through the glass, and thereupon I knew, beyond doubt, that there was something phenomenal about the gem—if gem it were. I could plainly trace the veins and texture of every petal.

I suppose I looked somewhat startled. Baldly stated, the fact may not seem calculated to inspire fear, but, in reality, there was something so weird about this unnatural bloom that I dropped it on the table. As I did so, I uttered an exclamation; for, in spite of the stranger’s assurances on the point, I had not overcome my feeling of the thing’s fragility.

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said, meeting my startled gaze. “It would need a steam hammer to do it any damage.”

He replaced the jewel in his pocket, and, when I returned the lens to him, he acknowledged it with a grave inclination of the head. As I looked into his sunken eyes, in which I thought there lay a certain sardonic merriment, the fantastic idea flashed through my mind that I had fallen into the clutches of an expert hypnotist, who was amusing himself at my expense; that the miniature rose was a mere hallucination, produced by the same means as the notorious Indian rope trick.

Then, looking around me at the cosmopolitan groups surrounding the many tables and catching snatches of conversations dealing with subjects so diverse as politics, painting, and the Russian ballet, common sense reasserted itself.

I looked into the gray face of my acquaintance. “I cannot believe,” I said slowly, “that human ingenuity could so closely duplicate the handiwork of nature. Surely the gem is unique—possibly one of those magical talismans of which we read in Eastern stories?”

My companion smiled. “It is not a gem,” he replied. “And, while in a sense it is a product of human ingenuity, it is also the handiwork of nature.”

I was badly puzzled, and doubtless I revealed the fact, for the stranger laughed in his short fashion.

“I am not trying to mystify you,” he assured me. “But the truth is so hard to believe sometimes that in the present case I hesitate to divulge it. Did you ever meet Tchériapin?”

This abrupt change of topic somewhat startled me, but, nevertheless, I replied: ‘I once heard him play. Why do you ask the question?”

“For this reason: Tchériapin possessed the only other example of this art which, so far as I am aware, ever left the possession of the inventor. He occasionally wore it in his buttonhole.”

“It is, then, a manufactured product of some sort?”

“As I have said, in a sense it is, But”—he drew the tiny exquisite ornament from his pocket again and held it up before me—“it is a natural bloom.”

“What?”

“It is a natural bloom,” replied my acquaintance, fixing his penetrating gaze upon me. “By a perfectly simple process, invented by the cleverest chemist of his age, it has been reduced to this gemlike state, while retaining unimpaired every one of its natural beauties, every shade of its natural color. You are incredulous?”

“On the contrary,” I replied, “having examined it through a magnifying glass, I had already assured myself that no human hand had fashioned it. You arouse my curiosity intensely. Such a process, with its endless possibilities, should be worth a fortune to the inventor.”

The stranger nodded grimly and again concealed the rose in his pocket.

“You are right,” he said. “The secret died with the man who discovered it, in the great munition factory explosion in 1917. You recall it? It shook all London, and fragments were cast into three counties.”

“I recall it perfectly well.”

“You remember also the death of Doctor Kreener, the chief chemist? He died in an endeavor to save some of the working people.”

“I remember.”

“He was the inventor of the process, but it was never put upon the market. He was a singular man, sir; as was once said of him, ‘A Don Juan of science.’ Dame Nature gave him her heart unwooed. He trifled with science, as some men trifle with love, tossing aside with a smile discoveries which would have made other men famous. This”—tapping his breast pocket—“was one of them.”

“You astound me. Do I understand you to mean that Doctor Kreener had invented a process of reducing any form of plant life to this condition?”

“Almost any form,” was the guarded reply. “And some forms of animal life, too.”

“What!”

“If you like”—the stranger leaned forward and grasped my arm—“I will tell you the story of Doctor Kreener’s last experiment.”

II.

Here is the stranger’s story:

I asked you, if you had ever seen Tchériapin, and you replied that you had once heard him play. Having once heard him play you will not have forgotten him.

He had something of the personality of Paganini, as you remember, except that he was a smaller man; long, gaunt white hands and the face of a haggard Mephistopheles. The critics quarreled about him, as critics only quarrel about real genius, and, while one school proclaimed that he had discovered an entirely new technique, a revolutionary system of violin playing, another school was equally positive in declaring that he could not play at all, that he was a mountebank, a trickster, whose proper place was in a variety theater.

There were stories, too, that were never published, stories not only about him, but also concerning the Stradivarius upon which he played.

As you have heard him play it is therefore unnecessary for me to attempt to describe the effect of that music. The only composition which ever bore his name—I refer to “The Black Mass”—affected me on every occasion when I heard it, as no other composition has ever done.

Perhaps it was his playing, rather than the music itself, which reached down into hitherto unplumbed depths within me and awakened dark things, which, unsuspected, lay there sleeping. I never heard “The Black Mass” played by any one else; indeed I am not aware that it was ever published. But had it been, we should rarely hear it. Like Locke’s music to “Macbeth” it bears an unpleasant reputation; to include it in any concert program would be to court disaster. An idle superstition, perhaps, but there is much naiveté in the artistic temperament.

Men detested Tchériapin, yet when he chose he could win over his bitterest enemies. Women followed him, as children followed the Pied Piper; he courted none, but was courted by all. He would glance aside with those black eyes, shrug in his insolent fashion and turn away. And they would follow. Heaven knows how many followed. So much for Tchériapin.

At the time of the episode to which I refer, Doctor Kreener occupied a house in Regent’s Park. He was a favorite with the painters, sculptors, poets, and social reformers who have made of Soho a new Mecca. No movement in art was so modern that Doctor Kreener was not conversant with it; no political development so violent or so secret that Doctor Kreener could not speak of it complacently and with inside knowledge.

The favorite meeting place for these oddly assorted boon companions of his was the doctor’s laboratory in Regent's Park. Here on a Sunday evening one might meet the very “latest” composer, the sculptor bringing a new “message,” or the man destined to supplant with the ballet the time-worn operatic tradition.

But, while some of these would come and go, so that one could never count with certainty upon meeting them, there was one who never failed to be present when~such an informal reception was held.

Andrews was the name by which he was known to the circles in which he moved. No one, from Sir John Tennier, the fashionable portrait painter, to Kruski, of the Russian ballet, disputed Andrews’ right to be counted one of the elect. He was a great, red-bearded, unkempt Scotsman, and only once can I remember to have seen him strictly sober; but to hear him talk about painters and painting, in his thick Caledonian accent, was to look into the soul of an artist.

He was as sour as an unripe grapefruit, cynical, embittered, a man savagely disappointed with life and the world; and tragedy was written all over him. If any one knew the secret of his wasted life it was Doctor Kreener, and Doctor Kreener was a reliquary of so many secrets that this one was as safe as if the grave had swallowed it.

One Sunday Tchériapin joined the party. That he would gravitate there, sooner or later, was inevitable.

From the first moment of their meeting an intense antagonism sprang up between Tchériapin and Andrews. Neither troubled very much to veil it. In Tchériapin it found expression in covert sneers and sidelong glances, while the big, lion-maned Scotsman snorted open contempt of the violinist.

Tchériapin became a regular visitor to Doctor Kreener’s laboratory. The doctor prevailed upon Andrews to tolerate him, but I could not help noticing how Tchériapin skillfully and deliberately goaded the Scotsman, seeming to take a fiendish delight in disagreeing with his pet theories and in discussing any topic which he had found to be distasteful to Andrews.

Chief among these was that sort of irreverent criticism of women, in which male parties so often indulge. Bitter cynic though he was, women were sacred to Andrews. To speak disrespectfully of a woman in his presence was like uttering blasphemy in the study of a cardinal. Tchériapin very quickly detected the Scotsman’s weakness, and one night he launched out into a series of amorous adventures, which set Andrews writhing.

On this occasion the party was a small one, comprising myself, Doctor Kreener, Andrews, and Tchériapin. I could feel the storm brewing, but was powerless to check it. How presently it was to break in tragic violence I could not foresee. Fate had not meant that I should foresee.

Allowing for the free play of an extravagant artistic mind, Tchériapin’s career, on his own showing, had been that of a callous blackguard. I began by being disgusted and ended by being fascinated, not by the man’s scandalous adventures, but by the scarcely human psychology of the narrator.

He related how he had passed from Warsaw to Budapest, Budapest to Paris, and Paris to London, leaving ruin behind him with a smile—airily flicking cigarette ash upon the floor to indicate the termination of each “episode.”

Andrews watched him in a lowering way, which I did not like at all. He had ceased to snort his scorn: indeed for ten minutes or so he had uttered no word or sound; but there was something in the pose of his ungainly body which strangely suggested that of a great dog preparing to spring. Presently the violinist recalled what he termed a “charming idyl of Normandy.”

“There is one poor fool in the world,” he said, shrugging his slight shoulders, “who never knew how badly he should hate me. Ha, ha! Of him I shall tell you. Do you remember, my friends, some few years ago, a picture called ‘A Dream of Dawn?’ It was published in Paris and London, and everybody bought it; everybody said: ‘He is a made man, this fellow who can paint so fine.’”

Tchériapin hesitated for a moment and then continued:

“It is the figure of a slender girl—ah, angels of grace, what a girl!” He kissed his hand rapturously. “She is posed bending gracefully forward and looking down at her own lovely reflection in the water. It is the seashore, you remember, and the little ripples play about her ankles. The first blush of the dawn robes her white body in a transparent mantle of light. Ah, it was as she stood so, in a little cove of Normandy, that I saw her!”

He paused again, rolling his dark eyes; and I could hear Andrews’ heavy breathing. Then he went on:

“It was the ‘new art’—the posing of the model, not in a lighted studio, but in the scene to be depicted. And the fellow who painted her—the man with the barbarous name, bah, he was big—as big as our Mr. Andrews—and ugly—pooh, uglier than he! A moon face, with cropped skull like a prize fighter, and no soul. But, yes, he could paint. ‘A Dream of Dawn’ was genius—yes, some soul he must have had.

“He could paint, dear friends, but he could not love. Him I counted as—puff!”

He blew imaginary down into space.

“Her I sought out and presently found. She told me, in those sweet stolen rambles along the shore, when the moonlight made her look like a Madonna, that she was his inspiration, his art, his life. And she wept—she wept, and I kissed her tears away.

“To please her I waited until ‘A Dream of Dawn’ was finished. With the finish of the picture, finished also his dream of dawn!”

Tchériapin laughed and lighted a fresh cigarette.

“Can you believe that a man could he so stupid? He never knew of my existence, this big, red booby. He never knew that I existed until—until his ‘dream’ had fled with me! In a week we were in Paris, that dream girl and I—in a month we had quarreled. I always end these matters with a quarrel; it makes the complete finish. She struck me in the face, and I laughed. She turned and went away. We were tired of one another.

“Ah!” Again he airily kissed his hand. “There were others after I had gone. I heard for a time. But her memory is like a rose, fresh and fair and sweet. I am glad I can remember her so, and not as she afterward became. That is the art of love. She killed herself with absinthe, my friends. She died in Marseilles.”

Thus far Tchériapin had proceeded, and he was in the act of again airily flicking ash upon the floor, when, uttering a sound which I can only describe as a roar, Andrews hurled himself upon the smiling violinist.

His great hands clutched Tchériapin’s throat; the insane Scotsman, for insane he was at that moment, forced the other back upon the settee from which he had half arisen. In vain I sought to drag him away from the writhing body, but I doubt if any man could have relaxed that deadly grip. Tchériapin’s eyes protruded hideously, and his tongue lolled forth from his mouth. One could hear the breath whistling through his nostrils, as Andrews silently, deliberately, squeezed the life out of him.

It all occupied only a few minutes, and then Andrews, slowly opening his rigidly crooked fingers, stood panting and looking down at the distorted face of the dead man.

For once in his life the Scotsman was sober, and, turning to Doctor Kreener, he said: “I have waited seven long years for this, and I'll hang wi’ contentment.”

I can never forget the ensuing moments, in which, amid a horrible silence, only broken by the ticking of a clock and the heavy breathing of Colquhoun, the long-forgotten creator of “A Dream of Dawn”—so long known to us as Andrews—we stood watching the contorted body on the settee.

And, as we watched, slowly the rigid limbs began to relax, and Tchériapin slid gently down on to the floor, collapsing there with a soft thud, where he squatted like some hideous Buddha, resting back against the cushions, one spectral white hand raised above his head, the fingers still clutching a big gold tassel.

Andrews, for so I always think of him, was the first to break the silence that ensued.

“Send for the police,” he said in a queer shaky voice. “Dinna fear but I’m ready. I’m only sorry it happened here.”

“You ought to be glad,” said Doctor Kreener.

There was a covert meaning in the words, a fact which penetrated even to the dulled intelligence of the Scotsman, for he glanced up haggardly at his friend.

“You ought to be glad,” repeated Doctor Kreener.

Turning, he walked to the laboratory door and locked it. He next lowered all the blinds.

“I pray that we have not been observed,” he said, “but we must chance it.”

He mixed a drink for Andrews and himself. His quiet, decisive manner had had its effect, and Andrews was now more composed. Indeed he seemed to be in a half-dazed condition, but he persistently kept his back turned to the crouching figure propped up against the settee.

“If you think you can follow me,” said Doctor Kreener abruptly, “I will show you the result of a recent experiment.”

Unlocking a cupboard he took out a tiny figure, some two inches long by one inch high, mounted upon a polished wooden pedestal. It was that of a guinea pig. The flaky fur gleamed like the finest silk, and one felt that the coat of the minute creature would be as floss to the touch; whereas, in reality, it possessed the rigidity of steel. Literally one could have done it little damage with a hammer. Its weight was extraordinary.

“I am learning new things about this process every day,” continued Doctor Kreener, placing the little figure upon a table. “For instance, while it seems to operate uniformly upon vegetable matter, there are curious modifications when one applies it to animal and mineral substances. I have now definitely decided that the result of this particular inquiry must never be published. You, Colquhoun, I believe, possess an example of the process, a tiger lily, I think? I must ask you to return it to me. Our late friend, Tchériapin, wears a pink rose in his coat, which I had treated in the same way. I am going to take the liberty of removing it.”

He spoke in the hard, incisive manner, which I had heard him use in the lecture theater, and it was evident enough that his design was to prepare Andrews for something which he contemplated. Facing the Scotsman, where he sat hunched up in the big armchair, dully watching the speaker, Doctor Kreener said:

“There is one experiment which I have never before had a suitable opportunity of attempting. Of its result I am personally confident, but science always demands proof.”

His voice rang now with a note of repressed excitement, as he paused for a moment. “If you were to examine this little specimen very closely,” he said, and rested his finger upon the tiny figure of the guinea pig, “you would find that in one particular it is imperfect. Although a diamond drill would have to be employed to demonstrate the fact, the animal’s organs, although they have undergone a chemical change quite, new to science, are intact, perfect down to the smallest detail. One part of the creature’s structure alone defied my process. In short, dental enamel is impervious to it. This little animal, otherwise as complete as when it lived and breathed, has no teeth. I found it necessary to extract them before submitting the body to the reductionary process.”

He paused. “Shall I go on?” he asked.

Andrews, to whose mind, I think, no conception of the doctor’s project had yet penetrated, shuddered, but slowly nodded his head.

Doctor Kreener glanced across the laboratory at the crouching figure of Tchériapin, then, resting his hands upon Andrews’ shoulders, he pushed him back in the chair and stared into his dull eyes.

“Brace yourself, Colquhoun,” he said tersely.

Turning, he crossed to a small mahogany cabinet at the farther end of the room. Pulling out a glass tray he judically selected a pair of dental forceps.

III.

Thus far the stranger’s appalling story had progressed when that singular cloak, in which, hypnotically, he had enwrapped me, seemed to drop, and I found myself clutching the edge of the marble table and staring into the gray face of the speaker.

I became suddenly aware of the babel of voices about me, of the greasy smell of the Café Regus, and of the presence of a waiter who was inquiring if there were any further orders, as closing time drew near. I was conscious of nausea.

“Excuse me,” I said, rising unsteadily, “but I fear the oppressive atmosphere is affecting me.”

“If you prefer to go out,” said my acquaintance, in that deep voice which, throughout the dreadful story, had rendered me oblivious of my surroundings, “I should be much favored if you would accompany me to a spot not five hundred yards from here.”

Seeing me hesitate, he added: “I have a particular reason for asking.”

“Very well,” I replied, inclining my head, “if you wish it. But certainly I must seek the fresh air.”

Going out through the swing doors and passing the bookstall, with its array of papers and journals, we came to the street, turned to the left, to the left again, and soon we were threading the mazes of Soho.

I felt somewhat recovered. Here in the busy highways the spell of my singular acquaintance lost much of its potency, and already I found myself doubting the story of Doctor Kreener and Tchériapin. Indeed I began to laugh at myself, conceiving that I had fallen into the hands of some comedian who was making sport of me.

I was about to give expression to these new and saner ideas when my companion paused before a door half hidden in a little alley, which divided the back of an Italian restaurant from the tawdry-looking establishment of a cigar merchant. He apparently held the key, for, although I did not actually hear the turning of the lock, I saw that he had opened the door.

“May I request you to follow me?” His deep voice reached me out of the darkness. “I will show you something which will repay your trouble.”

Again the cloak touched me, but it was without entirely resigning myself to the compelling influence that I followed my mysterious acquaintance up an uncarpeted and nearly dark stair. On the landing above a gas lamp was burning, and, opening a door immediately facing the stair, the stranger conducted me into a barely furnished and untidy room.

The atmosphere smelled like that of a barroom, the odors of stale spirits and of tobacco mingling unpleasantly. As my guide removed his hat and stood there, a square, gaunt figure in his queer, caped overcoat, I secured for the first time a view of his face in profile; and there was something startlingly unfamiliar about it. Seen thus, my acquaintance was another man. I realized that there was something unnatural about the long, white hair, the gray face; that the sharp outline of brow, nose, and chin was that of a much younger man than I had supposed him to be.

All this came to me in a momentary flash of perception, for immediately my attention was riveted upon a figure hunched up on a delapidated sofa on the opposite side of the room. It was that of a big man, bearded and very heavily built, but his face was scarred by years of suffering, and his eyes confirmed the story indicated by the smell of stale spirits, with which the air of the room was laden. A half empty bottle stood on a table at his elbow, a glass beside it, and a pipe lay in a saucer full of ashes near the glass.

As we entered, the glazed eyes of the man opened widely, and he clutched at the table with big red hands, leaning forward and staring horribly.

Saving this derelict figure and some few dirty utensils and scattered garments, which indicated that the apartment was used both as sleeping and living room, there was so little of interest in the place that automatically my wandering gaze strayed from the figure on the sofa to a large oil painting, unframed, which rested upon the mantelpiece above the dirty grate, in which the fire had become extinguished.

I uttered a stifled exclamation. It was “A Dream of Dawn,” evidently the original painting!

On the left of it, from a nail in the wall, hung a violin and bow, and on the right stood a sort of cylindrical glass case or closed jar, upon a wooden base.

From the moment that I perceived the contents of this glass case a sense of fantasy claimed me, and I ceased to know where reality ended and mirage began.

It contained a tiny and perfect figure of a man. He was arrayed in a perfect-fitting dress suit, such as a doll might have worn, and he was posed as if in the act of playing a violin, although no violin was present. At the elfin black hair and Mephistophelian face of this horrible, wonderful image I stared fascinatedly.

I looked and looked at the dwarfed figure of—Tchériapin!

All these impressions came to me in the space of a few hectic moments, when in upon my mental tumult intruded a husky whisper from the man on the sofa.

“Kreener!” he said. “Kreener!”

At the sound of that name, and because of the way in which it was pronounced, I felt my veins were freezing. The speaker was staring straight at my companion.

I clutched at the open door. I felt that there was still some crowning horror to come. I wanted to escape from that reeking room, but my muscles refused to obey me, and there I stood.

“Kreener!” repeated the husky voice, and I saw that the speaker was rising unsteadily to his feet. “You have brought him again! Why have you brought him again? He will play—he will play me a step nearer to hell.”

“Brace yourself, Colquhoun,” said the voice of my companion. “Brace yourself.”

“Take him awa’!” came in a sudden frenzied shriek. “Take him awa’! He’s there at your elbow, Kreener, mockin’ me and pointing to that cursed violin.”

“Here!” said the stranger, a high note of command in his voice. “Drop that! Sit down at once.”

Even as the other obeyed him, the cloaked stranger, stepping to the mantelpiece, opened a small box which lay there beside the glass case. He turned to me, and I tried to shrink away from him. For I knew—I knew—yet I loathed to look upon—what was in the box. Muffled, as though reaching me through fog, I heard the words:

“A perfect human body in miniature. Every organ intact, by means of a process rendered indestructible. Tchériapin, as he was in life, may be seen by the curious ten thousand years hence. Incomplete—in one respect—here in this box.”

The spell was broken by a horrifying shriek from the man whom my companion had addressed as Colquhoun, and whom I could only suppose to be the painter of the celebrated picture which rested upon the mantel.

“Take him awa’, Kreener! He is reaching for the violin!”

Animation returned to me, and I fell, rather than ran, down the darkened stair. How I opened the street door I know not, but, even as I stepped out into the homeliness of Soho, the cloaked figure was beside me, and a hand was laid upon my shoulder.

“Listen!” commanded a deep voice.

 

My next impression was of a dull murmur. I opened my eyes and struggled to sit upright. I was in the manager’s office of the Café Regus!

The headwaiter and the manager himself were bending over me solicitously. The headwaiter held a glass of water in his hand.

“What has happened?” I asked weakly. “Was I brought in here from the street?”

“No, no, m’sieur. The heat was very great to-night in the café. It was the heat, m’sieur.”

“But,” I protested, struggling to regain control of myself, “I went out.”

“M’sieur cannot have gone out.”

“But I did go out!” I persisted, “with the man to whom I was talking.”

“I do not recollect,” declared the headwaiter, “that m’sieur was talking to any one this evening.”