Chapter 3: Hell's Laboratory

The huge room was absolutely free of all sounds from anywhere save within itself. The walls, the floors, the doors were of chrome steel. The cages were iron-ribbed and ponderous.

The long table which ran down the strange room’s center was covered with retorts, test tubes, Bunsen burners--all of the stock-in-trade of the scientist who spends most of his time at research work. The man who bent over the table was well past middle age. His hair was snow-white, but his cheeks were like rosy red apples. He literally seemed to glow with health. He was like a strange flame. His hands were slender, the fingers long and extraordinarily supple. His lips were redder even than his cheeks, and made one, strangely enough, think of vampires. His eyes were coal-black, fathomless, piercing.

On the bronze wall directly across the table from the swiftly laboring man was a porcelain tablet set into the bronze, and in the midst of the table were a score of little push-buttons. Above each was a red light; and below, a green one.

Several inches below each green light was a little slot which resembled a tiny keyhole, something like the keyhole in the average handbag. There was a key in each hole, and from each key hung a length of gleaming chain which shone like gold and might have been gold, or at least, some gold-plated metal. On the dangling end of each chain was another key which might have been the twin of the key in the hole above.

In the space between the keyholes and the green lights there were the letters and figures: A-1, B-2, C-3, D-4 ... and so on up to T-20.

Plainly it was the beginning of a complicated classification system with any number of combinations possible.

Behind the working man the row of cages partially hid the brooding horror of the place. There were twenty cages--and in each one was a sulking, red-eyed anthropoid ape. Plainly the fact that the number of apes coincided with the number of push-buttons, and with the number of keys, to say nothing of the red lights and the green lights, was no accident. The apes were sullenly silent, proof that they feared the man at the table so much that they were afraid to move.

At last the white-haired man stopped and breathed a sigh of satisfaction. Carefully he placed in the middle of the table the instrument which he had been examining. It looked like a slightly concave aluminum plate or tympanum, save that on the apex appeared a tiny ball of the same metal. Except for the color and the fact that the thing was almost flat, it looked like a small Manchu hat.

“Naka Machi!” said the man suddenly in a conversational tone of voice.

The chrome steel door swung open swiftly and silently and another man entered. He was about the same height as the first man, but he was younger and his eyes were blacker. His hair was as black as the wings of a crow. He was a Japanese dressed in Occidental garb.

“Naka Machi,” said the white-haired one again, “I have examined every bit of the infinitesimal mechanism in the ball on this tympanum. It is perfect. You are a genius, Naka Machi. There is only one genius greater--Professor Caleb Barter!”

Naka Machi bowed low, and as he spoke his breath hissed inwardly through his teeth after the Japanese manner of admitting humility--”that my humble breath may not blow upon you”--which never needed really to be sincere.

“I am merely a genius with my fingers, Professor Barter,” said Naka Machi in a musical voice. “The smaller the medium in which I work the happier I am, Professor; and in that I am a genius. But the plan for this so marvelous little radio-control, as you call it, came entirely from your head, my master. I did exactly as the plans bade me. Will it work?”

Caleb Barter’s red face went redder still. His eyes shot flames of anger. His lips pouched. Almost he seemed on the point of striking down his Japanese assistant.

“Will it work?” he repeated. “Have you not just told me that you followed my plans exactly? Have I not just now checked your every bit of work and pronounced it perfect? Then how can it fail to work? Have you another one ready?”

“Yes, my master. Now that I have perfected two, the work will become monotonous. If the master wishes, I can create still another radio-control, inside the head of a pin, which I should first render hollow with that skill which only Naka Machi possesses?”

Caleb Barter almost smiled.

“It will not be necessary. But it will be necessary for you to make eighteen additional radio-controls of the same size as this one, or say make twenty-four so that we shall have some extra ones in case of accident. These two will be put into action at once. Naka Machi, bring me Lecky, completely uniformed as a smart chauffeur! Have you laid in a store of clothing, as I bade you, to fit every conceivable need of Lecky, Stanley, Morton and Cleve?”

“Yes, my master.”

“Then bring in Lecky accoutered as a chauffeur.”

Ten minutes later a young man entered behind Naka Machi. He was slender and his chauffeur’s uniform fitted him like a glove. He looked like a soldier in it. Indeed his bearing, his whole stance, spoke of many years as a soldier--and a proud one. The fellow was brimful of health. His cheeks were rosy with vitality. He looked like a man with health so abundant he never found means to tire himself to the point where he could sleep dreamlessly.

But, nevertheless his arms hung listlessly at his sides. His eyes seemed empty of hope, dull and lifeless, and one looked into those eyes and shuddered. One tried to gaze deeply into them and found oneself baffled. There was no soul behind them.