The_island_of_Dr._Moreau/chapters/Locked Door.tex

The reader will perhaps understand that at first everything was so
strange about me, and my position was the outcome of such unexpected
adventures, that I had no discernment of the relative strangeness of
this or that thing. I followed the llama up the beach, and was
overtaken by Montgomery, who asked me not to enter the stone enclosure.
I noticed then that the puma in its cage and the pile of packages had
been placed outside the entrance to this quadrangle.

I turned and saw that the launch had now been unloaded, run out again,
and was being beached, and the white-haired man was walking towards us.
He addressed Montgomery.

“And now comes the problem of this uninvited guest. What are we to do
with him?”

“He knows something of science,” said Montgomery.

“I’m itching to get to work again—with this new stuff,” said the
white-haired man, nodding towards the enclosure. His eyes grew
brighter.

“I daresay you are,” said Montgomery, in anything but a cordial tone.

“We can’t send him over there, and we can’t spare the time to build him
a new shanty; and we certainly can’t take him into our confidence just
yet.”

“I’m in your hands,” said I. I had no idea of what he meant by “over
there.”

“I’ve been thinking of the same things,” Montgomery answered. “There’s
my room with the outer door—”

“That’s it,” said the elder man, promptly, looking at Montgomery; and
all three of us went towards the enclosure. “I’m sorry to make a
mystery, Mr. Prendick; but you’ll remember you’re uninvited. Our little
establishment here contains a secret or so, is a kind of Blue-Beard’s
chamber, in fact. Nothing very dreadful, really, to a sane man; but
just now, as we don’t know you—”

“Decidedly,” said I, “I should be a fool to take offence at any want of
confidence.”

He twisted his heavy mouth into a faint smile—he was one of those
saturnine people who smile with the corners of the mouth down,—and
bowed his acknowledgment of my complaisance. The main entrance to the
enclosure was passed; it was a heavy wooden gate, framed in iron and
locked, with the cargo of the launch piled outside it, and at the
corner we came to a small doorway I had not previously observed. The
white-haired man produced a bundle of keys from the pocket of his
greasy blue jacket, opened this door, and entered. His keys, and the
elaborate locking-up of the place even while it was still under his
eye, struck me as peculiar. I followed him, and found myself in a small
apartment, plainly but not uncomfortably furnished and with its inner
door, which was slightly ajar, opening into a paved courtyard. This
inner door Montgomery at once closed. A hammock was slung across the
darker corner of the room, and a small unglazed window defended by an
iron bar looked out towards the sea.

This the white-haired man told me was to be my apartment; and the inner
door, which “for fear of accidents,” he said, he would lock on the
other side, was my limit inward. He called my attention to a convenient
deck-chair before the window, and to an array of old books, chiefly, I
found, surgical works and editions of the Latin and Greek classics
(languages I cannot read with any comfort), on a shelf near the
hammock. He left the room by the outer door, as if to avoid opening the
inner one again.

“We usually have our meals in here,” said Montgomery, and then, as if
in doubt, went out after the other. “Moreau!” I heard him call, and for
the moment I do not think I noticed. Then as I handled the books on the
shelf it came up in consciousness: Where had I heard the name of Moreau
before? I sat down before the window, took out the biscuits that still
remained to me, and ate them with an excellent appetite. Moreau!

Through the window I saw one of those unaccountable men in white,
lugging a packing-case along the beach. Presently the window-frame hid
him. Then I heard a key inserted and turned in the lock behind me.
After a little while I heard through the locked door the noise of the
staghounds, that had now been brought up from the beach. They were not
barking, but sniffing and growling in a curious fashion. I could hear
the rapid patter of their feet, and Montgomery’s voice soothing them.

I was very much impressed by the elaborate secrecy of these two men
regarding the contents of the place, and for some time I was thinking
of that and of the unaccountable familiarity of the name of Moreau; but
so odd is the human memory that I could not then recall that well-known
name in its proper connection. From that my thoughts went to the
indefinable queerness of the deformed man on the beach. I never saw
such a gait, such odd motions as he pulled at the box. I recalled that
none of these men had spoken to me, though most of them I had found
looking at me at one time or another in a peculiarly furtive manner,
quite unlike the frank stare of your unsophisticated savage. Indeed,
they had all seemed remarkably taciturn, and when they did speak,
endowed with very uncanny voices. What was wrong with them? Then I
recalled the eyes of Montgomery’s ungainly attendant.

Just as I was thinking of him he came in. He was now dressed in white,
and carried a little tray with some coffee and boiled vegetables
thereon. I could hardly repress a shuddering recoil as he came, bending
amiably, and placed the tray before me on the table. Then astonishment
paralysed me. Under his stringy black locks I saw his ear; it jumped
upon me suddenly close to my face. The man had pointed ears, covered
with a fine brown fur!

“Your breakfast, sair,” he said.

I stared at his face without attempting to answer him. He turned and
went towards the door, regarding me oddly over his shoulder. I followed
him out with my eyes; and as I did so, by some odd trick of unconscious
cerebration, there came surging into my head the phrase, “The Moreau
Hollows”—was it? “The Moreau—” Ah! It sent my memory back ten years.
“The Moreau Horrors!” The phrase drifted loose in my mind for a moment,
and then I saw it in red lettering on a little buff-coloured pamphlet,
to read which made one shiver and creep. Then I remembered distinctly
all about it. That long-forgotten pamphlet came back with startling
vividness to my mind. I had been a mere lad then, and Moreau was, I
suppose, about fifty,—a prominent and masterful physiologist,
well-known in scientific circles for his extraordinary imagination and
his brutal directness in discussion.

Was this the same Moreau? He had published some very astonishing facts
in connection with the transfusion of blood, and in addition was known
to be doing valuable work on morbid growths. Then suddenly his career
was closed. He had to leave England. A journalist obtained access to
his laboratory in the capacity of laboratory-assistant, with the
deliberate intention of making sensational exposures; and by the help
of a shocking accident (if it was an accident), his gruesome pamphlet
became notorious. On the day of its publication a wretched dog, flayed
and otherwise mutilated, escaped from Moreau’s house. It was in the
silly season, and a prominent editor, a cousin of the temporary
laboratory-assistant, appealed to the conscience of the nation. It was
not the first time that conscience has turned against the methods of
research. The doctor was simply howled out of the country. It may be
that he deserved to be; but I still think that the tepid support of his
fellow-investigators and his desertion by the great body of scientific
workers was a shameful thing. Yet some of his experiments, by the
journalist’s account, were wantonly cruel. He might perhaps have
purchased his social peace by abandoning his investigations; but he
apparently preferred the latter, as most men would who have once fallen
under the overmastering spell of research. He was unmarried, and had
indeed nothing but his own interest to consider.

I felt convinced that this must be the same man. Everything pointed to
it. It dawned upon me to what end the puma and the other animals—which
had now been brought with other luggage into the enclosure behind the
house—were destined; and a curious faint odour, the halitus of
something familiar, an odour that had been in the background of my
consciousness hitherto, suddenly came forward into the forefront of my
thoughts. It was the antiseptic odour of the dissecting-room. I heard
the puma growling through the wall, and one of the dogs yelped as
though it had been struck.

Yet surely, and especially to another scientific man, there was nothing
so horrible in vivisection as to account for this secrecy; and by some
odd leap in my thoughts the pointed ears and luminous eyes of
Montgomery’s attendant came back again before me with the sharpest
definition. I stared before me out at the green sea, frothing under a
freshening breeze, and let these and other strange memories of the last
few days chase one another through my mind.

What could it all mean? A locked enclosure on a lonely island, a
notorious vivisector, and these crippled and distorted men?