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.