THE SEX CONTROL
I did not see Kennedy again that day until late in the afternoon, when
he came into the laboratory carrying a small package.
“Theory is one thing, practice is another,” he remarked, as he threw
his hat and coat into a chair.
“Which means—in this case?” I prompted.
“Why, I have just seen Atherton. Of course I didn’t repeat our
conversation of this morning, and I’m glad I didn’t. He almost makes me
think you are right, Walter. He’s obsessed by the fear of Burroughs.
Why, he even told me that Burroughs had gone so far as to take a leaf
out of his book, so to speak, get in touch with the Eugenics Bureau as
if to follow his footsteps, but really to pump them about Atherton
himself. Atherton says it’s all Burroughs’ plan to break his will and
that the fellow has even gone so far as to cultivate the acquaintance
of Maude Schofield, knowing that he will get no sympathy from Crafts.”
“First it was Edith Atherton, now it is Maude Schofield that he hitches
up with Burroughs,” I commented. “Seems to me that I have heard that
one of the first signs of insanity is belief that everyone about the
victim is conspiring against him. I haven’t any love for any of
them—but I must be fair.”
“Well,” said Kennedy, unwrapping the package, “there _is_ this much to
it. Atherton says Burroughs and Maude Schofield have been seen together
more than once—and not at intellectual gatherings either. Burroughs is
a fascinating fellow to a woman, if he wants to be, and the Schofields
are at least the social equals of the Burroughs. Besides,” he added,
“in spite of eugenics, feminism, and all the rest—sex, like murder,
will out. There’s no use having any false ideas about _that_. Atherton
may see red—but, then, he was quite excited.”
“Over what?” I asked, perplexed more than ever at the turn of events.
“He called me up in the first place. ‘Can’t you do something?’ he
implored. ‘Eugenia is getting worse all the time.’ She is, too. I saw
her for a moment, and she was even more vacant than yesterday.”
The thought of the poor girl in the big house somehow brought over me
again my first impression of Poe’s story.
Kennedy had unwrapped the package which proved to be the instrument he
had left in the closet at Atherton’s. It was, as I had observed, like
an ordinary wax cylinder phonograph record.
“You see,” explained Kennedy, “it is nothing more than a successful
application at last of, say, one of those phonographs you have seen in
offices for taking dictation, placed so that the feebler vibrations of
the telephone affect it. Let us see what we have here.”
He had attached the cylinder to an ordinary phonograph, and after a
number of routine calls had been run off, he came to this, in voices
which we could only guess at but not recognize, for no names were used.
“How is she to-day?”
“Not much changed—perhaps not so well.”
“It’s all right, though. That is natural. It is working well. I think
you might increase the dose, one tablet.”
“You’re sure it is all right?” (with anxiety).
“Oh, positively—it has been done in Europe.”
“I hope so. It must be a boy—and an _Atherton_.”
“Never fear.”
That was all. Who was it? The voices were unfamiliar to me, especially
when repeated mechanically. Besides they may have been disguised. At
any rate we had learned something. Some one was trying to control the
sex of the expected Atherton heir. But that was about all. Who it was,
we knew no better, apparently, than before.
Kennedy did not seem to care much, however. Quickly he got Quincy
Atherton on the wire and arranged for Atherton to have Dr. Crafts meet
us at the house at eight o’clock that night, with Maude Schofield. Then
he asked that Burroughs Atherton be there, and of course, Edith and
Eugenia.
We arrived almost as the clock was striking, Kennedy carrying the
phonograph record and another blank record, and a boy tugging along the
machine itself. Dr. Crafts was the next to appear, expressing surprise
at meeting us, and I thought a bit annoyed, for he mentioned that it
had been with reluctance that he had had to give up some work he had
planned for the evening. Maude Schofield, who came with him, looked
bored. Knowing that she disapproved of the match with Eugenia, I was
not surprised. Burroughs arrived, not as late as I had expected, but
almost insultingly supercilious at finding so many strangers at what
Atherton had told him was to be a family conference, in order to get
him to come. Last of all Edith Atherton descended the staircase, the
personification of dignity, bowing to each with a studied graciousness,
as if distributing largess, but greeting Burroughs with an air that
plainly showed how much thicker was blood than water. Eugenia remained
upstairs, lethargic, almost cataleptic, as Atherton told us when we
arrived.
“I trust you are not going to keep us long, Quincy,” yawned Burroughs,
looking ostentatiously at his watch.
“Only long enough for Professor Kennedy to say a few words about
Eugenia,” replied Atherton nervously, bowing to Kennedy.
Kennedy cleared his throat slowly.
“I don’t know that I have much to say,” began Kennedy, still seated. “I
suppose Mr. Atherton has told you I have been much interested in the
peculiar state of health of Mrs. Atherton?”
No one spoke, and he went on easily: “There is something I might say,
however, about the—er—what I call the chemistry of insanity. Among the
present wonders of science, as you doubtless know, none stirs the
imagination so powerfully as the doctrine that at least some forms of
insanity are the result of chemical changes in the blood. For instance,
ill temper, intoxication, many things are due to chemical changes in
the blood acting on the brain.
“Go further back. Take typhoid fever with its delirium, influenza with
its suicide mania. All due to toxins—poisons. Chemistry—chemistry—all
of them chemistry.”
Craig had begun carefully so as to win their attention. He had it as he
went on: “Do we not brew within ourselves poisons which enter the
circulation and pervade the system? A sudden emotion upsets the
chemistry of the body. Or poisonous food. Or a drug. It affects many
things. But we could never have had this chemical theory unless we had
had physiological chemistry—and some carry it so far as to say that the
brain secretes thought, just as the liver secretes bile, that thoughts
are the results of molecular changes.”
“You are, then, a materialist of the most pronounced type,” asserted
Dr. Crafts.
Kennedy had been reaching over to a table, toying with the phonograph.
As Crafts spoke he moved a key, and I suspected that it was in order to
catch the words.
“Not entirely,” he said. “No more than some eugenists.”
“In our field,” put in Maude Schofield, “I might express the thought
this way—the sociologist has had his day; now it is the biologist, the
eugenist.”
“That expresses it,” commented Kennedy, still tinkering with the
record. “Yet it does not mean that because we have new ideas, they
abolish the old. Often they only explain, amplify, supplement. For
instance,” he said, looking up at Edith Atherton, “take heredity. Our
knowledge seems new, but is it? Marriages have always been dictated by
a sort of eugenics. Society is founded on that.”
“Precisely,” she answered. “The best families have always married into
the best families. These modern notions simply recognize what the best
people have always thought—except that it seems to me,” she added with
a sarcastic flourish, “people of no ancestry are trying to force
themselves in among their betters.”
“Very true, Edith,” drawled Burroughs, “but we did not have to be
brought here by Quincy to learn that.”
Quincy Atherton had risen during the discussion and had approached
Kennedy. Craig continued to finger the phonograph abstractedly, as he
looked up.
“About this—this insanity theory,” he whispered eagerly. “You think
that the suspicions I had have been justified?”
I had been watching Kennedy’s hand. As soon as Atherton had started to
speak, I saw that Craig, as before, had moved the key, evidently
registering what he said, as he had in the case of the others during
the discussion.
“One moment, Atherton,” he whispered in reply, “I’m coming to that.
Now,” he resumed aloud, “there is a disease, or a number of diseases,
to which my remarks about insanity a while ago might apply very well.
They have been known for some time to arise from various affections of
the thyroid glands in the neck. These glands, strange to say, if acted
on in certain ways can cause degenerations of mind and body, which are
well known, but in spite of much study are still very little
understood. For example, there is a definite interrelation between them
and sex—especially in woman.”
Rapidly he sketched what he had already told me of the thyroid and the
hormones. “These hormones,” added Kennedy, “are closely related to many
reactions in the body, such as even the mother’s secretion of milk at
the proper time and then only. That and many other functions are due to
the presence and character of these chemical secretions from the
thyroid and other ductless glands. It is a fascinating study. For we
know that anything that will upset—reduce or increase—the hormones is a
matter intimately concerned with health. Such changes,” he said
earnestly, leaning forward, “might be aimed directly at the very heart
of what otherwise would be a true eugenic marriage. It is even possible
that loss of sex itself might be made to follow deep changes of the
thyroid.”
He stopped a moment. Even if he had accomplished nothing else he had
struck a note which had caused the Athertons to forget their former
superciliousness.
“If there is an oversupply of thyroid hormones,” continued Craig, “that
excess will produce many changes, for instance a condition very much
like exophthalmic goiter. And,” he said, straightening up, “I find that
Eugenia Atherton has within her blood an undue proportion of these
thyroid hormones. Now, is it overfunction of the glands,
hyper-secretion—or is it something else?”
No one moved as Kennedy skillfully led his disclosure along step by
step.
“That question,” he began again slowly, shifting his position in the
chair, “raises in my mind, at least, a question which has often
occurred to me before. Is it possible for a person, taking advantage of
the scientific knowledge we have gained, to devise and successfully
execute a murder without fear of discovery? In other words, can a
person be removed with that technical nicety of detail which will leave
no clue and will be set down as something entirely natural, though
unfortunate?”
It was a terrible idea he was framing, and he dwelt on it so that we
might accept it at its full value. “As one doctor has said,” he added,
“although toxicologists and chemists have not always possessed
infallible tests for practical use, it is at present a pretty certain
observation that every poison leaves its mark. But then on the other
hand, students of criminology have said that a skilled physician or
surgeon is about the only person now capable of carrying out a really
scientific murder.
“Which is true? It seems to me, at least in the latter case, that the
very nicety of the handiwork must often serve as a clue in itself. The
trained hand leaves the peculiar mark characteristic of its training.
No matter how shrewdly the deed is planned, the execution of it is
daily becoming a more and more difficult feat, thanks to our increasing
knowledge of microbiology and pathology.”
He had risen, as he finished the sentence, every eye fixed on him, as
if he had been a master hypnotist.
“Perhaps,” he said, taking off the cylinder from the phonograph and
placing on one which I knew was that which had lain in the library
closet over night, “perhaps some of the things I have said will explain
or be explained by the record on this cylinder.”
He had started the machine. So magical was the effect on the little
audience that I am tempted to repeat what I had already heard, but had
not myself yet been able to explain:
“How is she to-day?”
“Not much changed—perhaps not so well.”
“It’s all right, though. That is natural. It is working well. I think
you might increase the dose one tablet.”
“You’re sure it is all right?”
“Oh, positively—it has been done in Europe.”
“I hope so. It must be a boy—and an _Atherton_.”
“Never fear.”
No one moved a muscle. If there was anyone in the room guilty of
playing on the feelings and the health of an unfortunate woman, that
person must have had superb control of his own feelings.
“As you know,” resumed Kennedy thoughtfully, “there are and have been
many theories of sex control. One of the latest, but by no means the
only one, is that it can be done by use of the extracts of various
glands administered to the mother. I do not know with what scientific
authority it was stated, but I do know that some one has recently said
that adrenalin, derived from the suprarenal glands, induces boys to
develop—cholin, from the bile of the liver, girls. It makes no
difference—in this case. There may have been a show of science. But it
was to cover up a crime. Some one has been administering to Eugenia
Atherton tablets of thyroid extract—ostensibly to aid her in fulfilling
the dearest ambition of her soul—to become the mother of a new line of
Athertons which might bear the same relation to the future of the
country as the great family of the Edwards mothered by Elizabeth
Tuttle.”
He was bending over the two phonograph cylinders now, rapidly comparing
the new one which he had made and that which he had just allowed to
reel off its astounding revelation.
“When a voice speaks into a phonograph,” he said, half to himself, “its
modulations received on the diaphragm are written by a needle point
upon the surface of a cylinder or disk in a series of fine waving or
zigzag lines of infinitely varying depth or breadth. Dr. Marage and
others have been able to distinguish vocal sounds by the naked eye on
phonograph records. Mr. Edison has studied them with the microscope in
his world-wide search for the perfect voice.
“In fact, now it is possible to identify voices by the records they
make, to get at the precise meaning of each slightest variation of the
lines with mathematical accuracy. They can no more be falsified than
handwriting can be forged so that modern science cannot detect it or
than typewriting can be concealed and attributed to another machine.
The voice is like a finger print, a portrait parlé—unescapable.”
He glanced up, then back again. “This microscope shows me,” he said,
“that the voices on that cylinder you heard are identical with two on
this record which I have just made in this room.”
“Walter,” he said, motioning to me, “look.”
I glanced into the eyepiece and saw a series of lines and curves,
peculiar waves lapping together and making an appearance in some spots
almost like tooth marks. Although I did not understand the details of
the thing, I could readily see that by study one might learn as much
about it as about loops, whorls, and arches on finger tips.
“The upper and lower lines,” he explained, “with long regular waves, on
that highly magnified section of the record, are formed by the voice
with no overtones. The three lines in the middle, with rhythmic
ripples, show the overtones.”
He paused a moment and faced us. “Many a person,” he resumed, “is a
biotype in whom a full complement of what are called inhibitions never
develops. That is part of your eugenics. Throughout life, and in spite
of the best of training, that person reacts now and then to a certain
stimulus directly. A man stands high; once a year he falls with a
lethal quantity of alcohol. A woman, brilliant, accomplished, slips
away and spends a day with a lover as unlike herself as can be
imagined.
“The voice that interests me most on these records,” he went on,
emphasizing the words with one of the cylinders which he still held,
“is that of a person who has been working on the family pride of
another. That person has persuaded the other to administer to Eugenia
an extract because ‘it must be a boy and an Atherton.’ That person is a
high-class defective, born with a criminal instinct, reacting to it in
an artful way. Thank God, the love of a man whom theoretical eugenics
condemned, roused us in—”
A cry at the door brought us all to our feet, with hearts thumping as
if they were bursting.
It was Eugenia Atherton, wild-eyed, erect, staring.
I stood aghast at the vision. Was she really to be the Lady Madeline in
this fall of the House of Atherton?
“Edith—I—I missed you. I heard voices. Is—is it true—what this
man—says? Is my—my baby—”
Quincy Atherton leaped forward and caught her as she reeled. Quickly
Craig threw open a window for air, and as he did so leaned far out and
blew shrilly on a police whistle.
The young man looked up from Eugenia, over whom he was bending,
scarcely heeding what else went on about him. Still, there was no trace
of anger on his face, in spite of the great wrong that had been done
him. There was room for only one great emotion—only anxiety for the
poor girl who had suffered so cruelly merely for taking his name.
Kennedy saw the unspoken question in his eyes.
“Eugenia is a pure normal, as Dr. Crafts told you,” he said gently. “A
few weeks, perhaps only days, of treatment—the thyroid will revert to
its normal state—and Eugenia Gilman will be the mother of a new house
of Atherton which may eclipse even the proud record of the founder of
the old.”
“Who blew the whistle?” demanded a gruff voice at the door, as a tall
bluecoat puffed past the scandalized butler.
“Arrest that woman,” pointed Kennedy. “She is the poisoner. Either as
wife of Burroughs, whom she fascinates and controls as she does Edith,
she planned to break the will of Quincy or, in the other event, to
administer the fortune as head of the Eugenics Foundation after the
death of Dr. Crafts, who would have followed Eugenia and Quincy
Atherton.”
I followed the direction of Kennedy’s accusing finger. Maude
Schofield’s face betrayed more than even her tongue could have
confessed.