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Ooze
By Anthony M. Rud
In the heart of a second-growth piney-woods
jungle of southern Alabama, a region sparsely
settled save by backwoods blacks and Cajans,
stands a strange, enormous ruin.
Interminable trailers of Cherokee rose,
white-laden during a single month of spring,
have climbed the heights of its three remaining
walls. Palmetto fans rise knee-high above the
base. A dozen scattered live-oaks, now belying
their nomenclature because of choking tufts of
gray Spanish moss and two-foot circlets of
mistletoe parasite which have stripped bare of
foliage the gnarled, knotted limbs, lean fantas¬
tic beards against the crumbling brick.
Immediately beyond, where the ground be¬
comes soggier and lower — dropping away
hopelessly into the tangle of dogwood, holly,
poison-sumac and pitcher-plants that is Mocca¬
sin Swamp—undergrowth of ti-ti and anis
has formed a protecting wall impenetrable to
all save the furtive ones. Some few outcasts
utilize the stinking depths of that sinister
swamp, distilling “shinny” or “pure cawn”
liquor for illicit trade.
I knew “shinny,” therefore I did not pur¬
chase it for personal consumption. A dozen
times I bought a quart or two, merely to
establish credit among the Cajans, pouring
away the vile stuff immediately into the sodden
ground. It seemed then that only through
filtration and condensation of their dozens of
weird tales regarding “Daid House” could I
arrive at understanding of the mystery and
weight of horror hanging about the place.
Certain it is that out of all the superstitious
cautioning, head-wagging and whispered non-
sensities I obtained only two indisputable facts.
The first was that no money, and no supporting
battery of ten-gage shotguns loaded with chilled
shot, could induce either Cajan or darky of
the region to approach within five hundred
yards of that flowering wall! The second fact
I shall dwell upon later.
Perhaps it would be as well, as I am only a
mouthpiece in this chronicle, to relate in brief
why I came to Alabama on this mission.
I am a scribbler of general fact articles, no
fiction writer as was Lee Cranmer. Lee
was my roommate during college days. I knew
his family well, admiring John Corliss Cranmer
even more than I admired the son and friend—
and almost as much as Peggy Breede whom
Lee married.
Work kept me to the city. Lee, on the other
hand, coming of wealthy family—and, from
the first, earning from his short-stories and
novel royalties more than I wrested from
editorial coffers—needed no anchorage. He
and Peggy honeymooned a four-month trip to
Alaska, visited Honolulu next winter, fished
for salmon on Cain’s River, New;' Brunswick,
and enjoyed the outdoors at all seasons.
They kept an apartment in Wilmette, near
Chicago, yet, during the few spring and fall
seasons they were “home,” both preferred to
rent a suite at one of the country clubs to
which Lee belonged. I suppose they spent
thrice five times the amount Lee actually
earned, yet for my part I only honored that
the two should find such great happiness in life
and still accomplish artistic triumph.
They were honest, zestful young Americans,
the type—and pretty nearly the only type—two
million dollars can not spoil. John Cranmer,
father of Lee, though as different from his
boy as a microscope is different from a paint¬
ing by Remington, was even farther from being
dollar-conscious. He lived in a world bounded
only by the widening horizon of biological
science—and his love for the two who would
carry on the Cranmer name.
Many a time I used to wonder how it could
be that so gentle, clean-souled and lovable a
gentleman as John Corliss Cranmer could have
ventured so far into scientific research without
attaining small-caliber atheism. Few do. He
believed both in God and in humankind. To
accuse him in murdering his boy and the girl
wife who had come to be loved as the mother
of baby Elsie—as well as blood and flesh of
his own family—was a gruesome, terrible
absurdity! Yes, even when John Corliss Cran¬
mer was declared unmistakably insane.
Lacking a relative in the world, baby Elsie
was given to me—and the middle-aged couple
who had accompanied the three as servants
through half of the known world. Elsie would
be Peggy over again. I worshiped her, know¬
ing that if my stewardship of her interests
could make of her a woman of Peggy’s love¬
liness and worth I should not have lived in
vain. And at four Elsie stretched out her
arms to me after a vain attempt to jerk out
the bobbed tail of Lord Dick, my tolerant old
Airedale—and called me “papa.”
I felt a deepdown choking . . . yes, those
strangely long black lashes some day might
droop in fun or coquetry, but now baby Elsie
held a wistful, trusting seriousness in depths
of ultramarine eyes—that same seriousness
which only Lee had brought to Peggy.
Responsibility in one instant became double.
That she might come to love me as more than
foster-parents was my dearest wish. Still,
through selfishness I could not rob her of
rightful heritage; she must know in after years.
And the tale that I would tell her must be the
horrible suspicion which had been bandied
about in common talk!
I went to Alabama, leaving Elsie in the
competent hands of Mrs. Daniels and her hus¬
band, who had helped care for her since birth.
In my possession, prior to the trip, were the
scant facts known to authorities at the time of
John Corliss Cranmer’s escape and disappear¬
ance. They were incredible enough.
For conducting biological research upon
forms of protozoan life, John Corliss Cranmer
had hit upon this region of Alabama. Near
a great swamp teeming with microscopic organ¬
isms, and situated in a semi-tropical belt where
freezing weather rarely intruded to harden the
bogs, the spot seemed ideal for his purpose.
Through Mobile he could secure supplies
daily by truck. The isolation suited. With
only an octoroon man to act as chef, house¬
man and valet for the times he entertained no
visitors, he brought down scientific apparatus,
occupying temporary quarters in the village of
Burdett’s Corners while his woods house was
in process of construction.
By all accounts the Lodge, as he termed it,
was a substantial affair of eight or nine rooms,
built of logs and planed lumber bought at Oak
Grove. Lee and Peggy were expected to spend
a portion of each year with him; quail, wild
turkey and deer abounded, which fact made
such a vacation certain to please the pair.
This was in 1907, the year of Lee’s marriage.
Six years later, when I came down, no sign of
a house remained except certain mangled and
rotting timbers projecting from viscid soil—
or what seemed like soil. A twelve-foot wall
of brick had been built to enclose the house
completely! One portion had fallen inivard!
II
I wasted weeks of time at first, interviewing
officials of the police department at Mobile,
the town marshals and county sheriffs of
Washington and Mobile counties, and officials
of the psychopathic hospital from which Cran-
mer had made his escape.
In substance the story was one of baseless
homicidal mania. Cranmer the elder had been
away until late fall, attending two scientific
conferences in the North, and then going
abroad to compare certain findings with those
of a Dr. Gemmler of Prague University. Un¬
fortunately, Gemmler was assassinated by a
religious fanatic shortly afterward.
Search of Gemmler’s notes and effects re¬
vealed nothing save an immense amount of
laboratory data on karyokinesis —the process
ofi chromosome arrangement occurring in first
growing cells of higher animal embryos. Ap¬
parently Cranmer had hoped to develop some
similarities, or point out differences between
hereditary factors occurring in lower forms of
life and those half-demonstrated in the cat and
monkey. The authorities had found nothing
that helped me. Cranmer had gone crazy; was
that not sufficient explanation ? Perhaps it
was for them, but not for me—and Elsie.
But to the slim basis of fact I was able to
unearth:
No one wondered when a fortnight passed
without appearance of any person from the
Lodge. Why should any one worry? A pro¬
vision salesman in Mobile called up twice, but
failed to complete a connection. He merely
shrugged. The Cranmers had gone away some¬
where on a trip. In a week, a month, a year,
they would be back. Meanwhile he lost com¬
missions, but what of it ? He had no responsi¬
bility for these queer nuts up there in the
piney-woods. Crazy? Of course! Why should
any guy with millions to spend shut himself
up among the Cajans and draw microscope-
enlarged notebook pictures of what the sales¬
man called “germs?”
A stir was aroused at the end of the fortnight,
but the commotion confined itself to building
circles. Twenty carloads of building brick,
fifty bricklayers, and a quarter-acre of fine-
meshed wire—the sort used for screening off
pens of rodents and small marsupials in a
zoological garden—were ordered, damn ex¬
pense, hurry! by an unshaved, tattered man
who identified himself with difficulty as John
Corliss Crammer. A certified check for the
total amount, given in advance, and another
check of absurd size slung toward a labor
entrepreneur, silenced objection, however.
These millionaires were apt to be flighty.
When they wanted something they wanted it
at tap of the bell. Well, why not drag down
the big profits? A poorer man would have
been jacked up in a day. Cranmer’s fluid gold
bathed him in immunity of criticism.
The encircling wall was built, and roofed
with netting which drooped about the squat-
pitch of the Lodge. Curious inquiries of work¬
men went unanswered until the final day.
Then Cranmer, a strange, intense apparition
more shabby than a quay dereliet, assembled
the workmen. In one hand he grasped a wad
of blue slips—fifty-six of them. In the other
he held a Luger automatic.
“I offer each man a thousand dollars for
silence!” he announced. “As an alternative
death! You know little. Will all of you con¬
sent to swear upon your honor that nothing
which has occurred here will be mentioned
elsewhere? By this I mean absolute silence!
You will not come back here to investigate any¬
thing. You will not tell your wives. You
will not open your mouths even upon the
witness stand in case you are called! My
price is one thousand apiece.
“In case one of you betrays me I give you
my word that this man shall die! I am rich.
I can hire men to do murder. Well, what do
you say?”
The men glanced apprehensively about. The
threatening Luger decided them. To a man
they accepted the blue slips—and, save for one
witness who lost all sense of fear and morality
in drink, none of the fifty-six has broken his
pledge, so far as I know. That one bricklayer
died later in delirium tremens.
It might have been different had not John
Corliss Cranmer escaped.
Ill
They found him the first time, mouthing mean¬
ingless phrases concerning an amoeba—one of
the tiny forms of protoplasmic life he was
known to have studied. Also he leaped into
a hysteria of self-accusation. He had murdered
two innocent people! The tragedy was his
crime. He had drowned them in ooze ! God !
Unfortunately for all concerned, Cranmer,
dazed and indubitably stark insane, chose to
perform a strange travesty on fishing four
miles to the west of his lodge—on the farther
border of Moccasin Swamp. His clothing had
been torn to shreds, his hat was gone, and he
was coated from head to foot with gluey mire.
It was far from strange that the good folk of
Shanksville, who never had glimpsed the eccen¬
tric millionaire, failed to associate him with
Cranmer.
They took him in, searched his pockets—
finding no sign save an inordinate sum of
money—and then put him under medical care.
Two precious weeks elapsed before Dr. Quirk
reluctantly acknowledged that he could do
nothing more for this patient, and notified the
proper authorities.
Then much more time was wasted. Hot
April and half of still hotter May passed by
before the loose ends were connected. Then
it did little good to know that this raving unfor¬
tunate was Cranmer, or that the two persons
of whom he shouted in disconnected delirium
actually had disappeared. Alienists absolved
him of responsibility. He was confined in a
cell reserved for the violent.
Meanwhile, strange things occurred back at
the Lodge—which now, for good and sufficient
reason, was becoming known to dwellers of
the woods as Dead House. Until one of the
walls fell in, however, there had been no chance
to see—unless one possessed the temerity to
climb either one of the tall live oaks, or mount
the barrier itself. No doors or opening of any
sort had been placed in that hastily constructed
wall!
By the time the western side of the wall fell,
not a native for miles around but feared the
spot far more than even the bottomless, snake-
infested bogs which lay to west and north.
The single statement was all John Corliss
Cranmer ever gave to the world. It proved
sufficient. An immediate search was instituted.
It showed that less than three weeks before the
day of initial reckoning, his son and Peggy
had come to visit him for the second time that
winter—leaving Elsie behind in company of
the Daniels pair. They had rented a pair of
Gordons for quail hunting, and had gone out.
That was the last any one had seen of them.
The backwoods negro who glimpsed them
stalking a covey behind their two pointing dogs
had known no more—even when sweated
through twelve hours of third degree. Certain
suspicious circumstances, having to do only
with his regular pursuit of “shinny” transpor¬
tation, had caused him to fall under suspicion
at first. He was dropped.
Two days later the scientist himself was
apprehended—a gibbering idiot who sloughed
his pole, holding on to the baited hook, into a
marsh where nothing save moccasins or an
errant alligator could have been snared.
His mind was three-quarters dead. Cranmer
then was in the state of the dope fiend who
rouses to a sitting position to ask seriously
how many Bolshevists were killed by Julius
Caesar before he was stabbed by Brutus, or
why it was the Roller canaries sang only on
Wednesday evenings. He knew that tragedy
of the most sinister sort had stalked through
his life—but little more, at first.
Later the police obtained that one statement
that he had murdered two human beings, hut
never could means or motive be established.
Official guess as to the means was no more
than wild conjecture; it mentioned enticing the
victims to the noisome depths of Moccasin
Swamp, there to let them flounder and sink.
The two were his son and daughter-in-law,
Lee and Peggy!
IV
By feigning coma—then awakening with
suddenness to assault three attendants with
incredible ferocity and strength—John Corliss
Cranmer escaped from Elizabeth Ritter Hos¬
pital. How he hid, how he managed to tra¬
verse sixty-odd intervening miles and still balk
detection, remains a minor mystery to be ex¬
plained only by the assumption that maniacal
cunning sufficed to outwit saner intellects.
Traverse these miles he did, though until I
was fortunate enough to uncover evidence to
this effect, it was supposed generally that he
had made his escape as stowaway on one of
the banana boats, or had buried himself in
some portion of the nearer woods where he
was unknown. The truth ought to be welcome
to householders of Shanksville, Burdett’s Cor¬
ners and vicinage—those excusably prudent
ones who to this day keep loaded shotguns
handy and barricade their doors at nightfall.
The first ten days of my investigation may be
touched upon in brief. I made headquarters in
Burdett’s Corners, and drove out each morning,
carrying lunch and returning for my grits and
piney-woods pork or mutton before nightfall.
My first plan had been to camp out at the edge
of the swamp, for opportunity to enjoy the
outdoors comes rarely in my direction. Yet
after one cursory examination of the premises
I abandoned the idea. I did not want to camp
alone there. And I am less superstitious than
a real estate agent.
It was, perhaps, psychic warning; more
probably the queer, faint, salty odor as of fish
left to decay, which hung about the ruin, made
too unpleasant an impression upon my olfactory
sense. I experienced a distinct chill every
time the lengthening shadows caught me near
Dead House.
The smell impressed me. In newspaper
reports of the case one ingenious explanation
had been worked out. To the rear of the spot
where Dead House had stood—inside the wall
—was a swamp, hollow, circular in shape. Only
a little real mud lay in the bottom of the bowl¬
like depression now, but one reporter on the
staff of The Mobile Register guessed that dur¬
ing the tenancy of the Lodge it had been a
fishpool. Drying up the water had killed the
fish, which now permeated the remnant of mud
with this foul odor.
The possibility that Cranmer had needed to
keep fresh fish at hand for some of his experi¬
ments silenced the natural objection that in a
country where every stream holds garpike,
bass, catfish and many other edible varieties,
no one would dream of stocking a stagnant
puddle.
After tramping about the enclosure, testing
the queerly brittle, desiccated top stratum of
earth within and speculating concerning the
possible purpose of the wall, I cutj off a long
limb of chinaberry and probed the mud. One
fragment of fish spine would confirm the guess
of that imaginative reporter.
I found nothing resembling a piscal skeleton,
but established several facts. First, this mud
crater had definite bottom only three or four
feet below the surface of remaining ooze.
Second, the fishy stench became stronger as I
stirred. Third, at one time the mud, water,
or whatever had comprised the balance of con¬
tent, had reached the rim of the bowl. The
last showed by certain marks plain enough
when the crusty, two-inch stratum of upper
coating was broken away. It was puzzling.
The nature of that thin, desiccated effluvium
which seemed to cover everything even to the
lower foot or two of brick, came in for next
inspection. It was strange stuff, unlike any
earth I ever had seen, though undoubtedly
some form of scum drained in from the swamp
at the time of river floods or cloudbursts, which
in this section are common enough in spring
and fall. It crumbled beneath the fingers.
When I walked over it, the stuff crumbled
hollowly. In fainter degree it possessed the
fishy odor also.
I took some samples where it lay thickest
upon the ground, and also a few where there
seemed to be no more than a depth of a sheet
of paper. Later I would have a laboratory
analysis made.
Apart from any possible bearing the stuff
might have upon the disappearance of my three
friends, I felt the tug of article interest—that
wonder over anything strange or seemingly
inexplicable which lends the hunt for fact a
certain glamor and romance all its own. To
myself I was! going to have to explain sooner
or later just why this layer covered the entire
space within the walls and was not perceptible
anywhere outside! The enigma could wait,
however—or so I decided.
Far more interesting were the traces of
violence apparent on wall and what once had
been a house. The latter seemed to have been
ripped from its foundations by a giant hand,
crushed out of semblance to a dwelling, and
then cast in fragments about the base of wall
—mainly on the south side, where heaps of
twisted, broken timbers lay in profusion. On
the opposite side there had been such heaps
once, but now only charred sticks, coated with
that gray-black, omnipresent coat of desiccation,
remained. These piles of charcoal had been
sifted and examined most carefully by the
authorities, as one theory had been advanced
that Cranmer had burned the bodies of his
victims. Yet no sign whatever of human
remains was discovered.
The fire, however, pointed out one odd fact
which controverted the reconstructions made by
detectives months before. The latter, suggest¬
ing that the dried scum had drained in from the
swamp, believed that the house timbers had
floated out to the sides of the wall—there to
arrange themselves in a series of piles! The
absurdity of' such a theory showed even more
plainly in the fact that if the scum had filtered
through in such a flood, the timbers most cer¬
tainly had been dragged into piles previously!
Some had burned —and the scum coated their
charred surfaces!
What had been the force which had torn
the Lodge to bits as if in spiteful fury? Why
had the parts of the wreckage been burned,
the rest to escape?
Right here I felt was the keynote to the
mystery, yet I could imagine no explanation.
That John Corliss Cranmer himself—physically
sound, yet a man who for decades had led a
sedentary life—could have accomplished such
destruction, unaided, was difficult to believe.
V
I turned my attention to the wall, hoping for
evidence which might suggest another theory.
That wall had been an example of the worst
snide construction. Though little more than
a year old, the parts left standing showed
evidence that they had begun to decay on the day
the last brick was laid. The mortar had fallen
from the interstices. Here and there a brick
had cracked and dropped out. Fibrils of the
climbing vines had penetrated crevices, working
for early destruction.
And one side already had fallen.
It was here that the first glimmering suspi¬
cion of the terrible truth was forced upon me.
The scattered bricks, even those which had
rolled inward toward the gaping foundation
lodge, had not been coated with scum! This
was curious, yet it could be explained by sur¬
mise that the flood itself had undermined this
weakest portion of the wall. I cleared away
a mass of brick from the spot on which the
structure had stood; to my surprise I found it
exceptionally firm! Hard red clay lay beneath!
The flood conception was faulty; only some
great force, exerted from inside or outside,
could have wreaked such destruction.
When careful measurement, analysis and
deduction convinced me—mainly from the fact
that the lowermost layers of brick all had fallen
outward, while the upper portions toppled in —
I began to link up this mysterious and horrific
force with the one which had rent the Lodge
asunder. It looked as though a typhoon or
gigantic centrifuge had needed elbow room in
ripping down the wooden structure.
But I got nowhere with the theory, though
in ordinary affairs I am called a man of too
great imaginative tendencies. No less than
three editors have cautioned me on this point.
Perhaps it was the narrowing influence of great
personal sympathy—yes, and love. I make no
excuses, though beyond a dim understanding
that some terrific, implacable force must have
made this spot his playground, I ended my
ninth day of note-taking and investigation
almost as much in the dark as I had been while
a thousand miles away in Chicago.
Then I started among the darkies and Cajans.
A whole day I listened to yarns of the days
which preceded Cranmer’s escape from Eliza¬
beth Ritter Hospital—days in which furtive
men sniffed poisoned air for miles around Dead
House, finding the odor intolerable. Days in
which it seemed none possessed nerve enough
to approach close. Days when the most fanci¬
ful tales of mediaeval superstitions were spun.
These tales I shall not give; the truth is incred¬
ible enough.
At noon upon the eleventh day I chanced
upon Rori Pailleron, a Cajan—and one of the
least prepossessing of all with whom I had
come in contact. “Chanced” perhaps is a bad
word. I had listed every dweller of the woods
within a five-mile radius. Rori was sixteenth
on my list. I went to him only after interview¬
ing all four of the Crabiers and two whole
families of Pichons. And Rori regarded me
with the utmost suspicion until I made him a
present of the two quarts of “shinny” pur¬
chased of the Pichons.
Because long practise has perfected me in
the technique of seeming to drink another man’s
awful liquor—no, I’m not an absolute pro¬
hibitionist ; fine wine or twelve-year-in-cask
Bourbon whisky arouses my definite interest—
I fooled Pailleron from the start. I shall omit
preliminaries, and leap to the first admission
from him that he knew more concerning Dead
House and its former inmates than any of the
other darkies or Cajans roundabout.
“...But I ain’t talkin’. Sacre! If I should
open my gab, what might fly out? It is for
keeping silent, y’r damn’ right! . . . ”
I agreed. He was a wise man—educated to
some extent in the queer schools and churches
maintained exclusively by Cajans in the depths
of the woods, yet naive withal.
We drank. And I never had to ask another
leading question. The liquor made him want
to interest me; and the only extraordinary topic
in this whole neck of the woods was the Dead
House.
Three-quarters of a pint of acrid, nauseous
fluid, and he hinted darkly. A pint, and he
told me something I scarcely could believe.
Another half-pint . . . But I shall give his
confession in condensed form.
He had known Joe Sibley, the octoroon chef,
houseman and valet who served Cranmer.
Through Joe, Rori had furnished certain indis-
pensables in the way of food to the Cranmer
household. At first, these salable articles had
been exclusively vegetable—white and yellow
turnip, sweet potatoes, corn and beans—but
later, meat!
Yes, meat especially—whole lambs, slaugh¬
tered and quartered, the coarsest variety of
piney-woods pork and beef, all in immense
quantity!
IV
In December of the fatal winter, Lee and his
wife stopped down at the Lodge for ten days
or thereabouts.
They were en route to Cuba at the time
intending to be away five or six weeks. Their
original plan had been only to wait over a day
or so in the piney-woods, but something caused
an amendment to the scheme.
The two dallied. Lee seemed to have become
vastly absorbed in something—so much ab¬
sorbed that it was only when Peggy insisted
upon continuing their trip, that he could tear
himself away.
It was during those ten days that he began
buying meat. Meager bits of it at first—a
rabbit, a pair of squirrels, or perhaps a few
quail beyond the number he and Peggy shot.
Rori furnished the game, thinking nothing of
it except that Lee paid double prices—and
insisted upon keeping the purchases secret from
other members of the household.
“I’m putting it across on the Governor,
Rori!” he said once with a wink. “Going to
give him the shock of his life. So you mustn’t
let on, even to Joe, about what I want you to do.
Maybe it won’t work out, but if it does! . .
Dad’ll have the scientific world at his feet!
He doesn’t blow his own horn anywhere near
enough, you know.”
Rori didn’t know. He hadn’t a suspicion what
Lee was talking about. Still, if this rich young
idiot wanted to pay him a half-dollar in good
silver coin for a quail that any one—himself
included—could knock down with a five-cent
shell, Rori was well satisfied to keep his mouth
shut. Each evening he brought some of the
small game. And each day Lee Cranmer
seemed to have use for an additional quail or
so . . .
When he was ready to leave for Cuba, Lee
came forward with the strangest of proposi¬
tions. He fairly whispered his vehemence
and desire for secrecy! He would tell Rori,
and would pay the Cajan five hundred dollars—
half in advance, and half at the end of five
weeks when Lee himself would return from
Cuba—provided Rori agreed to adhere abso¬
lutely to a certain secret program. The money
was more than a fortune to Rori; it was
undreamt-of affluence. The Cajan acceded.
“He wuz tellin’ me then how the ol’ man had
raised some kind of pet,” Rori confided, “an’
wanted to get shet of it. So he give it to Lee,
tellin’ him to kill it, but Lee was sot on foolin’
him. W’at I ask yer is, w’at kind of pet is it
w’at lives down in a mud sink an’ eats a couple
hawgs every night?”
I couldn’t imagine, so I pressed him for fur¬
ther details. Here at last was something which
sounded like a clue.
He really knew too little. The agreement
with Lee provided that if Rori carried out the
provisions exactly, he should be paid extra
and at his exorbitant scale of all additional
outlay, when Lee returned.
The young man gave him a daily schedule
which Rori showed. Each evening he was to
procure, slaughter and cut up a definite—and
growing—amount of meat. Every item was
checked, and I saw that the items ran from five
pounds up to forty!
“What, in heaven’s name, did you do with
it?” I demanded, excited now and pouring him
an additional drink for fear caution might
return to him.
“Took it through the bushes in back an’ slung
it in the mud sink there! An’ suthin’ come up
an’ drug it down!”
“A’gator ?”
“Diable ! How should I know ? It was dark.
I wouldn’t go close.” He shuddered, and the
fingers which lifted his glass shook as with
sudden chill. “Mebbe you’d of done it, huh?
Not me, though! The young fellah tole me to
sling it in, an’ I slung it.
“A couple times I come around in the light,
but there wasn’t nuthin’ there you could see.
Jes’ mud, an’ some water. Mebbe the thing
didn’t come out in daytimes ...”
“Perhaps not,” I agreed, straining every
mental resource to imagine what Lee’s sinister
pet could have been. “But you said something
about two hogs a day? What did you mean
by that ? This paper, proof enough that you’re
telling the truth so far, states that on the
thirty-fifth day you were to throw forty pounds
of meat—any kind—into the sink. Two hogs,
even the piney-woods variety, weigh a lot more
than forty pounds!”
From this point onward, Rori’s tale became
more and more enmeshed in the vagaries
induced by bad liquor. His tongue thickened.
I shall give his story without attempt to
reproduce further verbal barbarities, or the
occasional prodding I had to give in order to
keep him from maundering into foolish jargon.
Lee had paid munificently. His only objec¬
tion to the manner in which Rori had carried
out his orders was that the orders themselves
had been deficient. The pet, he said, had grown
enormously. It was hungry, ravenous. Lee
himself had supplemented the fare with huge
pails of scraps from the kitchen.
From that day Lee purchased from Rori
whole sheep and hogs! The Cajan continued
to bring the carcasses at nightfall, but no longer
did Lee permit him to approach the pool. The
young man appeared chronically excited now.
He had a tremendous secret—one the extent
of which even his father did not guess, and
one which would astonish the world! Only a
week or two more and he would spring it.
First he would have to arrange certain data.
Then came the day when everyone disap¬
peared from Dead House. Rori came around
several times, but concluded that all of the
occupants had folded tents and departed—
doubtless taking their mysterious “pet” along.
Only when he saw from a distance Joe, the
octoroon servant, returning along the road on
foot toward the Lodge, did his slow mental
processes begin to ferment. That afternoon
Rori visited the strange place for the next to
last time.
He did not go to the Lodge itself—and there
were reasons. While still some hundreds of
yards away from the place a terrible, sustained
screaming reached his ears! It was faint, yet
unmistakably the voice of Joe! Throwing a
pair of number two shells into the breach of his
shotgun, Rori hurried on, taking his usual path
through the brush at the back.
He saw—and as he told me even “shinny”
drunkenness tied his chattering tones—Joe, the
octoroon. Aye, he stood in the yard, far from
the pool into which Rori had thrown the car¬
casses —and Joe could not move!
Rori failed to explain in full, but something,
a slimy, amorphous something, which glistened
in the sunlight, already had engulfed the man
to his shoulders! Breath was cut off. Joe’s
contorted face writhed with horror and begin¬
ning suffocation. One hand—all that was free
of the rest of him—beat feebly upon the
rubbery, translucent thing that was engulfing
his body!
Then Joe sank from sight . . .
VII
Five days of liquored indulgence passed before
Rori, alone in his shaky cabin, convinced him¬
self that he had seen a fantasy born of alcohol.
He came back the last time—to find a high wall
of brick surrounding the Lodge, including the
mud-pool into which he had thrown the meat!
While he hesitated, circling the place without
discovering an opening—which he would not
have dared to use, even had he found it—a
crashing, tearing of timbers, and persistent
sounds of awesome destructions came from
within. He swung himself into one of the
oaks near the wall. And he was just in time
to see the last supporting stanchions of the
Lodge give way outward!
The whole structure came apart. The roof
fell in—yet seemed to move after it had fallen!
Logs of wall deserted layers of plywood in the
grasp of the shearing machine!
That was all. Suddenly intoxicated now,
Rori mumbled more phrases, giving me the
idea that on another day when he became sober
once more, he might add to his statements, but
I—numbed to the soul—scarcely cared. If
that which he related was true, what nightmare
of madness must have been consummated here!
I could vision some things now which con¬
cerned Lee and Peggy, horrible things. Only
remembrance of Elsie kept me faced forward
in the search—for now it seemed almost that
the handiwork of a madman must be preferred
to what Rori claimed to have seen! What had
been the sinister, translucent thing ? That
glistening thing which lumped upward about a
man, smothering, engulfing ?
Queerly enough, though such theory as came
most easily to mind now would have outraged
reason in me if suggested concerning total
strangers, I asked myself only what details of
Rori’s revelation had been exaggerated by fright
and fumes of liquor. And as I sat on the
creaking bench in his cabin, staring unseeing
as he lurched down to the floor, fumbling with
a lock box of green tin which lay under his
cot, and muttering, the answer to all my ques¬
tions lay within reach!
It was not until next day, however, that I
made the discovery. Heavy of heart I had
re-examined the spot where the Lodge had
stood, then made my way to the Cajan’s cabin
again, seeking sober confirmation of what he
had told me during intoxication.
In imagining that such a spree for Rori
would be ended by a single night, however, I
was mistaken. He lay sprawled almost as I
had left him. Only two factors were changed.
No “shinny” was left—and lying open, with its
miscellaneous contents strewed about, was the
tin box. Rori somehow had managed to open
it with the tiny key still clutched in his hand.
Concern for his safety alone was what made
me notice the box. It was a receptacle for
small fishing-tackle of the sort carried here
and there by any sportsman. Tangles of
Dowagiac minnows, spoon-hooks ranging in
size to silver-backed number eights, three reels
still carrying line of different weights, spinners,
casting-plugs, wobblers, floating baits, were
spilled out upon the rough plank flooring where
they might snag Rori badly if he rolled. I
gathered them, to save him an accident.
With the miscellaneous assortment in my
hands, however, I stopped dead. Something
had caught my eye—something lying flush with
the bottom of the lock box! I stared, and
then swiftly tossed the hooks and other impedi¬
menta upon the table. What I had glimpsed
there in the box was a looseleaf notebook of
the sort used for recording laboratory data!
And Rori scarcely could read, let alone write!
Feverishly, a riot of recognition, surmise,
hope and fear bubbling in my brain, I grabbed
the book and threw it open. At once I knew
that this was the end. The pages were scribbled
in pencil, but the handwriting was that precise
chirography I knew as belonging to John
Corliss Cranmer, the scientist!
“ . . . Could he not have obeyed my instruc¬
tions ! Oh, God! This ...”
These were the words at top of the first
page which met my eye.
Because knowledge of the circumstances, the
relation of which I pried out of the reluctant
Rori only some days later when I had him in
Mobile as a police witness for the sake of my
friend’s vindication, is necessary to understand¬
ing, I shall interpolate.
Rori had not told me everything. On his
late visit to the vicinage of Dead House he
saw more. A crouching figure, seated Turk-
fashion on top of the wall, appeared to be
writing industriously. Rori recognized the
man as Cranmer, yet did not hail him. He
had no opportunity.
Just as the Cajan came near, Cranmer rose,
thrust the notebook, which had rested across
his knees, into the box. Then he turned, and
tossed outside the wall both the locked box and
a ribbon to which was attached the key.
Then his arms raised toward heaven. For
five seconds he seemed to invoke the mercy of
Power beyond all of man’s scientific prying.
And finally he leaped, inside! . . .
Rori did not climb to investigate. He knew
that directly below this portion of wall lay
the mud sink into which he had thrown the
chunks of meat!
VIII
This is a true transcription of the statement
I inscribed, telling the sequence of actual events
at Dead House. The original of the statement
now lies in the archives of the detective depart¬
ment.
Cranmer’s notebook, though written in a
precise hand, yet betrayed the man’s insanity
by incoherence and frequent repetitions. My
statement has been accepted now, both by
alienists and by detectives who had entertained
different theories in respect to the case. It
quashes the noisome hints and suspicions re¬
garding three of the finest Americans who ever
lived—and also one queer supposition dealing
with supposed criminal tendencies in poor Joe.
John Corliss Cranmer went insane for suffi¬
cient cause!
As readers of popular fiction know well, Lee
Cranmer’s forte was the writing of what is
called, among fellows in the craft, the pseudo¬
scientific story. In plain words, this means a
yarn, based upon solid fact in the field of
astronomy, chemistry, anthropology or what¬
not, which carries to logical conclusion un¬
proved theories of men who devote their lives
to searching out further nadirs of fact.
In certain fashion these men are allies of
science. Often they visualize something which
has not been imagined even by the best of men
from whom they secure data, thus opening new
horizons of possibility. In a large way Jules
Verne was one of these men in his day; Lee
Cranmer bade fair to carry on the work in
worthy fashion—work taken up for a period
by an Englishman named Wells, but abandoned
for stories of a different, and in my humble
opinion a less absorbing type.
Lee wrote three novels, all published, which
dealt with such subjects—two of the three
secured from his own father’s labors, and the
other speculating upon the discovery and pos¬
sible uses of interatomic energy. Upon John
Corliss Cranmer’s return from Prague that
fatal winter, the father informed Lee that a
greater subject than any with which the young
man had dealt now could be tapped.
Cranmer, senior, had devised a way in which
the limiting factors in protozoic life and growth
could be nullified; in time, and with co-opera¬
tion of biologists who specialized upon kar-
yokinesis and embryology of higher forms,
he hoped—to put the theory in pragmatic terms
—-to be able to grow swine the size of elephants,
quail or woodcock with breasts from which a
hundredweight of white meat could be cut
away, and steers whose dehorned heads might
butt at the third story of a skyscraper!
Such result would revolutionize the methods
of food supply, of course. It also would hold
out hope for all undersized specimens of
humanity—provided only that if factors inhib¬
iting growth could be deleted, some method
of stopping gianthood also could be developed.
Cranmer the elder, through use of an unde¬
scribed (in the notebook) growth medium of
which one constituent was agar-agar, and the
use of radium emanations, had succeeded in
bringing about apparently unrestricted growth
in the paramcecium protozoan, in certain of the
vegetable growths (among which were bac¬
teria ), and in the amorphous cell of protoplasm
known as the amoeba—the last a single cell
containing only nucleolus, nucleus, and a space
known as the contractile vacuole which some¬
how aided in throwing off particles impossible
to assimilate directly. This point may be
remembered in respect to the piles of lumber
left near the outside walls surrounding Dead
House!
When Lee Cranmer and his wife came south
to visit, John Corliss Cranmer showed his son
an amoeba—normally an organism visible under
low-power microscope—which he had absolved
from natural growth inhibitions. This amoeba,
a rubbery, amorphous mass of protoplasm, was
the size then of a large beef liver. It could
have been held in two cupped hands, placed
side by side.
“How large could it grow ?” asked Lee, wide-
eyed and interested.
“So far as I know,” answered the father,
“there is no limit—now! It might, if it got
food enough, grow to be as big as the Masonic
Temple!
“But take it out and kill it. Destroy the
organism utterly—burning the fragments—else
there is no telling what might happen. The
amoeba, as I have explained, reproduces by
simple division. Any fragment remaining might
be dangerous.”
Lee took the rubbery, translucent giant cell
—but he did not obey orders. Instead of
destroying it as his father had directed, Lee
thought out a plan. Suppose he would grow
this organism to tremendous size? Suppose,
when the tale of his father’s accomplishment
were spread, an amoeba of many tons weight
could be shown in evidence? Lee, of some¬
what sensational cast of mind, determined in¬
stantly to keep secret the fact that he was not
destroying the organism, but encouraging its
further growth. Thought of possible peril
never crossed his mind.
He arranged to have the thing fed—allow¬
ing for normal increase of size in an abnormal
thing. It fooled him only in growing much
more rapidly. When he came back from Cuba
the amoeba practically filled the whole of the
mud sink. He had to give it much greater
supplies. . . .
The giant cell came to absorb as much as
two hogs in a single day. During daylight,
while hunger still was appeased, it never
emerged, however. That remained for the time
that it could secure no more food near at hand
to satisfy its ravenous and increasing appetite.
Only instinct for the sensational kept Lee
from telling Peggy, his wife, all about the
matter. Lee hoped to spring a coup which
would immortalize his father, and surprise his
wife terrifically. Therefore, he kept his own
counsel—and made bargains with the Cajan,
Rori, who supplied food daily for the shapeless
monster of the pool.
The tragedy itself came suddenly and unex¬
pectedly. Peggy, feeding the two Gordon
setters that Lee and she used for quail hunting,
was in the Lodge yard before sunset. She
romped alone, as Lee himself was dressing.
Of a sudden her screams cut the still air!
Without her knowledge, ten-foot pseudopods—
those flowing tentacles of protoplasm sent forth
by the sinister occupant of the pool—slid out
and around her putteed ankles.
For a moment she did not understand. Then,
at first suspicion of the horrid truth, her cries
rent the air. Lee, at that time struggling to
lace a pair of high shoes, straightened, paled,
and grabbed a revolver as he dashed out.
In another room a scientist, absorbed in his
notetaking, glanced up, frowned, and then—
recognized the voice, shed his white gown and
came out. He was too late to do aught but
gasp with horror.
In the yard Peggy was half engulfed in a
squamous, rubbery something which at first
glance he could not analyze.
Lee, his boy, was fighting with the sticky
folds, and slowly, surely, losing his own grip
upon the earth!
IX
John Corliss Cranmer was by no means a
coward. He stared, cried aloud, then ran
indoors, seizing a shotgun and a hunting-knife.
The knife was ten inches long and razor-keen.
Cranmer rushed out again. He saw an
indecent fluid something—which as yet he had
not had time to classify—lumping itself into
a six-foot-high center before his very eyes ! It
looked like one of the micro-organisms he had
studied! One grown to frightful dimensions.
An amoeba!
There, suffocated in the rubbery folds, yet
still apparent beneath the glistening ooze of this
monster, were two bodies. They were dead.
Nevertheless he attacked the flowing senseless
monster with his knife. Shot would do no
good. And he found that even the deep slashes
made by his knife closed together and healed.
The monster was invulnerable to ordinary
attack!
A pair of pseudopods sought out his ankles,
attempting to bring him low. Both of these
he severed—and escaped. Why did he try?
He did not know. The two whom he had
sought to rescue were dead, buried under folds
of this horrid thing he knew to be his own
discovery and fabrication. Then it was that
revulsion and insanity came upon him.
There ended the story of John Corliss Cran-
mer, save for one hastily scribbled paragraph
—evidently written at the time Rori had seen
him atop the wall.
May we not supply with assurance the inter¬
vening steps ?
Cranmer was known to have purchased a
whole pen of hogs, a day or two following the
tragedy. These animals never were seen again.
During the time the wall was being constructed
is it not reasonable to assume that he fed the
giant organism within—to keep it quiet? His
scientist brain must have visualized clearly the
havoc and horror which could be wrought by
the loathsome thing if it ever were driven by
hunger to flow away from the Lodge and prey
upon the countryside!
With the wall once in place, he evidently
figured that starvation or some other means
which he could supply would kill the thing.
One of the means had been made by setting
fire to several piles of the disgorged timbers;
probably this had no effect whatever.
The amoeba was to accomplish still more
destruction. In the throes of hunger it threw
its gigantic, formless strength against the house
walls from the inside; then every edible morsel
within was assimilated, the logs, rafters and
other fragments being worked out through the
contractile vacuole.
During some of its last struggles, undoubtedly,
the side wall of brick was weakened—not
to collapse, however, until the giant amoeba no
longer could take advantage of the breach.
In final death lassitude, the amoeba stretched
itself out in a thin layer over the ground. There
it succumbed, though there is no means of
estimating how long a time intervened.
The last paragraph in Cranmer’s notebook,
scrawled so badly that it is possible some words
I have not deciphered correctly, read as follows :
“In my work I have found the means of
creating a monster. The unnatural thing, in
turn, has destroyed my work and those whom
I held dear. It is in vain that I assure myself
of innocence of spirit. Mine is the crime of
presumption. Now, as expiation—worthless
though that may be—I give myself-”
It is better not to think of that last leap, and
the struggle of an insane man in the grip of
the dying monster.