In the gloomy depths of the old warehouse Dale saw a thing that
drew a scream of horror to his dry lips. It was a corpse--the
mold of decay on its long-dead features--and yet it was alive!
It was a corpse, standing before me like some propped-up
thing from the grave.
It was ten o'clock on the morning of December 5 when M. S. and I left
the study of Professor Daimler. You are perhaps acquainted with M. S.
His name appears constantly in the pages of the Illustrated News, in
conjunction with some very technical article on psycho-analysis or with
some extensive study of the human brain and its functions. He is a
psycho-fanatic, more or less, and has spent an entire lifetime of some
seventy-odd years in pulling apart human skulls for the purpose of
investigation. Lovely pursuit!
For some twenty years I have mocked him, in a friendly, half-hearted
fashion. I am a medical man, and my own profession is one that does not
sympathize with radicals.
As for Professor Daimler, the third member of our triangle--perhaps, if
I take a moment to outline the events of that evening, the Professor's
part in what follows will be less obscure. We had called on him, M. S.
and I, at his urgent request. His rooms were in a narrow, unlighted
street just off the square, and Daimler himself opened the door to us. A
tall, loosely built chap he was, standing in the doorway like a
motionless ape, arms half extended.
"I've summoned you, gentlemen," he said quietly, "because you two, of
all London, are the only persons who know the nature of my recent
experiments. I should like to acquaint you with the results!"
He led the way to his study, then kicked the door shut with his foot,
seizing my arm as he did so. Quietly he dragged me to the table that
stood against the farther wall. In the same even, unemotional tone of a
man completely sure of himself, he commanded me to inspect it.
For a moment, in the semi-gloom of the room, I saw nothing. At length,
however, the contents of the table revealed themselves, and I
distinguished a motley collection of test tubes, each filled with some
fluid. The tubes were attached to each other by some ingenious
arrangement of thistles, and at the end of the table, where a chance
blow could not brush it aside, lay a tiny phial of the resulting serum.
From the appearance of the table, Daimler had evidently drawn a certain
amount of gas from each of the smaller tubes, distilling them through
acid into the minute phial at the end. Yet even now, as I stared down at
the fantastic paraphernalia before me, I could sense no conclusive
reason for its existence.
I turned to the Professor with a quiet stare of bewilderment. He smiled.
"The experiment is over," he said. "As to its conclusion, you, Dale, as
a medical man, will be sceptical. And you"--turning to M. S.--"as a
scientist you will be amazed. I, being neither physician nor scientist,
am merely filled with wonder!"
* * * * *
He stepped to a long, square table-like structure in the center of the
room. Standing over it, he glanced quizzically at M. S., then at me.
"For a period of two weeks," he went on, "I have kept, on the table
here, the body of a man who has been dead more than a month. I have
tried, gentlemen, with acid combinations of my own origination, to bring
that body back to life. And ... I have--failed!
"But," he added quickly, noting the smile that crept across my face,
"that failure was in itself worth more than the average scientist's
greatest achievement! You know, Dale, that heat, if a man is not truly
dead, will sometimes resurrect him. In a case of epilepsy, for instance,
victims have been pronounced dead only to return to life--sometimes in
the grave.
"I say 'if a man be not truly dead.' But what if that man _is_ truly
dead? Does the cure alter itself in any manner? The motor of your car
dies--do you bury it? You do not; you locate the faulty part, correct
it, and infuse new life. And so, gentlemen, after remedying the ruptured
heart of this dead man, by operation, I proceeded to bring him back to
life.
"I used heat. Terrific heat will sometimes originate a spark of new life
in something long dead. Gentlemen, on the fourth day of my tests,
following a continued application of electric and acid heat, the
patient--"
Daimler leaned over the table and took up a cigarette. Lighting it, he
dropped the match and resumed his monologue.
"The patient turned suddenly over and drew his arm weakly across his
eyes. I rushed to his side. When I reached him, the body was once again
stiff and lifeless. And--it has remained so."
The Professor stared at us quietly, waiting for comment. I answered him,
as carelessly as I could, with a shrug of my shoulders.
"Professor, have you ever played with the dead body of a frog?" I said
softly.
* * * * *
He shook his head silently.
"You would find it interesting sport," I told him. "Take a common dry
cell battery with enough voltage to render a sharp shock. Then apply
your wires to various parts of the frog's anatomy. If you are lucky, and
strike the right set of muscles, you will have the pleasure of seeing a
dead frog leap suddenly forward. Understand, he will not regain life.
You have merely released his dead muscles by shock, and sent him
bolting."
The Professor did not reply. I could feel his eyes on me, and had I
turned, I should probably had found M. S. glaring at me in honest hate.
These men were students of mesmerism, of spiritualism, and my
commonplace contradiction was not over welcome.
"You are cynical, Dale," said M. S. coldly, "because you do not
understand!"
"Understand? I am a doctor--not a ghost!"
But M. S. had turned eagerly to the Professor.
"Where is this body--this experiment?" he demanded.
Daimler shook his head. Evidently he had acknowledged failure and did
not intend to drag his dead man before our eyes, unless he could bring
that man forth alive, upright, and ready to join our conversation!
"I've put it away," he said distantly. "There is nothing more to be
done, now that our reverend doctor has insisted in making a matter of
fact thing out of our experiment. You understand, I had not intended to
go in for wholesale resurrection, even if I had met with success. It was
my belief that a dead body, like a dead piece of mechanism, can be
brought to life again, provided we are intelligent enough to discover
the secret. And by God, it is _still_ my belief!"
* * * * *
That was the situation, then, when M. S. and I paced slowly back along
the narrow street that contained the Professor's dwelling-place. My
companion was strangely silent. More than once I felt his eyes upon me
in an uncomfortable stare, yet he said nothing. Nothing, that is, until
I had opened the conversation with some casual remark about the lunacy
of the man we had just left.
"You are wrong in mocking him, Dale," M. S. replied bitterly. "Daimler
is a man of science. He is no child, experimenting with a toy; he is a
grown man who has the courage to believe in his powers. One of these
days...."
He had intended to say that some day I should respect the Professor's
efforts. One of these days! The interval of time was far shorter than
anything so indefinite. The first event, with its succeeding series of
horrors, came within the next three minutes.
* * * * *
We had reached a more deserted section of the square, a black,
uninhabited street extending like a shadowed band of darkness between
gaunt, high walls. I had noticed for some time that the stone structure
beside us seemed to be unbroken by door or window--that it appeared to
be a single gigantic building, black and forbidding. I mentioned the
fact to M. S.
"The warehouse," he said simply. "A lonely, God-forsaken place. We shall
probably see the flicker of the watchman's light in one of the upper
chinks."
At his words, I glanced up. True enough, the higher part of the grim
structure was punctured by narrow, barred openings. Safety vaults,
probably. But the light, unless its tiny gleam was somewhere in the
inner recesses of the warehouse, was dead. The great building was like
an immense burial vault, a tomb--silent and lifeless.
We had reached the most forbidding section of the narrow street, where a
single arch-lamp overhead cast a halo of ghastly yellow light over the
pavement. At the very rim of the circle of illumination, where the
shadows were deeper and more silent, I could make out the black
mouldings of a heavy iron grating. The bars of metal were designed, I
believe, to seal the side entrance of the great warehouse from night
marauders. It was bolted in place and secured with a set of immense
chains, immovable.
This much I saw as my intent gaze swept the wall before me. This huge
tomb of silence held for me a peculiar fascination, and as I paced along
beside my gloomy companion, I stared directly ahead of me into the
darkness of the street. I wish to God my eyes had been closed or
blinded!
* * * * *
He was hanging on the grating. Hanging there, with white, twisted hands
clutching the rigid bars of iron, straining to force them apart. His
whole distorted body was forced against the barrier, like the form of a
madman struggling to escape from his cage. His face--the image of it
still haunts me whenever I see iron bars in the darkness of a
passage--was the face of a man who has died from utter, stark horror. It
was frozen in a silent shriek of agony, staring out at me with fiendish
maliciousness. Lips twisted apart. White teeth gleaming in the light.
Bloody eyes, with a horrible glare of colorless pigment. And--_dead_.
I believe M. S. saw him at the very instant I recoiled. I felt a sudden
grip on my arm; and then, as an exclamation came harshly from my
companion's lips, I was pulled forward roughly. I found myself staring
straight into the dead eyes of that fearful thing before me, found
myself standing rigid, motionless, before the corpse that hung within
reach of my arm.
And then, through that overwhelming sense of the horrible, came the
quiet voice of my comrade--the voice of a man who looks upon death as
nothing more than an opportunity for research.
"The fellow has been frightened to death, Dale. Frightened most
horribly. Note the expression of his mouth, the evident struggle to
force these bars apart and escape. Something has driven fear to his
soul, killed him."
* * * * *
I remember the words vaguely. When M. S. had finished speaking, I did
not reply. Not until he had stepped forward and bent over the distorted
face of the thing before me, did I attempt to speak. When I did, my
thoughts were a jargon.
"What, in God's name," I cried, "could have brought such horror to a
strong man? What--"
"Loneliness, perhaps," suggested M. S. with a smile. "The fellow is
evidently the watchman. He is alone, in a huge, deserted pit of
darkness, for hours at a time. His light is merely a ghostly ray of
illumination, hardly enough to do more than increase the darkness. I
have heard of such cases before."
He shrugged his shoulders. Even as he spoke, I sensed the evasion in his
words. When I replied, he hardly heard my answer, for he had suddenly
stepped forward, where he could look directly into those fear twisted
eyes.
"Dale," he said at length, turning slowly to face me, "you ask for an
explanation of this horror? There _is_ an explanation. It is written
with an almost fearful clearness on this fellow's mind. Yet if I tell
you, you will return to your old skepticism--your damnable habit of
disbelief!"
I looked at him quietly. I had heard M. S. claim, at other times, that
he could read the thoughts of a dead man by the mental image that lay on
that man's brain. I had laughed at him. Evidently, in the present
moment, he recalled those laughs. Nevertheless, he faced me seriously.
"I can see two things, Dale," he said deliberately. "One of them is a
dark, narrow room--a room piled with indistinct boxes and crates, and
with an open door bearing the black number 4167. And in that open
doorway, coming forward with slow steps--alive, with arms extended and a
frightful face of passion--is a decayed human form. A corpse, Dale. A
man who has been dead for many days, and is now--_alive_!"
* * * * *
M. S. turned slowly and pointed with upraised hand to the corpse on the
grating.
"That is why," he said simply, "this fellow died from horror."
His words died into emptiness. For a moment I stared at him. Then, in
spite of our surroundings, in spite of the late hour, the loneliness of
the street, the awful thing beside us, I laughed.
He turned upon me with a snarl. For the first time in my life I saw M.
S. convulsed with rage. His old, lined face had suddenly become savage
with intensity.
"You laugh at me, Dale," he thundered. "By God, you make a mockery out
of a science that I have spent more than my life in studying! You call
yourself a medical man--and you are not fit to carry the name! I will
wager you, man, that your laughter is not backed by courage!"
I fell away from him. Had I stood within reach, I am sure he would have
struck me. Struck me! And I have been nearer to M. S. for the past ten
years than any man in London. And as I retreated from his temper, he
reached forward to seize my arm. I could not help but feel impressed at
his grim intentness.
"Look here, Dale," he said bitterly, "I will wager you a hundred pounds
that you will not spend the remainder of this night in the warehouse
above you! I will wager a hundred pounds against your own courage that
you will not back your laughter by going through what this fellow has
gone through. That you will not prowl through the corridors of this
great structure until you have found room 4167--_and remain in that room
until dawn_!"
* * * * *
There was no choice. I glanced at the dead man, at the face of fear and
the clutching, twisted hands, and a cold dread filled me. But to refuse
my friend's wager would have been to brand myself an empty coward. I had
mocked him. Now, whatever the cost, I must stand ready to pay for that
mockery.
"Room 4167?" I replied quietly, in a voice which I made every effort to
control, lest he should discover the tremor in it. "Very well, I will do
it!"
It was nearly midnight when I found myself alone, climbing a musty,
winding ramp between the first and second floors of the deserted
building. Not a sound, except the sharp intake of my breath and the
dismal creak of the wooden stairs, echoed through that tomb of death.
There was no light, not even the usual dim glow that is left to
illuminate an unused corridor. Moreover, I had brought no means of light
with me--nothing but a half empty box of safety matches which, by some
unholy premonition, I had forced myself to save for some future moment.
The stairs were black and difficult, and I mounted them slowly, groping
with both hands along the rough wall.
I had left M. S. some few moments before. In his usual decisive manner
he had helped me to climb the iron grating and lower myself to the
sealed alley-way on the farther side. Then, leaving him without a word,
for I was bitter against the triumphant tone of his parting words, I
proceeded into the darkness, fumbling forward until I had discovered the
open door in the lower part of the warehouse.
And then the ramp, winding crazily upward--upward--upward, seemingly
without end. I was seeking blindly for that particular room which was to
be my destination. Room 4167, with its high number, could hardly be on
the lower floors, and so I had stumbled upward....
* * * * *
It was at the entrance of the second floor corridor that I struck the
first of my desultory supply of matches, and by its light discovered a
placard nailed to the wall. The thing was yellow with age and hardly
legible. In the drab light of the match I had difficulty in reading
it--but, as far as I can remember, the notice went something like this:
WAREHOUSE RULES
1. No light shall be permitted in any room or corridor, as a
prevention against fire.
2. No person shall be admitted to rooms or corridors unless
accompanied by an employee.
3. A watchman shall be on the premises from 7 P.M. until 6 A.M.
He shall make the round of the corridors every hour during that
interval, at a quarter past the hour.
4. Rooms are located by their numbers: the first figure in the
room number indicating its floor location.
I could read no further. The match in my fingers burned to a black
thread and dropped. Then, with the burnt stump still in my hand, I
groped through the darkness to the bottom of the second ramp.
Room 4167, then, was on the fourth floor--the topmost floor of the
structure. I must confess that the knowledge did not bring any renewed
burst of courage! The top floor! Three black stair-pits would lie
between me and the safety of escape. There would be no escape! No human
being in the throes of fear could hope to discover that tortured outlet,
could hope to grope his way through Stygian gloom down a triple ramp of
black stairs. And even though he succeeded in reaching the lower
corridors, there was still a blind alley-way, sealed at the outer end by
a high grating of iron bars....
* * * * *
Escape! The mockery of it caused me to stop suddenly in my ascent and
stand rigid, my whole body trembling violently.
But outside, in the gloom of the street, M. S. was waiting, waiting with
that fiendish glare of triumph that would brand me a man without
courage. I could not return to face him, not though all the horrors of
hell inhabited this gruesome place of mystery. And horrors must surely
inhabit it, else how could one account for that fearful thing on the
grating below? But I had been through horror before. I had seen a man,
supposedly dead on the operating table, jerk suddenly to his feet and
scream. I had seen a young girl, not long before, awake in the midst of
an operation, with the knife already in her frail body. Surely, after
those definite horrors, no _unknown_ danger would send me cringing back
to the man who was waiting so bitterly for me to return.
Those were the thoughts pregnant in my mind as I groped slowly,
cautiously along the corridor of the upper floor, searching each closed
door for the indistinct number 4167. The place was like the center of a
huge labyrinth, a spider-web of black, repelling passages, leading into
some central chamber of utter silence and blackness. I went forward with
dragging steps, fighting back the dread that gripped me as I went
farther and farther from the outlet of escape. And then, after losing
myself completely in the gloom, I threw aside all thoughts of return and
pushed on with a careless, surface bravado, and laughed aloud.
* * * * *
So, at length, I reached that room of horror, secreted high in the
deeper recesses of the deserted warehouse. The number--God grant I never
see it again!--was scrawled in black chalk on the door--4167. I pushed
the half-open barrier wide, and entered.
It was a small room, even as M. S. had forewarned me--or as the dead
mind of that thing on the grate had forewarned M. S. The glow of my
out-thrust match revealed a great stack of dusty boxes and crates, piled
against the farther wall. Revealed, too, the black corridor beyond the
entrance, and a small, upright table before me.
It was the table, and the stool beside it, that drew my attention and
brought a muffled exclamation from my lips. The thing had been thrust
out of its usual place, pushed aside as if some frenzied shape had
lunged against it. I could make out its former position by the marks on
the dusty floor at my feet. Now it was nearer to the center of the room,
and had been wrenched sidewise from its holdings. A shudder took hold of
me as I looked at it. A living person, sitting on the stool before me,
staring at the door, would have wrenched the table in just this manner
in his frenzy to escape from the room!
* * * * *
The light of the match died, plunging me into a pit of gloom. I struck
another and stepped closer to the table. And there, on the floor, I
found two more things that brought fear to my soul. One of them was a
heavy flash-lamp--a watchman's lamp--where it had evidently been
dropped. Been dropped in flight! But what awful terror must have gripped
the fellow to make him forsake his only means of escape through those
black passages? And the second thing--a worn copy of a leather-bound
book, flung open on the boards below the stool!
The flash-lamp, thank God! had not been shattered. I switched it on,
directing its white circle of light over the room. This time, in the
vivid glare, the room became even more unreal. Black walls, clumsy,
distorted shadows on the wall, thrown by those huge piles of wooden
boxes. Shadows that were like crouching men, groping toward me. And
beyond, where the single door opened into a passage of Stygian darkness,
that yawning entrance was thrown into hideous detail. Had any upright
figure been standing there, the light would have made an unholy
phosphorescent specter out of it.
I summoned enough courage to cross the room and pull the door shut.
There was no way of locking it. Had I been able to fasten it, I should
surely have done so; but the room was evidently an unused chamber,
filled with empty refuse. This was the reason, probably, why the
watchman had made use of it as a retreat during the intervals between
his rounds.
But I had no desire to ponder over the sordidness of my surroundings. I
returned to my stool in silence, and stooping, picked up the fallen book
from the floor. Carefully I placed the lamp on the table, where its
light would shine on the open page. Then, turning the cover, I began to
glance through the thing which the man before me had evidently been
studying.
And before I had read two lines, the explanation of the whole horrible
thing struck me. I stared dumbly down at the little book and laughed.
Laughed harshly, so that the sound of my mad cackle echoed in a thousand
ghastly reverberations through the dead corridors of the building.
* * * * *
It was a book of horror, of fantasy. A collection of weird, terrifying,
supernatural tales with grotesque illustrations in funereal black and
white. And the very line I had turned to, the line which had probably
struck terror to that unlucky devil's soul, explained M. S.'s "decayed
human form, standing in the doorway with arms extended and a frightful
face of passion!" The description--the same description--lay before me,
almost in my friend's words. Little wonder that the fellow on the
grating below, after reading this orgy of horror, had suddenly gone mad
with fright. Little wonder that the picture engraved on his dead mind
was a picture of a corpse standing in the doorway of room 4167!
I glanced at that doorway and laughed. No doubt of it, it was that awful
description in M. S.'s untempered language that had made me dread my
surroundings, not the loneliness and silence of the corridors about me.
Now, as I stared at the room, the closed door, the shadows on the wall,
I could not repress a grin.
But the grin was not long in duration. A six-hour siege awaited me
before I could hear the sound of human voice again--six hours of
silence and gloom. I did not relish it. Thank God the fellow before me
had had foresight enough to leave his book of fantasy for my amusement!
* * * * *
I turned to the beginning of the story. A lovely beginning it was,
outlining in some detail how a certain Jack Fulton, English adventurer,
had suddenly found himself imprisoned (by a mysterious black gang of
monks, or something of the sort) in a forgotten cell at the monastery of
El Toro. The cell, according to the pages before me, was located in the
"empty, haunted pits below the stone floors of the structure...." Lovely
setting! And the brave Fulton had been secured firmly to a huge metal
ring set in the farther wall, opposite the entrance.
I read the description twice. At the end of it I could not help but lift
my head to stare at my own surroundings. Except for the location of the
cell, I might have been in they same setting. The same darkness, same
silence, same loneliness. Peculiar similarity!
And then: "Fulton lay quietly, without attempt to struggle. In the dark,
the stillness of the vaults became unbearable, terrifying. Not a
suggestion of sound, except the scraping of unseen rats--"
I dropped the book with a start. From the opposite end of the room in
which I sat came a half inaudible scuffling noise--the sound of hidden
rodents scrambling through the great pile of boxes. Imagination? I am
not sure. At the moment, I would have sworn that the sound was a
definite one, that I had heard it distinctly. Now, as I recount this
tale of horror, I am not sure.
But I am sure of this: There was no smile on my lips as I picked up the
book again with trembling fingers and continued.
"The sound died into silence. For an eternity, the prisoner lay rigid,
staring at the open door of his cell. The opening was black, deserted,
like the mouth of a deep tunnel, leading to hell. And then, suddenly,
from the gloom beyond that opening, came an almost noiseless, padded
footfall!"
* * * * *
This time there was no doubt of it. The book fell from my fingers,
dropped to the floor with a clatter. Yet even through the sound of its
falling, I heard that fearful sound--the shuffle of a living foot! I sat
motionless, staring with bloodless face at the door of room 4167. And as
I stared, the sound came again, and again--_the slow tread of dragging
footsteps, approaching along the black corridor without_!
I got to my feet like an automaton, swaying heavily. Every drop of
courage ebbed from my soul as I stood there, one hand clutching the
table, waiting....
And then, with an effort, I moved forward. My hand was outstretched to
grasp the wooden handle of the door. And--I did not have the courage.
Like a cowed beast I crept back to my place and slumped down on the
stool, my eyes still transfixed in a mute stare of terror.
I waited. For more than half an hour I waited, motionless. Not a sound
stirred in the passage beyond that closed barrier. Not a suggestion of
any living presence came to me. Then, leaning back against the wall with
a harsh laugh, I wiped away the cold moisture that had trickled over my
forehead into my eyes.
It was another five minutes before I picked up the book again. You call
me a fool for continuing it? A fool? I tell you, even a story of horror
is more comfort than a room of grotesque shadows and silence. Even a
printed page is better than grim reality!
* * * * *
And so I read on. The story was one of suspense, madness. For the next
two pages I read a cunning description of the prisoner's mental
reaction. Strangely enough, it conformed precisely with my own.
"Fulton's head had fallen to his chest," the script read. "For an
endless while he did not stir, did not dare to lift his eyes. And then,
after more than an hour of silent agony and suspense, the boy's head
came up mechanically. Came up--and suddenly jerked rigid. A horrible
scream burst from his dry lips as he stared--stared like a dead man--at
the black entrance to his cell. There, standing without motion in the
opening, stood a shrouded figure of death. Empty eyes, glaring with
awful hate, bored into his own. Great arms, bony and rotten, extended
toward him. Decayed flesh--"
I read no more. Even as I lunged to my feet, with that mad book still
gripped in my hand, I heard the door of my room grind open. I screamed,
screamed in utter horror at the thing I saw there. Dead? Good God, I do
not know. It was a corpse, a dead human body, standing before me like
some propped-up thing from the grave. A face half eaten away, terrible
in its leering grin. Twisted mouth, with only a suggestion of lips,
curled back over broken teeth. Hair--writhing, distorted--like a mass of
moving, bloody coils. And its arms, ghastly white, bloodless, were
extended toward me, with open, clutching hands.
* * * * *
It was alive! Alive! Even while I stood there, crouching against the
wall, it stepped forward toward me. I saw a heavy shudder pass over it,
and the sound of its scraping feet burned its way into my soul. And
then, with its second step, the fearful thing stumbled to its knees. The
white, gleaming arms, thrown into streaks of living fire by the light of
my lamp, flung violently upwards, twisting toward the ceiling. I saw the
grin change to an expression of agony, of torment. And then the thing
crashed upon me--dead.
With a great cry of fear I stumbled to the door. I groped out of that
room of horror, stumbled along the corridor. No light. I left it behind,
on the table, to throw a circle of white glare over the decayed,
living-dead intruder who had driven me mad.
My return down those winding ramps to the lower floor was a nightmare of
fear. I remember that I stumbled, that I plunged through the darkness
like a man gone mad. I had no thought of caution, no thought of anything
except escape.
And then the lower door, and the alley of gloom. I reached the grating,
flung myself upon it and pressed my face against the bars in a futile
effort to escape. The same--as the fear-tortured man--who had--come
before--me.
I felt strong hands lifting me up. A dash of cool air, and then the
refreshing patter of falling rain.
* * * * *
It was the afternoon of the following day, December 6, when M. S. sat
across the table from me in my own study. I had made a rather hesitant
attempt to tell him, without dramatics and without dwelling on my own
lack of courage, of the events of the previous night.
"You deserved it, Dale," he said quietly. "You are a medical man,
nothing more, and yet you mock the beliefs of a scientist as great as
Daimler. I wonder--do you still mock the Professor's beliefs?"
"That he can bring a dead man to life?" I smiled, a bit doubtfully.
"I will tell you something, Dale," said M. S. deliberately. He was
leaning across the table, staring at me. "The Professor made only one
mistake in his great experiment. He did not wait long enough for the
effect of his strange acids to work. He acknowledged failure too soon,
and got rid of the body." He paused.
"When the Professor stored his patient away, Dale," he said quietly, "he
stored it in room 4170, at the great warehouse. If you are acquainted
with the place, you will know that room 4170 is directly across the
corridor from 4167."
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