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07 - The Island of Dr Moreau - H G Wells · Adventure Books Library

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  Seven the locked door. The reader will perhaps understand that at first everything was
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  so strange about me, and my position was the outcome of such unexpected adventures,
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  that I had no discernment of the relative strangeness of this or that thing.
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  I followed the lama up the beach and was overtaken by Montgomery, who
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  asked me not to enter the stone enclosure. I noticed then that the puma,
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  in its cage in the pile of packages, had been placed outside the
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  entrance to this quadrangle. I turned and saw that the launch had now been
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  unloaded, run out again, and was being beached, and the white haired
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  man was walking towards us. He addressed Montgomery, and now comes the problem
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  of this uninvited guest. What are we to do with him? He knowed
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  something of ganth, said Montgomery. I'm itching to get to work again with
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  this new stuff, said the white haired man, nodding towards the enclosure.
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  His eyes grew brighter. Ay dare say you are? Said Montgomery, in
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  anything but a cordial tone. We can't send him over there, and we
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  can't spare the time to build him a new shanty, and we certainly can't
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  take him into our confidence. Just yet, I'm in your hands, said
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  I. I had no idea of what he meant by over there. I've
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  been thinking of the same things, Montgomery answered. There's my room with the
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  outer door. That's it, said the elder man, promptly, looking at
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  Montgomery, and all three of us went towards the enclosure. I'm sorry to
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  make a mystery, mister Prendick, but you'll remember you're uninvited. Our little
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  establishment here contains a secret or so, and is kind of a bluebeard's chamber.
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  In fact, nothing very dreadful, really to a sane man. But
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  just now, as we don't know, you decidedly said I, I should
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  be a fool to take offence at any want of confidence. He twisted his
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  heavy mouth into a faint smile. He was one of those saturnine people whose
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  smile with the corners of the mouth down and bowed his acknowledgment of my complaisance.
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  The main entrance to the enclosure was past. It was a heavy wooden
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  gate, framed in iron and locked with the cargo of the launch piled outside
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  it. And at the corner we came to a small doorway. I had
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  not previously observed. The white haired man produced a bundle of keys from the
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  pocket of his greasy blue jacket, opened the door and entered his keys.
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  And the elaborate locking up of the place, even while it was still under
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  his eye, struck me as peculiar. I followed him and found myself in
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  a small apartment, plainly but not uncomfortably furnished, and with its inner door,
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  which was slightly ajar, opening into a paved courtyard. This inner door,
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  Montgomery at once closed. A hammock was slung across the darker corner of
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  the room, and a small unglazed window, defended by an iron bar,
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  looked out towards the sea. This, the white haired man told me,
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  was to be my apartment, and the inner door, which for fear of
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  accidents he said he would lock on the other side, was my limit.
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  Inward, he called my attention to a convenient deck chair before the window,
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  and to an array of old books. Chiefly I found surgical works and additions
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  of the Latin and Greek classics, languages I cannot read with any comfort,
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  on a shelf near the hammock. He left the room by the outer door,
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  as if to avoid opening the inner one again. We usually have our
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  meals in here, said Montgomery, and then, as if in doubt,
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  went out after the other Moreau. I heard him call, and for the
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  moment I do not think I noticed. Then, as I handled the books
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  on the shelf, it came up in consciousness where had I heard the name
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  of Moreau before? I sat down before the window, took out the biscuits
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  that still remained to me and ate them with an excellent appetite Moreau. Through
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  the window, I saw one of those unaccountable men in white, lugging a
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  packing case along the beach. Presently the window frame hid him. Then I
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  heard a key inserted and turned in the lock behind me. After a little
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  while I heard through the locked door the noise of the staghounds that had now
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  been brought up from the beach. They were not barking, but sniffing and
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  growling in a curious fashion. I could hear the rapid patter of their feet,
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  and Montgomery's voice soothing them. I was very much impressed by the elaborate
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  secrecy of these two men regarding the contents of the place, and for some
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  time I was thinking of that, and of the unaccountable familiarity of the name
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  of Moreau. But so odd is the human memory that I could not then
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  recall that well known name in its proper connection. From that, my thoughts
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  went to the indefinable queerness of the deformed man on the beach. I never
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  saw such a gait, such odd motions as he pulled at the I recalled
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  that none of these men had spoken to me, though most of them I
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  had found looking at me one time or another in a peculiarly furtive manner,
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  quite unlike the frank stare of your unsophisticated savage. Indeed, they had all
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  seemed remarkably taciturn, and when they did speak, endowed with very uncanny voices.
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  What was wrong with them? Then? I recalled the eyes of Montgomery's
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  ungainly attendant. Just as I was thinking of him, he came in.
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  He was now dressed in white, and carried a little tray with some coffee
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  and boiled vegetables. Thereon, I could hardly repress a shuddering recoil as he
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  came, bending amiably, and placed the tray before me on the table.
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  Then astonishment paralyzed me. Under his stringy black locks. I saw his ear
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  it jumped upon me suddenly close to my face. The man had pointed ears
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  covered with a fine brown fur Your breakfast, sir, he said. I
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  stared at his face, without attempting to answer him. He turned and went
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  towards the door, regarding me yardly over his shoulder. I followed him out
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  with my eyes, and as I did so, by some odd trick of
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  unconscious cerebration, there came surging into my head the phrase the Moreau hollows.
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  Was it Moreau? Ah? It sent my memory back ten years, the
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  Moreau horrors. The phrase drifted loose in my mind for a moment, and
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  then I saw it in read lettering on a little buff colored pamphlet to read,
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  which made one shiver and creep. Then I remembered distinctly all about it.
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  That long forgotten pamphlet came back with startling vividness to my mind. I
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  had been a mere lad then. And Moreau was I suppose about fifty a
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  prominent and masterful physiologist, well known in scientific circles for his extraordinary imagination and
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  his brutal directness in discussion. Was this the same Moreau? He had published
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  some very astonishing facts in connection with the transfusion of blood and an addition,
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  was known to be doing valuable work on morbid growths. Then suddenly his career
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  was closed. He had to leave England. A journalist obtained access to his
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  laboratory in the capacity of laboratory assistant, with the deliberate intention of making sensational
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  exposures, and by the help of a shocking accident. If it was an
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  accident, his gruesome pamphlet became notorious. On the day of its publication,
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  a wretched dog, flayed and otherwise mutilated, escaped from Moreau's house. It
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  was in the silly season, and a prominent editor, a cousin of the
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  temporary laboratory assistant, appealed to the conscience of the nation. It was not
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  the first time that conscience has turned against the methods of research. The doctor
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  was simply howled out of the country. It may be that he deserved to
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  be, but I still think that the tepid support of his fellow investigators and
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  his desertion by the great body of scientific workers was a shameful thing. Yet
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  some of his experiments, by the journalist's account, were wantonly cruel. He
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  might perhaps have purchased his social peace by abandoning his investigations, but he apparently
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  preferred the latter, as most men would who have once fallen under the overmastering
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  spell of research. He was unmarried, and had indeed nothing but his own
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  interest to consider. I felt convinced that this must be the same man.
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  Everything pointed to it. It dawned upon me to what end the puma and
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  the other animals, which had now been brought with other luggage into the enclosure
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  behind the house, were destined. And a curious, faint odor, the
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  halitus of something familiar, an odor that had been in the background of my
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  consciousness hitherto, suddenly came forward into the forefront of my thoughts. It was
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  the antiseptic odor of the dissecting room. I heard the puma growling through the
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  wall, and one of the dogs yelped as though it had been struck.
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  Yet surely, and especially to another scientific man, there was nothing so horrible
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  in vivisection as to account for this secrecy, And by some odd leap in
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  my thoughts, the pointed ears and luminous eyes of Montgomery's attendant came back again
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  before me with the sharpest definition. I stared before me out at the green
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  sea frothing under a freshening breeze, and let these and other strange memories of
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  the last few days chase one another through my mind. What could it all
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  mean? A locked enclosure on a lonely island, a notorious vivisector, and
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  these crippled and distorted men,