The House on the Strand Read Free Page B

trees. Was the whole thing hallucination engendered by that hell-brew of a drug? As I wandered, mug in hand, through to the library, the telephone started to ring again. I suspected it might be Magnus, and it was. His voice, clipped and decisive as always, stood me in greater stead than the drink I could not have, or the mug of tea. I flung myself down in a chair and prepared for a session.
    "I've been ringing you for hours," he said. "Had you forgotten you promised to put through a call at half-past three?"
    I had not forgotten, I told him. "The fact is, I was otherwise engaged."
    "So I imagined. Well?"
    The moment was one to savour. I wished I could keep him guessing. The thought gave me a pleasing sensation of power, but it was no use, I knew I had to tell him.
    "It worked," I said. "Success one hundred per cent." I realised, from the silence at the other end of the line, that this piece of information was totally unexpected. He had visualised failure. His voice, when it came, was pitched in a lower key, almost as though he were talking to himself.
    "I can hardly believe it," he said. "How absolutely splendid." And then, taking charge, as always, "You did exactly as I told you, followed the instructions? Tell me everything, from the beginning... Wait, though, are you all right?"
    "Yes," I said, "I think so, except that I feel bloody tired, and I've cut my hand, and I was nearly sick in the boiler-room."
    "Minor matters, dear boy, minor matters. There's often a feeling of nausea afterwards, it soon passes. Go on."
    His impatience fed my own excitement, and I wished he had been in the room beside me instead of three hundred miles away.
    "First of all," I said, enjoying myself, "I've seldom seen anything more macabre than your so-called lab. Bluebeard's chamber would be an apter description for it. All those embryos in jars, and that revolting monkey's head.."
    "Perfectly good specimens and extremely valuable," he interrupted, "but don't get side-tracked. I know what they are for: you don't. Tell me what happened."
    I took a sip of my rapidly cooling tea, and put down the mug.
    "I found the row of bottles," I continued, "all in the locked cupboard. Neatly labelled, A, B, C. I poured exactly three measures from A into the medicine-glass, and that was that. I swallowed it, replaced the bottle and glass, locked the cupboard, locked the lab, and waited for something to happen. Well, nothing did." I paused, to let this information sink in. No comment from Magnus.
    "So," I went on, "I went into the garden. Still no reaction. You told me the time factor varied, that it could be three minutes, five, ten, before anything happened. I expected to feel drowsy, although you hadn't specifically mentioned drowsiness, but as nothing seemed to be happening I thought I would go for a stroll. So I climbed over the wall by the summer-house into the field, and began to walk in the direction of the cliffs."
    "You damn fool," he said. "I told you to stay in the house, at any rate for the first experiment."
    "I know you did. But, frankly, I wasn't expecting it to work. I planned to sit down, if it did, and drift off into some delightful—"
    "Damn fool," he said again. "It doesn't happen that way."
    "I know it doesn't, now," I said.
    Then I described my whole experience, from the moment the drug took effect to the smashing of the glass in the basement kitchen. He did not interrupt me at all except to murmur, when I paused for breath and a sip of tea, "Go on.. go on.."
    When I had finished, including the aftermath in the boiler-room, there was complete silence, and I thought we had been cut off. "Magnus," I said, "are you there?"
    His voice came back to me, clear and strong, repeating the same words that he had used at the start of our telephone session.
    "How splendid," he said. "How absolutely splendid. Perhaps..." The truth was that I was completely drained, exhausted, having been through the whole process twice.
    He began to talk rapidly, and I