Help via Ko-Fi
The secret of gland control lay in the Para Röntgen rays, of that Harley Gale was certain. Faced with failure, he hit upon a brilliant idea to create a gland champion
By ED EARL REPP
CHAPTER I
Splendid Savage
PROFESSOR GALE led the way onto the thread-like catwalk that arched above the crouching mass of machinery. Close behind him came Perrin, gripping the guard rails tightly as though a little nervous. The four others, members of the Board of Directors, like Perrin, followed gingerly. Step by step they inched their way out over the great electrical monsters, vigilant of their every move, lest they slip and hurtle into eternity on the web of high power wires that formed a veritable net over the dynamos.
Into the middle of the swaying walk they made their way, then stopped. The tall, slightly bowed scientist gestured at the humming machinery.
"You see, I haven't been loafing on the job," he smiled briefly. "This little outlay here represents fifteen months of planning."
His short, white smock hung loosely from his lean shoulders. Professor Harley Gale looked like the shrewd scientist he was, from the top of his intellectual forehead to his perpetually unpolished shoes. His face was that of a scholar, his hands those of the artist, his unpressed clothes those of a man who has more to think of than appearances. His gaunt, intense face reflected the keenness of the mind behind it.
As he watched the heavy-browed, red face of the shorter man, his electric blue eyes were anxious. The effect of all this on Professor Perrin meant much to him.
After a moment in which his yellowish, puffy eyes flicked over the scene below, Perrin said sarcastically, "Very pretty. What does it do—supply the city with power?" His thick, protruding lips smirked unpleasantly. Before Gale could answer, he turned around and said suggestively, "Shall we go back, gentlemen?"
The other four men started mincing their way back across the slender steel arch in response to his words, all of them smiling at his evaluation of Gale's work.
Disappointment was plain in the professor's face as he followed. He was staking everything on this visit from Professor Perrin and his satellites of the Board.
Gale would have given ten years of his life for a private fortune at this stage of his career, but his means were limited indeed. For twenty years he had served as head of the Bio-Chemistry department of the Mellon Institute, drawing a yearly salary of five thousand dollars. Not a paltry sum, but only a drop in the bucket to a man engaged in work as expensive as Gale's.
Here in the laboratory of the Institute his every request for money was bickered over. The practical members of the Board, most of them men who knew so little about science that they thought a retort was a quick reply, could see no farther than the end of their purse-strings. They were, first and last, business men. Had they only possessed the foresight that Gale did, they might have seen the untold benefits that humanity would one day receive from his work.
At the end of the hall Professor Gale threw open the door to the laboratory and showed the five men in.
The white-walled room was nearly forty feet square, with a great, domed ceiling of translucent glass. The whole of the interior was suffused with a gentle, indirect light which filtered through the semi-opaque dome. At the left of the door was a compact battery of great vacuum tubes arranged so that they gave the appearance of the graded pipes of an organ. The smallest of the gleaming tubes was over four feet high, the largest reaching nearly to the ceiling.
STRAIGHT across from the door the entire wall curved outward in a semi-circle. The space thus provided was transformed into a raised stage. The stage was bare except for two large objects. One was a porcelain operating table, and the other, stationed at the end of the table, was a six-feet-tall pyramid of frosted glass. From the top of the pyramid protruded a long, crane-like arm.
Perrin, his fat lips pursed, sized the place up with a jaundiced eye. It was the first time he had visited the laboratory in months, ever since the last application for an appropriation.
"Very impressive," he grunted. "What's this supposed to do—put the Rockefeller Foundation to shame?"
Short, bald, dark-spectacled Doctor Lanton grinned at the Head's humor. The coat encasing his portly body was unbuttoned and his groaning vest, sporting a scalloped effect down the front where his fat stomach pulled open the spaces between buttons seemed about to fly apart.
Behind him cadaverous Henry Gauntt glanced bleakly about the room. His bald head and white face, completely hairless, gleamed like the porcelain operating table, making his blue eyes glitter like chips of glacial ice.
An angry retort surged up within the scientist. With a great effort he forced it down and managed a smile.
"No," he assured them, "it's all necessary—every bit of it. The work I've been doing here could easily use twice as much space and keep ten men busy."
Perrin's coarse features looked dubious at the statement. Then he snapped, "Well, suppose you get down to business, Gale. Just what have you discovered that entitles you to anything over the thousand a month your department is allowed?"
Harley Gale gestured at the row of chairs before the little stage. "If you gentlemen will have seats, I'll show you the work I'm doing. I'm sure you'll realize the tremendous importance of it." Fortunately, they missed the sarcasm behind his words.
As the shaggy-headed Perrin lowered himself into a chair, Professor Gale walked to the stage and went up the four steps to the platform. While the members of the Board took seats, he hurriedly moved a wooden box-and-chute arrangement from off-stage to the end of the operating table, placing the upper end of the chute against the table. It appeared as though whatever subject Gale intended to use on the table could be slid down the chute into the barred cage when he had finished with it.
Now he stepped through a door at the side for a moment and returned carrying a small, black-and-white tom cat. It was a sickly, scrawny specimen of the ordinary back-alley variety. He placed it on the table and turned to his small audience.
Five pairs of eyes glared coldly at him. Nordstrum—blond, blocky-headed efficiency expert—leaned back and tapped his thumb nail against his square front teeth. At the end of the row hunched little Matthew Smollett, wizened, acid of expression.
Gale clenched his fists and prepared for the fight he knew was coming. With a determined effort to break down their prejudice, he said earnestly, "I don't need to tell you men what a tremendous power for good or evil the ductless glands are in the body. You've all seen those pathetic specimens, victims of over-or under-activity of the pituitary, the thyroid, or some other of the endocrine glands. Gigantic, soft-boned bodies; beetling brows; thick, brutish features. Or the other extreme, roly-poly bodies of pure fat, and puerile, idiotic faces. Dolicocephalics, cretins, eunuchs—oh, the list is endless. My work for the last six years has been dedicated to the salvation of these unfortunate monsters."
"What are you trying to tell us?" put in Perrin angrily. "You don't have any wild ideas about fooling with the endocrines!"
"That's just the wild idea I do have," Gale snapped. He fought down the impatience that beat up in him. "Did it ever occur to you to wonder why we haven't been able to work safely with these glands? Simply because we go at it with strong substances like pituitrin. Why, it's like trying to repair a watch with blacksmith's tools."
"And how do you propose to do it?" Gauntt challenged.
Gale darted a look at him that was both pitying and disdainful. "With light rays," he said simply. "And I don't propose to do it; I have already done it on animals!"
Perrin's face was blank, then incredulous; and finally, perforce, cynical. "You're prepared to demonstrate?" he snapped.
Gale nodded. "If you'll have the patience to wait, I'll show you what I'm talking about."
PROFESSOR PERRIN looked startled at the abrupt acceptance of his challenge. The eyes of the group went to the mysterious, glass shielded apparatus the scientist was working with now. Gale swung the long arm that extended over the table into position above the head of it. At the end of the arm was a device something like one of the peanut butter dispensing machines seen in delicatessens. The bottom of the funnel was a lens of sapphire-quartz, and below this, inside a four-inch "pipe" of quartz glass, were stationed refractors.
Gale threw in the knife switch that controlled the apparatus. A subdued humming arose. A weird, purple glow lighted up the frosted glass sides of the machine. Across the room the huge tubes sprang into life, casting their green glow over the white walls. He commenced to adjust the refraction system suspended over the cat.
While he worked, he explained: "These complicated refractors you are probably wondering about perform the work of 'mixing' certain rays that I am employing here. The Röntgen ray and infra-red ray are the primary ones. The ray that results might be called the para-Röntgen' ray, for it is infinitely more penetrating than the Röntgen ray—or the X-ray, as it is called. The difficult part of my job has been to find a glass capable of withstanding the terrific heat produced when these rays are condensed to the concentration I must have.
"This heat is hard for me to explain without going into it deeply. A It seems as though a certain sort of 'light pressure' is created as the light passes through the refractors. Unfortunately, the glass I am using here is only partly successful. However, gentlemen—" he glanced up at them suddenly, "I have been able to achieve something science has failed to do ever since the endocrines were discovered. If you will watch..."
He broke off and threw in another switch. From the bottom of the urn-shaped machine shot a wide column of light that entered the glass pipe.
As it descended, shuttling back and forth through prisms and lenses, it narrowed successively, until finally, as it emerged, it was a solid scarlet thread, as opaque as steel.
Gale focussed the ray upon the base of the animal's brain, over the pituitary gland. Then he twisted the rheostat until a half charge of the para-Röntgen ray was entering the cat's body. The light appeared like a solid needle of ruby glass driven into the animal's brain. Still the cat seemed oblivious of the process.
For about five minutes the treatment went on. Then Gale reached for the rheostat and sent the full charge of the ray burning down onto the kitten. The crackling of generators became loud in the room, a sharp overtone to the humming of giant transformers.
Abruptly, Professor Perrin lurched from his chair, his florid face becoming the color of tallow. "My God, Gale!" he cried. "That cat's growing!"
CHAPTER II
Wanted—A Champion!
WITH a scuffling of feet and a clatter of chairs shoved back, the five men crowded to the platform and ringed the operating table. It was true—the kitten had suddenly commenced to grow longer and heavier! Before their eyes Gale was creating a monstrous feline from what had been, only a moment earlier, a tiny kitten.
For another minute the scientist bent over his equipment, his glittering eyes burning onto the spot of glowing red on the back of the animal's head. His forehead glistened with sweat. The cat was fully a foot and a half now, and still growing. When finally he turned off the current, the animal was over two feet long. To all appearances, it was nothing but a strangely marked mountain lion. And yet only a moment ago it had been a small alley-cat!
Harley Gale grasped the switches hurriedly and pulled them out. The room was deathly quiet as the humming and crackling trailed off. He tilted one end of the operating table and sent the brute sliding down the chute into the cage, then slammed the lid shut.
He poked a finger at it. In a flash the cat was screaming in insane rage and tearing savagely at the bars. Its mad caterwauling echoed horribly through the big room as it fought the bars in a frenzy. The creature's eyes were like saucers of green fire. Its fangs clashed against the iron bars as it tried to mangle them.
Gale stepped back and sponged his brow with a handkerchief. As the others turned amazed faces to him, he let his long arms drop to his sides. "And there, gentlemen," he said quietly, "I am stopped."
Not a sound broke the awed silence. Every man of the Board of Directors was shocked, for once, out of his studied cynicism.
"Matter from energy!" gasped Gauntt. "How—?"
"Artificial fixation1, directly from the air," said Gale quietly.
1: It is an accepted universal law that nothing is lost in the universe, but merely undergoes change. The combustion of matter produces energy, heat, light, etc. Conversely energy can be re-converted into matter, which is what Professor Gale does here. The added mass of the cat is derived from the powerful stream of electronic pouring its electrons into the formulation and fixation of matter. Nature does this in the action of plants, transforming nitrogen into proteins. Man does it in the laboratory in several ways, notably the well-known Haber process, which utilizes pure nitrogen and hydrogen and with the action of a catalyst, uranium, osmium, or platinum, producing ammonia and in another step, nitric acid, by the Ostwald process.-Ed.
"Amazing!" breathed the board-member.
"I have created a splendid savage," the scientist went on, "but I can do nothing to remedy the horrible distortions man is subject to because of unruly glands. I can cause growth, as in this case, but that is all. My para-Röntgen ray is strong enough to penetrate only to the outer layer of the glands. To reach the delicate inner parts of them, and thus to cure the various diseases, I must have one thing more. Before I tell you what that is, let me show you something."
Wordlessly, they followed him into the subject room that opened off the stage. The room was at the end of a short hall. It was a narrow room, only six feet wide and about fifteen feet long. The walls of it were lined with cages.
Professor Gale went to a large cage about ten feet tall and correspondingly heavy. A shaggy gorilla came to the front of it and stared out at them. There was something odd about the animal, some expression in the eyes that caused a puzzled frown to crease the men's foreheads.
Gale turned to Perrin. "What species would you say this is?" he asked.
"Why—the ordinary gorilla," the director replied.
Gale shook his head. "That animal is a chimpanzee," he announced quietly. "Formerly it was about three feet tall. Its strength now is approximately twice that of an ordinary ape."
He shrugged, as looks of surprise crossed their faces; "Unfortunately," he went on, "it is simply one more evidence of my failure. I was trying to cure the creature of a thyroidal disorder, a soft-boned condition. I failed. It has been made into a giant, but its bones are still as soft as chalk."
HE led them past cages crowded with unearthly creatures that brought startled gasps from the Directors. Rabbits as large as sheep; mongrel dogs the size of Saint Bernards; canaries whose beaks could have crushed walnuts; and a large, glass-lidded box full of such things as a foot-long grasshopper, a flea as big as an armadillo, and mice the size of puppies.
When all the subjects had been exhibited, he turned suddenly to the men. His eyes bored into theirs with a challenge. "To continue my work I must have more money. You are allowing me a thousand a month. I—I need more than that."
Perrin snorted, "How much more?"
Gale hesitated a moment, then replied quietly, "Two thousand dollars. A total of three thousand a month."
Henry Gauntt started, gasped, "Three thousand dollars! Why—it's preposterous! "
"But realize the value of the invention!" Gale defended hurriedly. "In the first year alone the discovery will at least double the money you put into it! There should be a number of wealthy men who'd be eager to put up the extra money on your advice. And aside from that, think of the inestimable good we can do for a suffering world."
"Do I understand," Perrin put in acidly, "that you intend to perform this experiment on human beings?"
"Exactly," Gale snapped. "How else can I demonstrate its worth?"
Perrin clenched his fists. "Professor Gale," he said flatly, "it is my earnest wish that you forget this unholy discovery of yours! It is unthinkable that an experiment such as that should take place in the Mellon Institute!" He turned to the others. "Do I speak for you gentlemen?" There were nods of agreement.
"You're refusing me the chance to develop my discovery?" Gale asked angrily. "The chance to learn the secret medical men have—"
Wizened little Matthew Smollett cut in, "I can see no practical value in these brutes of yours. Freaks. Nothing more."
"But think!" the scientist implored. "I am only one step from the greatest scientific discovery of the ages! For a sum that will later seem paltry..."
"Your experiments have cost the Institute a small fortune already," Perrin interrupted him. He turned and jerked his head toward the door. As the others moved away, he fixed his puffy eyes on the scientist once more. "I must ask you not to let word of this get. to the newspapers. It is our policy to avoid'—sensationalism!" He turned his fat back on Gale and walked after the others.
For a long time after they left, the professor still stood in his subject room staring at the open door. Somehow his mind refused to give credence to the denouncement of his discovery. It was unbelievable that such short-sightedness could exist. At last he went back to the laboratory and put things away. Despondently he left the building and drove home.
The green shrubbery of spring seemed a dull gray to him, for his spirits colored everything with his own discouragement. To be so close to the fulfillment of his dreams and yet to be a million miles from it. At that moment he hated Perrin and the others as he never knew he could hate anyone.
At his little cottage he prepared his lonely supper and ate with small appetite. His thoughts constantly recurred to the brutal reception he had been given. He knew that there were dozens of men who would be eager to help, and yet with Perrin's denunciation saddled on him, these men would not even give him a hearing. How such a bigot as the Head of the Board had got into the open-minded Mellon Institute, he could not imagine. At last, to take his mind off his troubles, he propped his evening paper open and began to read as he ate.
Disinterestedly, he turned the pages. All at once he frowned. His mild eyes looked interested. And then, suddenly, he grabbed the paper and held it with both fists. His eyes burned with a feverish light as he scanned the black banner line spread across the sports page:
"Heavyweight Champion Joe Bannock Collects $1,000,000 for Thirty Minutes' Work!"
One million dollars!
THE words pounded at his brain, staggered him with the import of what he had read. He surged to his feet and let the paper fall to the floor, while he stared straight across the room. For his brain had telegraphed to him, in the instant he scanned those words, a statement he had read long ago. A prophecy by a prominent boxing expert who had said: "If only a clever lightweight could be suddenly transformed to the size of a heavyweight, and yet retain his agility and his hair-trigger mind, he could undoubtedly have the championship of the world without working up a good sweat."
Gale's mind echoed, "A clever lightweight transformed to a heavyweight." Suddenly he kicked the chair back and strode away. His eyes were glassily bright as he exulted, "I'll do it! I'll make a superman no one can beat. I'll build my own champion! A gland champion!"
The way out of his difficulties had opened up. If he could get some obscure prizefighter to submit to the operation, the process would render him, like the ape, tremendously powerful, but otherwise exactly the same. He would have more than the strength of a heavyweight but the nimbleness and alert brain of a small, clever man. The winnings would be unlimited, for such a fighter would be invincible. And half that money would be Gale's! That money would enable him to continue his work.
The way was fraught with danger, but at least it was a way, if only he could find a man willing to undergo the operation. The whole thing would be done without anyone's knowing of his connection with it. And Professor Perrin and his supercilious satellites would be shown up for the bigots they were!
For a week Gale visited the different gymnasiums where, for a small sum, prizefighters could work out and find others willing to go a few rounds with them. The warm odors of sweat and leather and liniment were familiar to him, for he had been an athlete himself when he was in college. He still had a tiny pair of gold gloves signifying that he had won the intercollegiate light heavyweight championship during his last year at Columbia. He found that the knowledge he had picked up so long ago was serving him in good stead now.
At first the different fighters all blurred into a succession of very similar faces and form. Then, from the dozens he watched fight, several began to stand out. He got to know all the "comers" and many of the has-beens at sight. There was one young fighter particular who caught his eye.
He was not over twenty-five, and had a clean-limbed build and a clever, effective style. He was as deceptive and quick as a bantam-weight. Gale frequently saw him feint a larger man out of position by nimble footwork, and then move in and tag him twice before his opponent knew what had happened. Hitting him, Gale heard a battered sparring partner mutter, was like swatting flies with an unstrung tennis racket.
And yet Gale had never seen him win from a really good heavyweight. The thing that held him back was obvious: the top-ranking heavies were simply too tough for him. He was too big for the lightweight class, too small for' the heavyweights. Professor Gale had seen others like Wade Henry. All of them had ended up as sparring partners before very long.
Finally, one day, while Henry was working out with another fighter, he approached his trainer and gave him an envelope to be delivered to the young fighter. Inside it was a twenty-dollar bill and a short note asking him to come to the laboratory at nine that night. Gale left before the note was delivered.
At nine-fifteen that evening a knock came on the outside door of the laboratory. The scientist hurried to open it. As the light from the interior flowed over the visitor, Gale knew his note had been honored. Wade Henry's brown, ruggedly-handsome face peered in at him. Quickly he showed him in and preceded him to the laboratory.
AS he looked him over in the light, he knew he had picked a good subject for the experiment—if only the fighter was willing. He had an intelligent, alert face and the lithe tread that bespeaks the natural athlete.
Inside the big room, Henry turned to Gale. "I got your note and the twenty bucks," he said. "What's the catch?"
"There's no catch," Gale hastened to assure him. "The reason I sent for you is that I'm looking for a man to build into the heavyweight champion of the world, and I think you're it!"
"Me?" The blue eyes under the slightly battered brows were amused. "You picked the wrong man, pal. I ain't got the weight to stand up against the big boys."
"No, but if you did have—" Gale put in eagerly. "I've watched you fight, and I think if you weighed forty or fifty pounds more and were correspondingly powerful, you could lick them all!"
A low laugh broke from the fighter's lips. "Sure. An' if I weighed four hundred pounds I could probably take 'em on five at a time. The only trouble is—I don't."
Gale could scarcely repress his eagerness as he sought for words to explain his proposition. If he simply blurted out the story Wade Henry would think he was crazy. Finally he began, "I've got some interesting subjects" in 'the other room that I'd_ like to show you. After you see them, I think you'll be able to understand what I'm trying to tell you a little better."
The prize-fighter was mildly interested in the collection, but apparently saw nothing unusual in it. But when Gale informed him that every animal and insect in it had been expanded to at least three times its original size, he was amazed and incredulous.
"You mean that gorilla's really a chimp!" he snorted. "It ain't possible."
"But it is," the scientist said earnestly. "Come back in the lab and I'll let you see for yourself."
Eagerly he led the way back and secured another hybrid alley cat on which to perform the experiment. All went well. At the end of eight minutes the animal was in a cage snarling and spitting its rage at the world.
"Geez!" Henry gasped. "Am I seein' things?"
"All you're seeing," the professor said, "is the way I could build you into a two hundred and fifty pound fighter."
Henry stared, his mouth hanging open.
"This is the whole story," the scientist explained earnestly. "I'll tell you everything from start to finish, and then you can make up your mind."
For several minutes he explained, leaving out nothing. At last he concluded, "From your viewpoint, there is absolutely no drawback at all. You will become bigger and more powerful and you'll be just as fast on your feet and as clever as you are now. The money you win will be divided fifty-fifty. In a year's time I think we can make a million dollars—five hundred thousand apiece. What's more, you'll be heavyweight champion of the world!"
"Five hundred thousand bucks!" Wade Henry walked off slowly, rubbing the back of his neck with his palm. "And heavyweight champion of the world." Abruptly, he turned and walked back, stuck out his hand. "It's a deal, Professor! I got nothin' to lose, an' a lot to win. When do we start?"
"Right now!" Gale snapped.
"Henry, you're going to do more than just win the title. You're going to give me the means of doing for mankind the greatest thing that has ever been done in medicine! You're going to be the first laboratory-constructed champion in history!"
CHAPTER III
One Punch Hogan
PROFESSOR GALE'S fellow faculty members wondered what had happened to him to 'make him cool off so suddenly on his laboratory work.
A certain sports editor, Howard Macklin, could have told them. He, too, was startled one evening when, in response to a call from Gale, he came to his little place in the suburbs. He and the scientist had been team-mates back in 1912, on the college boxing team. Since then their paths had gone different ways, but still they kept in touch with each other sporadically.
In the small building he had constructed behind his house, Harley Gale exhibited his compact gymnasium and then called in his fighter. Macklin's florid face was startled when he saw the magnificent specimen that came from a back room.
Wade Henry could never have been recognized as the underweight heavy of a few weeks before. He stood six-feet-six and had shoulders that could barely be squeezed through a doorway. As he stood by the two men, he looked down at them as though on children. His chest bulged with hard, symmetrical muscles and his flat diaphragm was ridged with stomach muscles that stood out like the lines of a washboard. When he walked, his bronzed skin rippled with the firm sinews beneath it." In trunks and boxing shoes he looked like some Greek statue come to life.
"Great guns!" the newspaperman gasped. "Where did you find him?"
"Just a—a discovery of mine," Gale replied enigmatically. "One Punch Hogan, he calls himself. Watch those muscles of his as he punches the bag. You'll see where he gets the name."
The giant prizefighter paused to shake hands with the sports editor. Macklin winced and nursed his hand as the boxer walked off to the bag. "One Punch" Hogan hadn't quite learned his own strength yet....
Hogan pulled on his light training gloves and experimentally tapped the bag. Then his big shoulders went into lazy action and the gloves began rhythmically drumming the bag. He seemed to put forth utterly no effort at all, and yet the bag thundered against the iron rim of the standard as though it were being punished. After a minute of steady punching he drove a long, slow punch at the vibrating bag, his back muscles standing out sharply. With a loud "bang" it was split open!
Macklin gasped. Before he could say anything, Hogan grinned and walked to the long, leather sand-bag and commenced sinking light blows into it, at the same time feinting and weaving before it with the agility of a featherweight. The thudding of his gloved fists on the hard surface of the bag showed the force with which it was being struck. Abruptly, the fighter squared off as though he were toe to toe with a real opponent, and began throwing hard blows. The two hundred and fifty pound bag bounced repeatedly from the shock of the punches. Then there was a particularly loud thump, a ripping sound, and a cascade of sand streamed onto the floor from the split open sand-bag. A blow that would have broken an ordinary man's fist had smashed the hard-packed leather sack!
"Why—why, that boy's got the strength of a bull!" Macklin gasped. "He's a coming champ, or I miss my guess."
"That's why I called for you," Gale said. "To build him up the way he should be, I'll need a lot of publicity."
"You mean you're managing him?" the editor asked. "Thought you were a scientific man?"
"Ordinarily I am, but this is a chance I can't resist. There's one favor I want to ask of you, however. The faculty at the Institute would throw a fit if they knew what I was doing. If you can help me out by simply saying that Hogan's manager is 'Jack Burns,' I'll be eternally grateful."
"Well—it's a funny thing for a man with a fighter like this not to want publicity, but if that's how you want it—okay."
Appreciation warmed Gale's eyes. He said impulsively, "I knew I could count on you, Macklin. If ever I can help you...."
MACKLIN waved his cigar in the air. "Glad to do it," he said. "My prediction is that in six months you'll both be in the money. In a year, if your boy's got the brains to match his body, maybe a shot at the crown!"
One year! The words pounded through the scientist's brain as his friend turned to go. One year until he would have the means of finishing his work. That year would be the greatest gamble, perhaps, that any man had ever made, but the prize in the game was worth the risk.
The muted roar of the crowd was a far-away clamor in the little underground dressing room. It brought a touch of unreality to the whole, unearthly affair. It was difficult for Gale to believe that up there, in the American Legion Stadium of Detroit, thousands of men and women were waiting to see his man emerge from the tunnel and climb through the ropes.
But the big scrapbook on the battered training table formed a tangible bridge between unreality and truth. Gale's eyes flicked rapidly over the pages. Headlines and pictures, paragraphs clipped from sports writers' columns. "One Punch Hogan Floors Mickey Ryan in First!" "Larenti Takes Count in First Round as Hogan Tallies Sixth Straight Win!" "Odds Give Hogan Ten-to-One Over Buddy Mack!" And on the last used page of the book, a recent headline: "One Punch Hogan's Fifteenth Straight Kayo Earns Shot at Title!"
Fifteen fights—fifteen knockouts in the first round. It told a story the sports world was going crazy over. Fortunes had been made and lost in bets on the mysterious giant. And in the bank were two fortunes that Professor Gale had saved from their earnings. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars apiece, waiting for them. It needed only tonight's million-dollar purse to complete the sum he needed. After income tax deductions and the hundred other deductions, he would still have what he needed to finish his work uninterrupted.
Beside Gale, on the table, lay an open newspaper that told the rest of the story. The headline read: "Champion Joe Bannock Defends Title Against Hogan Tonight!"
A shadow of anxiety clouded the scientist's eyes as he looked away from the paper. The magnitude of it had suddenly come home to him. Never before had he realized how big a thing he had plunged into. But when he thought it out coolly, he knew there was nothing to worry about. With a small exception, Hogan was absolutely normal. The only difference he had discovered was that he was more than ordinarily susceptible to suggestion. Still, that was no drawback. It only made it more certain that he would keep to the terms of their agreement.
He started, as a knock came on the door. Someone called, "Five minutes, Mr. Burns!"
"Coming!" Gale replied. He was startled at the strangeness of his own voice. Now Wade Henry stood up and rubbed his bandaged hands together. He appeared as unconcerned over it as the scientist was worried.
"One sock is all I'll need," he promised. "I'll put Bannock away inside of a minute." He tugged the cord of his dressing robe tighter. His huge shoulders bulged massively under the blue cloth. There was not an ounce of excess weight on his body tonight; he was trained to a hair. His rock-hard body was tanned, and the skin ?rm over tough, resilient muscles.
"I'm afraid it won't be so easy as that," Gale reminded him. "Bannock is nearly as big as you are and he's smart. Not only smart, but not quite as clean a fighter as he might be."
"He won't try any of his stuff tonight," the boxer frowned. "There's too big a crowd and too darned smart a referee. I think it'll be a pushover, myself." i
Gale sighed, "I hope you're right. If we lose tonight it will throw everything off indefinitely. Bannock wouldn't agree to a return fight for at least a year."
HE opened the door and they went out. The sound of the crowd rolled in on them in a suffocating wave. Reporters crowded the narrow concrete tunnel and hounded both men for a statement. Gale was taciturn, Hogan grinning and obliging. His handsome, rugged face showed above the men's heads as they went along the tunnel. He predicted that the fight would not go over thirty seconds, and pushed them out of the way to exhibit the one-two that would end the battle.
At the ringside they ducked through the small door into the smoke, the glaring light, and the shouting of fight fans. A great roar swelled up and seemed to beat against the low clouds as Hogan climbed through the ropes and shook his hands at the crowd. His dark, strong face was split by a grin.
The ring was a tiny white square in the stadium, like a postage stamp in the center of a wash tub. Batteries of lights poured hot beams of brilliance down through the night. Smoke boiled in the rays like fog.
Champion Joe Bannock was already in his corner. Gale sat close to the ring and stared at him. He was a great, black-haired man with a mass of curly hair and a protruding jaw. His nose was flattened from the batterings of seventy fights. He had high cheek bones that emphasized the deep-set black eyes. Bannock was nearly as big as Hogan. Six-feet-three, he weighed two hundred and twenty-five pounds. His muscles were the heavy, bulging sinews of the laborer.
Almost before Gale realized it, the bell rang for introductions. As if in a dream he saw Hogan walk to the middle of the ring. Both men were introduced to the crowd and then to each other. They shook hands, turned abruptly and went back to their corners. A queer tightness gripped him as he held his breath waiting for the fight to start. This was the moment he had waited for and yet dreaded.
Across the ring Bannock hunched forward, his long arms stretched out along the ropes. His scarred face was eager, hard, as he waited. Suddenly the bell clanged. The fight was on!
CHAPTER IV
The Renegade Champion
BANNOCK darted from his corner to the middle of the ring and stood there with his gloves held low as the giant challenger moved forward. His long left arm shot out stiffly and flicked a stinging blow to Hogan's ear. The other man danced back and tried a counter right which missed by a fraction of an inch.
Gale's fists clenched as he strained forward in his seat. Sweat beaded his forehead. The screams of excited fight fans were a faroff sound in his ears. His mind was in the ring, feeling the pain of the champion's blows and striving to figure out his» next move, as though it were he, instead of Hogan, who was fighting.
Joe Bannock feinted with his left, suddenly, then sidestepped and looped a hard right hook into Hogan's jaw. The big fighter backed off and shook his head. A tiny trickle of blood came from his nose. He looked a little surprised. Bannock was by far the trickiest and fastest fighter he had met yet.
In the next moment every observer in the stadium came to his feet as One Punch Hogan faked a side step, then jerked his muscular body. back swiftly and drove in hard, his head lowered. Over the clamor was audible the smack of leather on flesh. The champion fell back and tried to cover up. He floundered and went down.
The referee rushed up, said something to Hogan, and the giant shuffled across the ring to a neutral corner. At the count of four Bannock came to one knee, shook his head, then came up groggily.
Swiftly Hogan slid from his corner and moved in for the kill. His feet seemed barely to touch the canvas as he danced in. His splendid muscles rippled as he moved, biceps bulging as he held his arms close to him, left glove against his ribs, right glove cocked. The champion stumbled back clumsily as the challenger came on.
And then, even as Hogan prepared to shoot in his deadly right hand, the groggy champion snapped into life. His weakness had been faked! Before Hogan could cover up, Bannock slammed in a roundhouse right to Hogan's chin that lifted him on his toes! He stumbled forward blindly, reached for Bannock to clinch with him. A staggering body blow took him squarely over the heart and spun him about.
One Punch Hogan's face was a white, blood-smeared mask as his knees bent and dumped him rudely on the canvas. The champion raised his hands and shook them at his handlers as he moved to a corner. Hogan lay there motionless—a bleeding unconscious hulk!
Down in the audience Professor Gale groaned and stared at the fallen man with feverish eyes. There on the floor lay the end of his dream! Bannock had been too clever for his man. Overconfidence, the midget that cuts down giants, had brought defeat to Hogan.
Suddenly Gale recalled something that had seemed unimportant before Hogan's susceptibility to mental suggestion. It worked with the animals in the laboratory, why not with Hogan? Gale's hands clenched the arms of the chair as he thought of it. Why not overcome the lassitude of Hogan's body by impressing it on his mind that he must get up? He put it to the test.
With every ounce of energy he possessed, he drove his brain to the seemingly hopeless task of dragging Hogan to his feet, to try to last out the round. His face became white as he closed his eyes and fought against the terrible inertia of tortured nerves that held the fighter to the canvas with the power of an electromagnet. "Get off that mat!" he groaned. "Get to your feet! Get to your feet, man!"
The crowd was oblivious of the struggle going on. Shrill screams of women punctuated the hoarser shouts of men, "Kill him! Kill him!" rang through the stadium on lips of every fan, that swelled to a roar that shook the foundation. "Kill him; kill him!"
Gale's eyes snapped open as the roar of the crowd died down. He shot a look in the ring—to see Hogan come to his feet and stand there panting, his great chest swelling with sobbing breaths. Relief flooded Gale's body and he almost sank down.
Now the challenger shook himself and stared about like a man newly awakened. He spotted Joe Bannock as he maneuvered for the final, smashing blow. Suddenly, from his bloody lips came an animal-like roar. He sprang forward with both fists swinging. Bannock drummed three triphammer blows into his face with battering force. But though their power snapped his head back, the giant kept coming. "Kill him! Kill him!" the crowd kept roaring.
BANNOCK was forced to fall back as Hogan came plowing on. He forgot his coup de grace and turned all his efforts to avoiding the crushing roundhouse swings that threatened to smash into his head. And still the enraged challenger stumbled on. Faster now, until he had backed the champion into a corner. His face was dark with bestial fury. Bannock saw the look in his eyes and tried to duck.
The amazed crowd forgot to yell.
Smack! The sound of the blow echoed all over the momentarily stricken silence of the stadium.
Bannock staggered. As he stumbled near the ropes with Hogan close behind, Gale got a good look at the giant. His face was unrecognizable in its ferocity. His lips were moving as though he were talking to himself. And then it came home to Gale. He lurched erect in his seat. He gasped, "Good Lord!"
For Hogan was muttering, "Kill him! Kill him!" in obedience to the crowd's shouted orders! Gale's mental suggestions had been crushed under the weight of the thousands of minds screaming for him to kill. He was trying to murder Joe Bannock.
Wildly excited now, the recovered crowd roared thunderously.
The slap of leather signalled another blow to the champion's face. The vicious punch straightened him up. Hogan crashed a third blow into his stomach and doubled him over. With a vicious uppercut he slammed his gloved fist into the champion's jaw and brought him up on his toes. With a last, deliberate shot, Hogan smashed Joe Bannock straight back into the ropes. The helpless fighter slowly slid down and sprawled over the floor.
The referee moved out and started the count. By the time "ten" was pronounced Bannock had not stirred. The referee went towards Hogan to raise his arm as the throng shouted its excited approval.
But the new champion's hand was never raised. With a bestial snarl he slammed his big fist into the official's face, then grabbed him and commenced strangling him. In his big hands the referee shook like a rag doll.
From both corners the seconds came running. They seized the mad fighter's arms and legs and sought to haul him off the gasping man. Hogan released the referee and took a man in each hand. He knocked their heads together and tossed their unconscious bodies to the canvas. A vicious blow to the jaw flattened another second. The last man saw his danger and ran back out of range.
Over the screams of the crowd the professor shouted to Hogan to stop. His words were drowned in the shrilling of police whistles as a dozen blue-coated figures climbed through or over the ropes. Black-jacks were raised to menace the madman.
Hogan stopped and looked at them-. Then he muttered, "Kill!" and charged them. His flying fists and flailing arms flung them about like corn stalks. Black-jacks thudded on his skull but were helpless to stop him. There was no room for pain in a mind filled with hate. Now he threw off the last policeman and vaulted the ropes. The ring-siders screamed and fought to get out of his way.
Gale stumbled over people's feet and legs to the aisle and ran after him, but quickly the crowd closed in behind the mad champion and shut him off. The immense stadium became a shouting, gesticulating hell. Those arms and voices kept him from reaching the monster and calming him. At last he turned and went back to the ringside, convinced of the hopelessness of catching him now.
He saw Reissner, the promoter, standing there with a check grasped in flaccid fingers. Reissner started to protest, and then blabbered, "What's—— what's amatter with your man, Burns? What's he..."
"Never mind," the scientist clipped. "We won. That's all that matters right now."
Gale darted into the tunnel and hurried out. One strain hummed through his mind. To get back to the laboratory and try to think...
THE next few hours were a turmoil for the anguished scientist. He drove hurriedly back to the laboratory and rushed inside. His mind, already weary with the struggle he had had, was tortured with bitter self-recrimination.
He had loosed a madman on the world, a madman with terrible strength. His desire to help mankind had backlashed. Innocent persons might be killed before the giant was captured. Perhaps the Board of Directors had been right—he was experimenting with things too dangerous to be chanced. And yet, inside himself, he knew it was not true. It had been only that chance blow, on a certain nerve, that had upset all his calculations at the last moment. He realized what had happened. The same glandular disorder that made the cats go insanely savage had been produced. That, coupled with the crowd's suggestion to kill, impressed on the fighter, now, forever, had developed a homicidal maniac.
He brightened a little when he realized that he had the money at last to continue the work and perhaps cure Hogan. But what good would it do him to perfect the process if he could not get near enough to Hogan—or Wade Henry—to use it on him? At any rate, he must occupy every moment of his time from now on in trying to finish his experiments. He must work secretly and try to undo the harm he had done, without bringing disgrace on the Mellon Institute and himself.
With the speed of thought, he rushed for the safe where all his formulae were locked. But even as his hand touched the dial, a familiar, harsh voice barked, "So you've done it! Ruined your own reputation and ours!"
Gale whirled to see the shaggy head and slack-bellied body of Professor Perrin standing in the doorway. He was holding a newspaper. Behind him, in the corridor, he could see the other members of the Board.
"Done it!" he gasped. "Done what?"
Perrin stalked in and thrust the paper in his face. Gale looked searchingly in his eyes, then took the paper and spread it out before him. Of a sudden he stiffened.
The story of the fighter's escape was spread all over the front page. At the top of the page, in the left hand column, was a picture of himself—of Harley Gale—and captioned, "Professor Harley Gale, of the Mellon Institute." And in smaller type below, "First photo of the mysterious 'Jack Burns,' who has been secretly managing One Punch Hogan. An alert photographer managed to snap this picture in the new champion's dressing room, the first one yet taken of the insane champion's handler."
Gale's slender frame slumped. It was as though this final blow was too much to fight against. His voice was husky as he said, "Well—give me credit for trying to save the Institute's name, at least."
Gauntt stepped around Perrin and sneered, "Will that help the poor victim of your selfishness? With every officer, and every man who owns a gun, even, out to capture him dead or alive, that will do him a lot of good, won't it?"
"Dead or alive!" gasped the scientist.
Perrin snorted, "Probably dead. No one would be fool enough to try to capture that maniac alive." He stared owlishly at the stunned professor for a long moment. Then: "How soon can you leave?"
Gale jerked, "Leave? Why—I can't leave now. I've got to discover some way to bring Henry back to normal."
"Surely you don't expect us to tolerate you any longer," Perrin bit out acidly. "You've acted inhumanly towards a fellow being, disgraced the Institute, and deliberately disobeyed our orders. Gale, I'm demanding your resignation tonight!"
"But—!" Gale floundered for some argument to support his request. "Can't you see—don't you understand that I'm the only man who can save him? Are you going to deny me the chance to make restitution?"
"We are," Gauntt levelled at him.
Gale stepped forward and grasped Perrin's coat lapels. "You've got to give me a chance," he insisted vehemently. "Thirty days is all I ask. After all-think of the prominence it will bring the Institute if I succeed!"
THE spark of selfishness in Perrin was touched. He considered, then shrugged, "Very well, we'll take a vote." From his pocket he took a notebook, and tore out a sheet of paper. He ripped it into five slips and gave one to each man. "Those who believe Gale should be granted 30 days respite will mark their ballots with 'yes.' The others will mark them 'no.'"
Gale's pulses thundered in his head as he saw the slips marked, folded and collected in Perrin's hat. His lips were dry. Perrin withdrew the first slip.
"'Yes,'" he read. He took out another. "No," was the verdict. The third one revealed a second "No." Gale's eyes fell as the tide commenced to flow against him. Then Perrin's voice cut into his consciousness, "'Yes.' That makes it even. The last must decide."
The whole laboratory seemed charged with tension as the final slip was withdrawn. For just a second Perrin hesitated. Then he opened it. Gale almost collapsed as he saw the answer, written in bold letters—"Yes!"
Perrin was disgusted. "You're getting a chance you don't deserve," he snapped. "Try, for once, to act as though you were sane. You have exactly thirty days. Goodnight."
He turned, and, jamming his hat on his head, went out. The others followed him.
Gale ran his fingers through his crisp gray hair. "Thirty days to perform a miracle," he mused. "A month to do what men have failed to do for thousands of years."
CHAPTER V
Quantity X
HE went to work blindly the first week. His alert brain, stunned by the catastrophe, refused to function normally. Ordinarily he could take a mass of information and from a simple perusal boil it down to its barest elements and infer what could be made of it. Now he groped in the sheaves of papers on which his data was recorded. But he found nothing. The ape's bones remained as soft as ever despite his constant trials; the cats were still savage as devils.
Day by day he scanned the papers eagerly for news of the monster. Every fresh atrocity—robberies, sabotage, attempted killings—heaped more coals on the scientist's head. Almost every day Perrin would come into the laboratory and scoff at his work or taunt him with his terrible blunder.
Miraculously, Wade Henry was still alive. He had been shot at a number of times, but the shooters' nervousness had saved him. Periodically he would appear in some small town, rob the stores of what he needed, and leave. Two men who had tried to take him by force had been slightly injured. And still Gale's hopes burned at fever heat that Wade Henry would be captured before his month was up.
And then, just three weeks after Perrin's ultimatum had been delivered, he stumbled onto something. His apparatus was perfected as far as he could go with it in its present state, and still it was not good enough. In desperation he left the laboratory and entered his study. Idly he dropped into a chair and picked up a book, more with the idea of forgetting the battle for a while than of learning anything from it. Lackadaisically he glanced at the title—Röntgen Rays.2 He split the book open at random and glanced in it. The first sentence he read caught his attention. "Now, glass is only partially transparent to Röntgen rays; therefore the oblique rays would be more absorbed in passing through the glass than the rays which come in a normal direction."
2: Barker, George F. Röntgen Rays, Harper and Brothers, New York and London.
The thought jarred him like a physical blow. He had been paying no attention at all to polarization of the rays he used in his work! If they were traveling obliquely, naturally their efficiency would be reduced. With new hope he hurried from the study and set about rearranging his prismatic apparatus. At last his problem—his "X-Quantity"— was clearly defined: to cause all his para-Röntgen rays to enter the gland at a horizontal plane, for only in this way would full power be obtained.
All the rest of the afternoon and all night he labored over the machine, now grinding, now polishing. When it was finished he turned away, too tired even to try it out, and shambled to his cot, which he had brought to a spare room off the laboratory in order to save time going and coming to his home. Gratefully he crawled between the blankets.
Three hours later he was up again. After a hurried breakfast he went out for the news. He groaned aloud as he read the latest tidings on the brute he had created. He had assaulted a policeman in a little town twenty-five miles away, and in the battle the officer's neck had been broken! He would live, the account said, but at least three months would have to be spent in the hospital. Gale felt as guilty as though he had been the attacker himself.
Then, anxious to test the new prisms, he went to the subject room and brought the ape out. Hot, piercing lights burned in his dark eyes as he treated the animal. After a few minutes he stood back, the ray still burning down onto the animal's neck. Gingerly he took hold of its forearm. Slowly he applied pressure. If he could detect the slightest bending of the bones, he would know he had failed. His lips were tightly compressed as he continued to exert pressure. But after a few seconds the same ominous resiliency told him the verdict: failure.
In despair he reached up to switch the machine off. As he did so his hand passed below the refractor. A spark of red ?re seemed to leap from the diamond ring he wore. He started, then experimentally moved it back into the path of the tiny thread of scarlet light. Again there came a dazzling splash of red light spraying out from the diamond. While he held his hand there, the ape groaned. Gale's eyes swept down. The brute was stirring restlessly under the new ray which speared its skin. Suddenly Gale reached down and grasped the ape's arm again.
HE exerted a little pressure. Then more. Still more. And yet the bone did not give! The ape had been cured! Now he knew what the ray needed—some slight polarization property of diamond to eliminate a foreign ray which neutralized the para-Röntgen.
That meant another rebuilding of the apparatus and the installation of a properly ground diamond. It was several minutes before Gale could drive his tired mind and body to the task. Then, with a prayer that he could duplicate the cut of his ring diamond, he set about completely overhauling his machine and changing the entire set-up.
For twenty-four hours he labored without a pause. Under his skillful hands the various prisms were once more installed in place. The diamond, ground by himself to what he hoped was the right shape, was fixed into the end of the quartz-glass pipe. But the final test would have to wait. Harley Gale knew if he attempted to use it now, he would fall asleep in the middle of the experiment.
Wearily he shambled to his bed and fell into it. He dropped instantly into a dark, bottomless sleep. His mind, utterly worn out with the twenty-seven days' labor, was getting its first rest in days.
Out of a sound sleep Gale awoke to find he was shivering. For a moment his sleep-weighted eyes would not open. He shivered as a tremor passed over him, and then opened his eyes and glanced around. He saw in a flash why he had been cold. The window beside his bed was wide open, and the curtains were fluttering in the night breeze that crept into the room.
A half moon shone through the window, throwing a rectangular pattern across the bed. Gale gathered himself for the ordeal of getting out of bed to close the window. Suddenly he realized that he had shut the window before he went to bed! In the next moment, before his startled mind could function, a huge shadow blotted out the moon and sprawled over the bed.
Gale's eyes caught one brief look at the intruder's face before he was in the room. On his shocked mind was stamped the savage, distorted countenance of Wade Henry!
CHAPTER VI
The Man from Hell
FOR a long, horrible moment he could only lie there and watch the brute sprawl into the room. As the fighter straightened up beside the cot, his gigantic body loomed ominously over Gale. With a start, the scientist broke the spell and scrambled out of bed. His groping hand found the wall switch and flooded the room with light.
The heavyweight looked even more horrible as the light spilled over him. Dirty, ragged, bloody, his body was still clothed only in his fighting trunks. Deep scratches, clotted with blood, criss-crossed his dark skin. In the black beard that stubbled his jaws and chin, his mouth hung open, saliva making his lips gleam lustfully. His nostrils dilated with each noisy breath. Mad lights sparkled in his eyes.
Gale commenced edging toward the door. Instantly the brute stepped in his path. His great arms hung loosely as he advanced. Then he spoke, his slobbering mouth mumbling one phrase again and again: "Kill him! Kill him!" But this time the words were more vicious, even, than before.
The scientist fell back a little as the words jarred on him. Desperately he eyed the door, but he knew it would be impossible to reach it now. And yet in the room beyond he had medical instruments—a hypodermic syringe and drugs, with which he could stop the killer. Wade Henry took another step toward him as he hung there undecided. Desperation forced him to an extreme measure.
He raised his hand and held it so that light reflected from the facets of his diamond ring into the giant's eyes. The fighter blinked as the little square of light struck his eyes.3
3: Professor Gale here makes use of the fact that any glittering or shining object serves powerfully to attract the attention of a subject to be hypnotised. Using the glittering diamond in his ring, he is attempting to so focus the attention of the giant upon a single object, that hypnotism will be simply a matter of dominance over a will power from which a great portion of resistance has been removed by fascination. It is the same method used by snakes to charm birds, enabling them to strike while the fascinated victim is made incapable of summoning initiative in time to escape.-Ed.
GALE took a short step toward him. Tensely he played the light into the other's eyes.
Again Henry muttered, "Kill him!" Now the word was weaker, spoken as though he said it to try to remind himself of something. For a long minute the two stood there face to face, six feet apart, neither moving a muscle.
Then Gale said quietly: "Your arms are tied to your sides. You can't lift them."
"Can't lift them," repeated the madman stupidly. Then he frowned, and his big shoulders hunched as though he were straining to raise his arms and found them tied down. His forehead glistened with sweat.
"You're going into the other room, now, and lie down on the white table in there," Gale said positively.
The fighter nodded dumbly and mumbled, "Other room." He turned and shuffled through the door. A breath of relief came from the scientist's lips. The mind of the brute had been brought under his domination, by the use of the simplest of all hypnotic devices. A complex surgical operation, even, could be performed on him now without his waking up.4 A tiny piece of diamond had made the difference between life and death to the professor.
4: "Hypnotism has been employed as an anaesthetic in surgery for many years, beginning with Recamier's experiments in 1821. Among the most prominent of hypnotist-surgeons are Esdaile, Forel and Le Fort, who have operated successfully on subjects they had previously mesmerized frequently before the operation. However, Moll, in Hypnotism (Charles Scribners Sons, New York), states that such operations are successful only when the patient is one who is accustomed to being hypnotized by the surgeon in charge. In other cases there is danger that analgesia (insensibility to pain) may not be produced, and the subject may suffer under the knife, though unable to move or tell of his agony. G. H. Estabrooks, Professor of Psychology at Colgate, states his belief in the Scientific American that the greatest value of hypnotism in medicine today is in curing such afflictions as alcoholism and drug addiction, since ether and like anaesthetics are more positive in their action for ordinary purposes.—Ed.
He hastened through the door as the The fighter blinked at the diamond giant shambled in and crossed the dark laboratory. He turned on alight and the stage across the big, white room was illuminated. Obediently the fighter lay face down on the operating table. He was so big now that he completely hid it from view as he lay there, his arms and legs hanging over loosely.
The professor's breath came sibilantly as he crouched over the creature and swung the great diamond refractor above his head. He rushed to the switchboard at the base of the triangular glass shield and set a number of indicators. He fixed electrodes to every joint—elbow, shoulder, knee, ankle—so that the changes taking place in the brute's body would not cause stiffening of the articulations. At last he shoved in a large knife switch. For a moment the lights dimmed, then the laboratory was filled with the sharp crackling of generators and the musical hum of vacuum tubes joining in a chorus of high and low voices. The room was filled with the eerie glow of the mighty vacuum tubes as brilliant green light flamed up inside them.
Now he turned the rheostat on full, sent the scarlet ray darting through the prisms. The new refractor at the bottom of the quartz glass pipe condensed the broad beam into a needle-like point of brilliance. Gale's bony fist gripped the controls and swung the apparatus directly over the fighter's head.
His lips were tight against his teeth as he sucked in agonized breaths. In the weird green light his eyes looked sunken, like those of a skull. Each line in his face seemed to be carved deeply, for he was straining every nerve and every atom of his being in this final heart-breaking effort. The stakes were big in tonight's game—sanity, for one man; life, for another, if a still worse monster resulted from the untried ray.
Two long minutes passed while Harley Gale hunched over the inert body like some medieval alchemist. The angry arcing of electricity in the power room kept up its ominous background. The mighty vacuum tubes hummed softly behind the scientist. Over everything flickered the ghostly light.
PROFESSOR GALE lurched back in sudden shock as the fighter stirred and groaned. He started back, then stopped dead as the giant slowly shoved himself up and turned his bearded, slack-jawed face to him. Recognition did not show in the horrible visage.
A hundred fears came to Gale then. Fears mingled with regrets-regrets that he had not chained the man down while he worked, that he had not tried again to prove the ray before taking this risk, that he had ever started the whole business. For there before him he saw a creature bereft of his reason, with no civilized expression traced on his features to distinguish him from the animal.
In the next moment a quiet, familiar voice jarred him. "What've you been doin' to the joint, Professor? Don't look the way it did before."
A glad cry broke from Harley Gale's lips as he realized it was the fighter who had spoken! Spoken in the same voice he had owned a month before, when he was sane. He rushed forward and turned off the switches, then took off the electrodes.
"Say, where'd I get these rags?" Wade Henry demanded. Then his mouth fell open. "Don't tell me I been out since I got kayoed?"
"You've been out exactly a month," Gale said shakily. "And you didn't get kayoed—you won. You not only beat Bannock, but you laid out a dozen policemen, four seconds, the referee, and a few others!"
The fighter's face was startled and incredulous as he listened. "Say, I—I done it up right, didn't I?" he grinned through his whiskers.
"You did," Gale agreed. He felt suddenly weary, for the past month had told on him. He had been going on nerve alone for days, and now that nerve was no longer needed, his body was burned out. In a tired voice he went on, "There's three-quarters of a million dollars waiting in the bank for you, after we straighten out a little trouble. And Henry—you've made it possible for me to give humanity one of the greatest gifts it has ever received. You were as important in this work as—" The weary voice trailed off.
The heavyweight champion stared at him for a moment, and then blurted, "What's amatter, Professor? Don't you feel okay?"
There was no answer, except for a soft bump and a slight snoring sound. But the sound of the snoring was answer enough that Professor Gale felt okay. For he was sprawled out flat on his back, enjoying the first sound sleep he had had in many weeks.