Classic Adventure Books - Daily

07 - The Island of Dr Moreau - H G Wells

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Duration:: 13m
Broadcast on:: 23 Jun 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

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At Saulgoodmedia.com, we believe in the power of stories to transform lives. Whether you're a lifelong learner, a parent seeking bedtime stories for your children, or someone looking to unwind after a long day, we have something just for you. We invite you to try Saul Good Media free for one month. Explore our extensive collection and find the perfect audio content that resonates with you. Join our community of passionate listeners and unlock a world of knowledge, relaxation, and inspiration. Visit www.soulgoodmedia.com today and start your free trial. That's S-O-L-G-O-O-D-M-E-D-I-A dot com. 7. The Locked Door The reader will perhaps understand that at first everything was so strange about me, and my position was the outcome of such unexpected adventures that I had no discernment of the relative strangeness of this or that thing. I followed the llama up the beach and was overtaken by Montgomery, who asked me not to enter the stone enclosure. I noticed then that the puma in its cage and the pile of packages had been placed outside the entrance to this quadrangle. I turned and saw that the launch had now been unloaded, run out again, and was being beached, and the white-haired man was walking towards us. He addressed Montgomery. And now comes the problem of this uninvited guest. What are we to do with him? "He knows something of science," said Montgomery. "I'm itching to get to work again with this new stuff," said the white-haired man, nodding towards the enclosure. His eyes grew brighter. "I dare say you are," said Montgomery, in anything but a cordial tone. "We can't send him over there, and we can't spare the time to build him a new shanty, and we certainly can't take him into our confidence just yet. I'm in your hands," said I. "I had no idea of what he meant by over there." "I've been thinking of the same things," Montgomery answered. "There's my room with the outer door." "That's it," said the elder man promptly, looking at Montgomery. And all three of us went towards the enclosure. "I'm sorry to make a mystery, Mr. Prindic, but you'll remember you're uninvited. Our little establishment here contains a secret or so, and is kind of a blue-beards chamber. In fact, nothing very dreadful, really, to a sane man. But, just now, as we don't know you, decidedly," said I. "I should be a fool to take offense at any want of confidence." He twisted his heavy mouth into a faint smile. He was one of those satinine people who smiled with the corners of the mouth down, and bowed his acknowledgement of my complacence. The main entrance to the enclosure was passed. It was a heavy wooden gate, framed in iron, and locked, with the cargo of the launch piled outside it, and at the corner we came to a small doorway I had not previously observed. The white-haired man produced a bundle of keys from the pocket of his greasy blue jacket, opened the door, and entered. His keys and the elaborate locking up of the place, even while it was still under, his eye struck me as peculiar. I followed him, and found myself in a small apartment, plainly but not uncomfortably furnished, and with its inner door, which was slightly ajar, opening into a paved courtyard. This inner door, Montgomery at once, closed. A hammock was slung across the darker corner of the room, and a small, unglazed window, defended by an iron bar, looked out towards the sea. This, the white-haired man told me, was to be my apartment, and the inner door, which, for fear of accidents, he said, he would lock on the other side, was my limit inward. He called my attention to a convenient deck-chair before the window, and to an array of old books, chiefly I found surgical works and editions of the Latin and Greek classics, languages I cannot read with any comfort, on a shelf near the hammock. He left the room by the outer door, as if to avoid opening the inner one again. "We euthetically have our meals in here," said Montgomery, and then, as if in doubt, went out out to the other. "Morrow!" I heard him call, and for the moment, I do not think I noticed. Then, as I handled the books on the shelf, it came up in consciousness. Where had I heard the name of Morill before? I sat down before the window, took out the biscuits that still remained to me, and ate them with an excellent appetite. "Morrow!" Through the window I saw one of those unaccountable men in white, lugging a packing-case along the beach. Presently the window frame hid him. Then I heard a key inserted, and turned in the lock behind me. After a little while I heard through the locked door the noise of the stag-hounds, that are now being brought up from the beach. They were not barking, but sniffing and growling in a curious fashion. I could hear the rapid patter of their feet and Montgomery's voice soothing them. I was very much impressed by the elaborate secrecy of these two men regarding the contents of the place, and for some time I was thinking of that, and of the unaccountable familiarity of the name of Morill. But so odd is the human memory that I could not then recall that well-known name in its proper connection. From that my thoughts went to the indefinable queerness of the deformed man on the beach. I never saw such a gate such odd motions as he pulled at the box. I recalled that none of these men had spoken to me, though most of them I had found looking at me one time or another in a peculiarly furtive manner, quite unlike the frank stare of your unsophisticated savage. Indeed, they'd all seemed remarkably taciturn, and when they did speak, endowed with very uncanny voices. What was wrong with them? Then I recalled the eyes of Montgomery's ungainly attendant. Just as I was thinking of him he came in. He was now dressed in white, and carried a little tray with some coffee and boiled vegetables thereon. I could hardly repress a shuddering recoil as he came, bending amiably, and placed the tray before me on the table. Then astonishment paralyzed me. Under his stringy black locks I saw his ear. It jumped upon me suddenly close to my face. The man had pointed ears, covered with a fine brown fur. "Your breakfast, sir," he said. I stared at his face without attempting to answer him. He turned and went towards the door, regarding me oddly over his shoulder. I followed him out with my eyes, and, as I did so, by some odd trick of unconscious cerebration. There came surging into my head the phrase, "The Moreau hollows. Was it?" "Moreau?" "Ah. It sent my memory back ten years. The Moreau horrors." The phrase drifted loose in my mind for a moment, and then I saw it in red lettering on a little buff-coloured pamphlet to read which made one shiver and creep. Then I remembered distinctly all about it. That long-forgotten pamphlet came back with startling vividness to my mind. I had been a mere lad then, and Moreau was, I suppose, about fifty. A prominent and masterful physiologist, well known in scientific circles for his extraordinary imagination and his brutal directness in discussion, was this the same Moreau? He had published some very astonishing facts in connection with the transfusion of blood, and in addition was known to be doing valuable work on more-bit growths. Then suddenly his career was closed. He had to leave England. A journalist obtained access to his laboratory in the capacity of laboratory-assistant with the deliberate intention of making sensational exposures, and by the help of a shocking accident, if it was an accident, his gruesome pamphlet became notorious. On the day of its publication a wretched dog, flayed and otherwise mutilated, escaped from Moreau's house. It was in the silly season, and a prominent editor, a cousin of the temporary laboratory-assistant, appealed to the conscience of the nation. It was not the first time that conscience has turned against the methods of research. The doctor was simply howled out of the country. It may be that he deserved to be, but I still think that the tepid support of his fellow investigators, and his desertion by the great body of scientific workers, was a shameful thing. Yet some of his experiments, by the journalist's account, were wantonly cruel. He might perhaps have purchased his social peace by abandoning his investigations, but he apparently preferred the latter, as most men would who have once fallen under the over-mastering spell of research. He was unmarried, and had indeed nothing but his own interest to consider. I felt convinced that this must be the same man, everything pointed to it. It dawned upon me to what in the puma and the other animals, which had now been brought with other luggage into the enclosure behind the house, were destined. And a curious faint odour, the holitis of something familiar, an odour that had been in the background of my consciousness hitherto suddenly came forward into the forefront of my thoughts. It was the antiseptic odour of the dissecting room. I heard the puma growling through the wall, and one of the dogs yelped as though it had been struck. Yet surely, and especially to another scientific man, there was nothing so horrible in vivisection as to account for this secrecy. And by some odd leap in my thoughts, the pointed ears and luminous eyes of Montgomery's attendant came back again before me with the sharpest definition. I stared before me out at the green sea, throbbing under a freshening breeze, and let these and other strange memories of the last few days chase one another through my mind. What could it all mean? A locked enclosure on a lonely island, a notorious vivisector, and these crippled and distorted men.