THE MONSTER MEN(魔鬼一样的人)

VIP免费

2024-12-25 0 0 567.98KB 157 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

THE MONSTER MEN

Edgar Rice Burroughs

THE MONSTER MEN

1 THE RIFT

As he dropped the last grisly fragment of the dismembered and

mutilated body into the small vat of nitric acid that was to devour every

trace of the horrid evidence which might easily send him to the gallows,

the man sank weakly into a chair and throwing his body forward upon his

great, teak desk buried his face in his arms, breaking into dry, moaning

sobs.

Beads of perspiration followed the seams of his high, wrinkled

forehead, replacing the tears which might have lessened the pressure upon

his overwrought nerves. His slender frame shook, as with ague, and at

times was racked by a convulsive shudder. A sudden step upon the

stairway leading to his workshop brought him trembling and wide eyed to

his feet, staring fearfully at the locked and bolted door.

Although he knew perfectly well whose the advancing footfalls were,

he was all but overcome by the madness of apprehension as they came

softly nearer and nearer to the barred door. At last they halted before it,

to be followed by a gentle knock.

"Daddy!" came the sweet tones of a girl's voice.

The man made an effort to take a firm grasp upon himself that no tell-

tale evidence of his emotion might be betrayed in his speech.

"Daddy!" called the girl again, a trace of anxiety in her voice this time.

"What IS the matter with you, and what ARE you doing? You've been

shut up in that hateful old room for three days now without a morsel to eat,

and in all likelihood without a wink of sleep. You'll kill yourself with

your stuffy old experiments."

The man's face softened.

"Don't worry about me, sweetheart," he replied in a well controlled

voice. "I'll soon be through now--soon be through--and then we'll go

away for a long vacation-- for a long vacation."

"I'll give you until noon, Daddy," said the girl in a voice which carried

a more strongly defined tone of authority than her father's soft drawl, "and

then I shall come into that room, if I have to use an axe, and bring you out-

THE MONSTER MEN

-do you understand?"

Professor Maxon smiled wanly. He knew that his daughter was equal

to her threat.

"All right, sweetheart, I'll be through by noon for sure--by noon for

sure. Run along and play now, like a good little girl."

Virginia Maxon shrugged her shapely shoulders and shook her head

hopelessly at the forbidding panels of the door.

"My dolls are all dressed for the day," she cried, "and I'm tired of

making mud pies--I want you to come out and play with me." But

Professor Maxon did not reply-- he had returned to view his grim

operations, and the hideousness of them had closed his ears to the sweet

tones of the girl's voice.

As she turned to retrace her steps to the floor below Miss Maxon still

shook her head.

"Poor old Daddy," she mused, "were I a thousand years old, wrinkled

and toothless, he would still look upon me as his baby girl."

If you chance to be an alumnus of Cornell you may recall Professor

Arthur Maxon, a quiet, slender, white-haired gentleman, who for several

years was an assistant professor in one of the departments of natural

science. Wealthy by inheritance, he had chosen the field of education for

his life work solely from a desire to be of some material benefit to

mankind since the meager salary which accompanied his professorship

was not of sufficient import to influence him in the slightest degree.

Always keenly interested in biology, his almost unlimited means had

permitted him to undertake, in secret, a series of daring experiments which

had carried him so far in advance of the biologists of his day that he had,

while others were still groping blindly for the secret of life, actually

reproduced by chemical means the great phenomenon.

Fully alive to the gravity and responsibilities of his marvellous

discovery he had kept the results of his experimentation, and even the

experiments themselves, a profound secret not only from his colleagues,

but from his only daughter, who heretofore had shared his every hope and

aspiration.

It was the very success of his last and most pretentious effort that had

THE MONSTER MEN

placed him in the horrifying predicament in which he now found himself--

with the corpse of what was apparently a human being in his workshop

and no available explanation that could possibly be acceptable to a matter-

of-fact and unscientific police.

Had he told them the truth they would have laughed at him. Had he

said: "This is not a human being that you see, but the remains of a

chemically produced counterfeit created in my own laboratory," they

would have smiled, and either hanged him or put him away with the other

criminally insane.

This phase of the many possibilities which he had realized might be

contingent upon even the partial success of his work alone had escaped his

consideration, so that the first wave of triumphant exultation with which

he had viewed the finished result of this last experiment had been

succeeded by overwhelming consternation as he saw the thing which he

had created gasp once or twice with the feeble spark of life with which he

had endowed it, and expire--leaving upon his hands the corpse of what

was, to all intent and purpose, a human being, albeit a most grotesque and

misshapen thing.

Until nearly noon Professor Maxon was occupied in removing the

remaining stains and evidences of his gruesome work, but when he at last

turned the key in the door of his workshop it was to leave behind no single

trace of the successful result of his years of labor.

The following afternoon found him and Virginia crossing the station

platform to board the express for New York. So quietly had their plans

been made that not a friend was at the train to bid them farewell--the

scientist felt that he could not bear the strain of attempting explanations at

this time.

But there were those there who recognized them, and one especially

who noted the lithe, trim figure and beautiful face of Virginia Maxon

though he did not know even the name of their possessor. It was a tall

well built young man who nudged one of his younger companions as the

girl crossed the platform to enter her Pullman.

"I say, Dexter," he exclaimed, "who is that beauty?"

The one addressed turned in the direction indicated by his friend.

THE MONSTER MEN

"By jove!" he exclaimed. "Why it's Virginia Maxon and the

professor, her father. Now where do you suppose they're going?"

"I don't know--now," replied the first speaker, Townsend J. Harper, Jr.,

in a half whisper, "but I'll bet you a new car that I find out."

A week later, with failing health and shattered nerves, Professor

Maxon sailed with his daughter for a long ocean voyage, which he hoped

would aid him in rapid recuperation, and permit him to forget the

nightmare memory of those three horrible days and nights in his

workshop.

He believed that he had reached an unalterable decision never again to

meddle with the mighty, awe inspiring secrets of creation; but with

returning health and balance he found himself viewing his recent triumph

with feelings of renewed hope and anticipation.

The morbid fears superinduced by the shock following the sudden

demise of the first creature of his experiments had given place to a

growing desire to further prosecute his labors until enduring success had

crowned his efforts with an achievement which he might exhibit with

pride to the scientific world.

His recent disastrous success had convinced him that neither Ithaca

nor any other abode of civilization was a safe place to continue his

experiments, but it was not until their cruising had brought them among

the multitudinous islands of the East Indies that the plan occurred to him

that he finally adopted--a plan the outcome of which could he then have

foreseen would have sent him scurrying to the safety of his own country

with the daughter who was to bear the full brunt of the horrors it entailed.

They were steaming up the China Sea when the idea first suggested

itself, and as he sat idly during the long, hot days the thought grew upon

him, expanding into a thousand wonderful possibilities, until it became

crystalized into what was a little short of an obsession.

The result was that at Manila, much to Virginia's surprise, he

announced the abandonment of the balance of their purposed voyage,

taking immediate return passage to Singapore. His daughter did not

question him as to the cause of this change in plans, for since those three

days that her father had kept himself locked in his workroom at home the

THE MONSTER MEN

girl had noticed a subtle change in her parent--a marked disinclination to

share with her his every confidence as had been his custom since the death

of her mother.

While it grieved her immeasurably she was both too proud and too

hurt to sue for a reestablishment of the old relations. On all other topics

than his scientific work their interests were as mutual as formerly, but by

what seemed a manner of tacit agreement this subject was taboo. And so

it was that they came to Singapore without the girl having the slightest

conception of her father's plans.

Here they spent nearly a month, during which time Professor Maxon

was daily engaged in interviewing officials, English residents and a

motley horde of Malays and Chinamen.

Virginia met socially several of the men with whom her father was

engaged but it was only at the last moment that one of them let drop a hint

of the purpose of the month's activity. When Virginia was present the

conversation seemed always deftly guided from the subject of her father's

immediate future, and she was not long in discerning that it was in no

sense through accident that this was true. Thereafter her wounded pride

made easy the task of those who seemed combined to keep her in

ignorance.

It was a Dr. von Horn, who had been oftenest with her father, who

gave her the first intimation of what was forthcoming. Afterward, in

recollecting the conversation, it seemed to Virginia that the young man

had been directed to break the news to her, that her father might be spared

the ordeal. It was evident then that he expected opposition, but the girl

was too loyal to let von Horn know if she felt other than in harmony with

the proposal, and too proud to evince by surprise the fact that she was not

wholly conversant with its every detail.

"You are glad to be leaving Singapore so soon?" he had asked,

although he knew that she had not been advised that an early departure

was planned.

"I am rather looking forward to it," replied Virginia.

"And to a protracted residence on one of the Pamarung Islands?"

continued von Horn.

THE MONSTER MEN

"Why not?" was her rather non-committal reply, though she had not

the remotest idea of their location.

Von Horn admired her nerve though he rather wished that she would

ask some questions--it was difficult making progress in this way. How

could he explain the plans when she evinced not the slightest sign that she

was not already entirely conversant with them?

"We doubt if the work will be completed under two or three years,"

answered the doctor. "That will be a long time in which to be isolated

upon a savage little speck of land off the larger but no less savage Borneo.

Do you think that your bravery is equal to the demands that will be made

upon it?"

Virginia laughed, nor was there the slightest tremor in its note.

"I am equal to whatever fate my father is equal to," she said, "nor do I

think that a life upon one of these beautiful little islands would be much of

a hardship-- certainly not if it will help to promote the success of his

scientific experiments."

She used the last words on a chance that she might have hit upon the

true reason for the contemplated isolation from civilization. They had

served their purpose too in deceiving von Horn who was now half

convinced that Professor Maxon must have divulged more of their plans to

his daughter than he had led the medical man to believe. Perceiving her

advantage from the expression on the young man's face, Virginia followed

it up in an endeavor to elicit the details.

The result of her effort was the knowledge that on the second day they

were to sail for the Pamarung Islands upon a small schooner which her

father had purchased, with a crew of Malays and lascars, and von Horn,

who had served in the American navy, in command. The precise point of

destination was still undecided--the plan being to search out a suitable

location upon one of the many little islets which dot the western shore of

the Macassar Strait.

Of the many men Virginia had met during the month at Singapore von

Horn had been by far the most interesting and companionable. Such time

as he could find from the many duties which had devolved upon him in the

matter of obtaining and outfitting the schooner, and signing her two mates

THE MONSTER MEN

and crew of fifteen, had been spent with his employer's daughter.

The girl was rather glad that he was to be a member of their little

company, for she had found him a much travelled man and an interesting

talker with none of the, to her, disgusting artificialities of the professional

ladies' man. He talked to her as he might have talked to a man, of the

things that interest intelligent people regardless of sex.

There was never any suggestion of familiarity in his manner; nor in his

choice of topics did he ever ignore the fact that she was a young girl.

She had felt entirely at ease in his society from the first evening that she

had met him, and their acquaintance had grown to a very sensible

friendship by the time of the departure of the Ithaca--the rechristened

schooner which was to carry them away to an unguessed fate.

The voyage from Singapore to the Islands was without incident.

Virginia took a keen delight in watching the Malays and lascars at their

work, telling von Horn that she had to draw upon her imagination but little

to picture herself a captive upon a pirate ship--the half naked men, the

gaudy headdress, the earrings, and the fierce countenances of many of the

crew furnishing only too realistically the necessary savage setting.

A week spent among the Pamarung Islands disclosed no suitable site

for the professor's camp, nor was it until they had cruised up the coast

several miles north of the equator and Cape Santang that they found a tiny

island a few miles off the coast opposite the mouth of a small river--an

island which fulfilled in every detail their requirements.

It was uninhabited, fertile and possessed a clear, sweet brook which

had its source in a cold spring in the higher land at the island's center.

Here it was that the Ithaca came to anchor in a little harbor, while her crew

under von Horn, and the Malay first mate, Bududreen, accompanied

Professor Maxon in search of a suitable location for a permanent camp.

The cook, a harmless old Chinaman, and Virginia were left in sole

possession of the Ithaca.

Two hours after the departure of the men into the jungle Virginia heard

the fall of axes on timber and knew that the site of her future home had

been chosen and the work of clearing begun. She sat musing on the

strange freak which had prompted her father to bury them in this savage

THE MONSTER MEN

corner of the globe; and as she pondered there came a wistful expression

to her eyes, and an unwonted sadness drooped the corners of her mouth.

Of a sudden she realized how wide had become the gulf between them

now. So imperceptibly had it grown since those three horrid days in

Ithaca just prior to their departure for what was to have been but a few

months' cruise that she had not until now comprehended that the old

relations of open, good-fellowship had gone, possibly forever.

Had she needed proof of the truth of her sad discovery it had been

enough to point to the single fact that her father had brought her here to

this little island without making the slightest attempt to explain the nature

of his expedition. She had gleaned enough from von Horn to understand

that some important scientific experiments were to be undertaken; but

what their nature she could not imagine, for she had not the slightest

conception of the success that had crowned her father's last experiment at

Ithaca, although she had for years known of his keen interest in the

subject.

The girl became aware also of other subtle changes in her father. He

had long since ceased to be the jovial, carefree companion who had shared

with her her every girlish joy and sorrow and in whom she had confided

both the trivial and momentous secrets of her childhood. He had become

not exactly morose, but rather moody and absorbed, so that she had of late

never found an opportunity for the cozy chats that had formerly meant so

much to them both. There had been too, recently, a strange lack of

consideration for herself that had wounded her more than she had

imagined. Today there had been a glaring example of it in his having left

her alone upon the boat without a single European companion--something

that he would never have thought of doing a few months before.

As she sat speculating on the strange change which had come over her

father her eyes had wandered aimlessly along the harbor's entrance; the

low reef that protected it from the sea, and the point of land to the south,

that projected far out into the strait like a gigantic index finger pointing

toward the mainland, the foliage covered heights of which were just

visible above the western horizon.

Presently her attention was arrested by a tossing speck far out upon the

THE MONSTER MEN

rolling bosom of the strait. For some time the girl watched the object

until at length it resolved itself into a boat moving head on toward the

island. Later she saw that it was long and low, propelled by a single sail

and many oars, and that it carried quite a company.

Thinking it but a native trading boat, so many of which ply the

southern seas, Virginia viewed its approach with but idle curiosity. When

it had come to within half a mile of the anchorage of the Ithaca, and was

about to enter the mouth of the harbor Sing Lee's eyes chanced to fall

upon it. On the instant the old Chinaman was electrified into sudden and

astounding action.

"Klick! Klick!" he cried, running toward Virginia. "Go b'low, klick."

"Why should I go below, Sing?" queried the girl, amazed by the

demeanor of the cook.

"Klick! Klick!" he urged grasping her by the arm--half leading, half

dragging her toward the companion-way. "Plilates! Mlalay plilates--

Dyak plilates."

"Pirates!" gasped Virginia. "Oh Sing, what can we do?"

"You go b'low. Mebbyso Sing flighten 'em. Shoot cannon. Bling

help. Maxon come klick. Bling men. Chase'm 'way," explained the

Chinaman. "But plilates see 'em pletty white girl," he shrugged his

shoulders and shook his head dubiously, "then old Sing no can flighten 'em

'way."

The girl shuddered, and crouching close behind Sing hurried below.

A moment later she heard the boom of the old brass six pounder which for

many years had graced the Ithaca's stern. In the bow Professor Maxon

had mounted a modern machine gun, but this was quite beyond Sing's

simple gunnery. The Chinaman had not taken the time to sight the

ancient weapon carefully, but a gleeful smile lit his wrinkled, yellow face

as he saw the splash of the ball where it struck the water almost at the side

of the prahu.

Sing realized that the boat might contain friendly natives, but he had

cruised these waters too many years to take chances. Better kill a hundred

friends, he thought, than be captured by a single pirate.

At the shot the prahu slowed up, and a volley of musketry from her

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

THEMONSTERMEN1THEMONSTERMENEdgarRiceBurroughsTHEMONSTERMEN21THERIFTAshedroppedthelastgrislyfragmentofthedismemberedandmutilatedbodyintothesmallvatofnitricacidthatwastodevoureverytraceofthehorridevidencewhichmighteasilysendhimtothegallows,themansankweaklyintoachairandthrowinghisbodyforwarduponhisgrea...

展开>> 收起<<

THE MONSTER MEN(魔鬼一样的人).pdf

共157页,预览32页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

THE MONSTER MEN(魔鬼一样的人)

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: