His hand was on the metal rod from which
depended the spiral spring and the needle, which just rested on that
fragment of grey stuff which I had seen in the glass vessel. “Yes, I’m going to stop it now,” he said, “or the germs will be getting
at my gramophone record, or the record will get cold. See, I spray it
with carbolic vapour, I put it back into its nice warm bed. It will
sing to us again. But terrible? What do you mean by terrible?”

Indeed, when he asked that I scarcely knew myself what I meant. I had
been witness to a new marvel of science as wonderful perhaps as any
that had ever astounded the beholder, and my nerves--these childish
whimperers--had cried out at the darkness and the profundity. But
the horror diminished, the fascination increased as he quite shortly
told me the history of this phenomenon. He had attended that day and
operated upon a young soldier in whose brain was embedded a piece of
shrapnel. The boy was _in extremis_, but Horton had hoped for the
possibility of saving him. To extract the shrapnel was the only chance,
and this involved the cutting away of a piece of brain known as the
speech-centre, and taking from it what was embedded there. But the hope
was not realised, and two hours later the boy died. It was to this
fragment of brain that, when Horton returned home, he had applied the
needle of his gramophone, and had obtained the faint whisperings which
had caused him to ring me up, so that he might have a witness of this
wonder. Witness I had been, not to these whisperings alone, but to the
fragment of singing. “And this is but the first step on the new road,” said he. “Who knows
where it may lead, or to what new temple of knowledge it may not be the
avenue? Well, it is late: I shall do no more to-night. What about the
raid, by the way?”

To my amazement I saw that the time was verging on midnight. Two hours
had elapsed since he let me in at his door; they had passed like a
couple of minutes. Next morning some neighbours spoke of the prolonged
firing that had gone on, of which I had been wholly unconscious. Week after week Horton worked on this new road of research, perfecting
the sensitiveness and subtlety of the needle, and, by vastly increasing
the power of his batteries, enlarging the magnifying power of his
trumpet. Many and many an evening during the next year did I listen to
voices that were dumb in death, and the sounds which had been blurred
and unintelligible mutterings in the earlier experiments, developed,
as the delicacy of his mechanical devices increased, into coherence
and clear articulation. It was no longer necessary to impose silence
on Mrs. Gabriel when the gramophone was at work, for now the voice we
listened to had risen to the pitch of ordinary human utterance, while
as for the faithfulness and individuality of these records, striking
testimony was given more than once by some living friend of the dead,
who, without knowing what he was about to hear, recognised the tones
of the speaker. More than once also, Mrs. Gabriel, bringing in syphons
and whisky, provided us with three glasses, for she had heard, so she
told us, three different voices in talk. But for the present no fresh
phenomenon occurred: Horton was but perfecting the mechanism of his
previous discovery and, rather grudging the time, was scribbling at a
monograph, which presently he would toss to his colleagues, concerning
the results he had already obtained. And then, even while Horton was on
the threshold of new wonders, which he had already foreseen and spoken
of as theoretically possible, there came an evening of marvel and of
swift catastrophe. I had dined with him that day, Mrs. Gabriel deftly serving the meal
that she had so daintily prepared, and towards the end, as she was
clearing the table for our dessert, she stumbled, I supposed, on a
loose edge of carpet, quickly recovering herself. But instantly Horton
checked some half-finished sentence, and turned to her. “You’re all right, Mrs. Gabriel?” he asked quickly. “Yes, sir, thank you,” said she, and went on with her serving. “As I was saying,” began Horton again, but his attention clearly
wandered, and without concluding his narrative, he relapsed into
silence, till Mrs. Gabriel had given us our coffee and left the room. “I’m sadly afraid my domestic felicity may be disturbed,” he said. “Mrs. Gabriel had an epileptic fit yesterday, and she confessed when
she recovered that she had been subject to them when a child, and since
then had occasionally experienced them.”

“Dangerous, then?” I asked. “In themselves not in the least,” said he. “If she was sitting in
her chair or lying in bed when one occurred, there would be nothing
to trouble about. But if one occurred while she was cooking my dinner
or beginning to come downstairs, she might fall into the fire or
tumble down the whole flight. We’ll hope no such deplorable calamity
will happen. Now, if you’ve finished your coffee, let us go into the
laboratory. Not that I’ve got anything very interesting in the way of
new records. But I’ve introduced a second battery with a very strong
induction coil into my apparatus. I find that if I link it up with my
record, given that the record is a--a fresh one, it stimulates certain
nerve centres. It’s odd, isn’t it, that the same forces which so
encourage the dead to live would certainly encourage the living to die,
if a man received the full current. One has to be careful in handling
it. Yes, and what then? you ask.”

The night was very hot, and he threw the windows wide before he settled
himself cross-legged on the floor. “I’ll answer your question for you,” he said, “though I believe we’ve
talked of it before. Supposing I had not a fragment of brain-tissue
only, but a whole head, let us say, or best of all, a complete corpse,
I think I could expect to produce more than mere speech through the
gramophone. The dead lips themselves perhaps might utter--God! what’s
that?”

From close outside, at the bottom of the stairs leading from the dining
room which we had just quitted to the laboratory where we now sat,
there came a crash of glass followed by the fall as of something heavy
which bumped from step to step, and was finally flung on the threshold
against the door with the sound as of knuckles rapping at it, and
demanding admittance. Horton sprang up and threw the door open, and
there lay, half inside the room and half on the landing outside, the
body of Mrs. Gabriel. Round her were splinters of broken bottles and
glasses, and from a cut in her forehead, as she lay ghastly with face
upturned, the blood trickled into her thick grey hair. Horton was on his knees beside her, dabbing his handkerchief on her
forehead. “Ah! that’s not serious,” he said; “there’s neither vein nor artery
cut. I’ll just bind that up first.”

He tore his handkerchief into strips which he tied together, and made a
dexterous bandage covering the lower part of her forehead, but leaving
her eyes unobscured.