But on the bulky envelope there is the direction, “Not
to be opened till January, 1925.” He spoke with some reserve and, so I
think, with slight horror at the strange things which had happened on
the completion of this creature. It evidently made him uncomfortable
to talk about it, and for that reason I fancy he put what was then a
rather remote date to the day when his record should reach my eye. Finally, in these preliminaries, for the last five years before the
war, he had scarcely entered, for the sake of companionship, any
house other than his own and mine. Ours was a friendship dating from
school-days, which he had never suffered to drop entirely, but I doubt
if in those years he spoke except on matters of business to half a
dozen other people. He had already retired from surgical practice in
which his skill was unapproached, and most completely now did he avoid
the slightest intercourse with his colleagues, whom he regarded as
ignorant pedants without courage or the rudiments of knowledge. Now
and then he would write an epoch-making little monograph, which he
flung to them like a bone to a starving dog, but for the most part,
utterly absorbed in his own investigations, he left them to grope along
unaided. He frankly told me that he enjoyed talking to me about such
subjects, since I was utterly unacquainted with them. It clarified his
mind to be obliged to put his theories and guesses and confirmations
with such simplicity that anyone could understand them. I well remember his coming in to see me on the evening of the 4th of
August, 1914. “So the war has broken out,” he said, “and the streets are impassable
with excited crowds. Odd, isn’t it? Just as if each of us already was
not a far more murderous battlefield than any which can be conceived
between warring nations.”

“How’s that?” said I. “Let me try to put it plainly, though it isn’t that I want to talk
about. Your blood is one eternal battlefield. It is full of armies
eternally marching and counter-marching. As long as the armies friendly
to you are in a superior position, you remain in good health; if a
detachment of microbes that, if suffered to establish themselves,
would give you a cold in the head, entrench themselves in your mucous
membrane, the commander-in-chief sends a regiment down and drives them
out. He doesn’t give his orders from your brain, mind you--those aren’t
his headquarters, for your brain knows nothing about the landing of the
enemy till they have made good their position and given you a cold.”

He paused a moment. “There isn’t one headquarters inside you,” he said, “there are many. For instance, I killed a frog this morning; at least most people would
say I killed it. But had I killed it, though its head lay in one place
and its severed body in another? Not a bit: I had only killed a piece
of it. For I opened the body afterwards and took out the heart, which
I put in a sterilised chamber of suitable temperature, so that it
wouldn’t get cold or be infected by any microbe. That was about twelve
o’clock to-day. And when I came out just now, the heart was beating
still. It was alive, in fact. That’s full of suggestions, you know. Come and see it.”

The Terrace had been stirred into volcanic activity by the news of war:
the vendor of some late edition had penetrated into its quietude, and
there were half a dozen parlour-maids fluttering about like black and
white moths. But once inside Horton’s door isolation as of an Arctic
night seemed to close round me. He had forgotten his latch-key, but
his housekeeper, then newly come to him, who became so regular and
familiar a figure in the Terrace, must have heard his step, for before
he rang the bell she had opened the door, and stood with his forgotten
latch-key in her hand. “Thanks, Mrs. Gabriel,” said he, and without a sound the door shut
behind us. Both her name and face, as reproduced in some illustrated
daily paper, seemed familiar, rather terribly familiar, but before I
had time to grope for the association, Horton supplied it. “Tried for the murder of her husband six months ago,” he said. “Odd
case. The point is that she is the one and perfect housekeeper. I once
had four servants, and everything was all mucky, as we used to say
at school. Now I live in amazing comfort and propriety with one. She
does everything. She is cook, valet, housemaid, butler, and won’t have
anyone to help her. No doubt she killed her husband, but she planned it
so well that she could not be convicted. She told me quite frankly who
she was when I engaged her.”

Of course I remembered the whole trial vividly now. Her husband, a
morose, quarrelsome fellow, tipsy as often as sober, had, according
to the defence cut his own throat while shaving; according to the
prosecution, she had done that for him. There was the usual discrepancy
of evidence as to whether the wound could have been self-inflicted,
and the prosecution tried to prove that the face had been lathered
after his throat had been cut. So singular an exhibition of forethought
and nerve had hurt rather than helped their case, and after prolonged
deliberation on the part of the jury, she had been acquitted. Yet not
less singular was Horton’s selection of a probable murderess, however
efficient, as housekeeper. He anticipated this reflection. “Apart from the wonderful comfort of having a perfectly appointed and
absolutely silent house,” he said, “I regard Mrs. Gabriel as a sort
of insurance against my being murdered. If you had been tried for
your life, you would take very especial care not to find yourself in
suspicious proximity to a murdered body again: no more deaths in your
house, if you could help it. Come through to my laboratory, and look at
my little instance of life after death.”

Certainly it was amazing to see that little piece of tissue still
pulsating with what must be called life; it contracted and expanded
faintly indeed but perceptibly, though for nine hours now it had been
severed from the rest of the organisation. All by itself it went on
living, and if the heart could go on living with nothing, you would
say, to feed and stimulate its energy, there must also, so reasoned
Horton, reside in all the other vital organs of the body other
independent focuses of life. “Of course a severed organ like that,” he said, “will run down quicker
than if it had the co-operation of the others, and presently I shall
apply a gentle electric stimulus to it. If I can keep that glass bowl
under which it beats at the temperature of a frog’s body, in sterilised
air, I don’t see why it should not go on living. Food--of course
there’s the question of feeding it. Do you see what that opens up in
the way of surgery? Imagine a shop with glass cases containing healthy
organs taken from the dead. Say a man dies of pneumonia.