She wished she could notice him less, for he
always made her shudder; but her very dread had sharpened her eyes and
ears where he was concerned. He always went hatless around the yard,
and the total hairlessness of his head enhanced his skeletonlike aspect
horribly. Now she heard a faint chuckle as he took a small monkey from
its cage against the wall and carried it to the clinic, his long, bony
fingers pressing so cruelly into its furry sides that it cried out in
frightened anguish. The sight sickened her, and brought her walk to
an end. Her inmost soul rebelled at the ascendancy this creature had
gained over her brother, and she reflected bitterly that the two had
almost changed places as master and servant. Night came without Clarendon's return to the house, and Georgina
concluded that he was absorbed in one of his very longest sessions,
which meant total disregard of time. She hated to retire without a talk
with him about his sudden recovery; but finally, feeling it would be
futile to wait up, she wrote a cheerful note and propped it before his
chair on the library table; then started resolutely for bed. She was not quite asleep when she heard the outer door open and shut. So it had not been an all-night session after all! Determined to see
that her brother had a meal before retiring, she rose, slipped on a
robe, and descended to the library, halting only when she heard voices
from behind the half-opened door. Clarendon and Surama were talking,
and she waited till the clinic-man might go. Surama, however, showed no inclination to depart; and indeed, the
whole heated tenor of the discourse seemed to bespeak absorption and
promise length. Georgina, though she had not meant to listen, could
not help catching a phrase now and then, and presently became aware of
a sinister undercurrent which frightened her very much without being
wholly clear to her. Her brother's voice, nervous, incisive, held her
notice with disquieting persistence. "But anyway," he was saying, "we haven't enough animals for another
day, and you know how hard it is to get a decent supply at short
notice. It seems silly to waste so much effort on comparative trash
when human specimens could be had with just a little extra care." Georgina sickened at the possible implication, and caught at the hall
rack to steady herself. Surama was replying in that deep, hollow tone
which seemed to echo with the evil of a thousand ages and a thousand
planets. "Steady, steady--what a child you are with your haste and impatience! You crowd things so! When you've lived as I have, so that a whole life
will seem only an hour, you won't be so fretful about a day or week or
month! You work too fast. You've plenty of specimens in the cages for a
full week if you'll only go at a sensible rate. You might even begin on
the other material if you'd be sure not to overdo it." "Never mind my haste!" the reply was snapped out sharply; "I have
my own methods. I don't want to use our material if I can help it,
for I prefer them as they are. And you'd better be careful of them
anyway--you know the knives those sly dogs carry." Surama's deep chuckle came. "Don't worry about that. The brutes eat, don't they? Well, I can get
you one any time you need it. But go slow--with the boy gone, there are
only eight, and now that you've lost San Quentin it'll be hard to get
new ones by the wholesale. I'd advise you to start in on Tsanpo--he's
the least use to you as he is, and----"

But that was all Georgina heard. Transfixed by a hideous dread from
the thoughts this talk excited, she nearly sank to the floor where she
stood, and was scarcely able to drag herself up the stairs and into
her room. What was the evil monster Surama planning? Into what was he
guiding her brother? What monstrous circumstances lay behind these
cryptic sentences? A thousand phantoms of darkness and menace danced
before her eyes, and she flung herself upon the bed without hope of
sleep. One thought above the rest stood out with fiendish prominence,
and she almost screamed aloud as it beat itself into her brain with
renewed force. Then nature, kinder than she expected, intervened at
last. Closing her eyes in a dead faint, she did not awake till morning,
nor did any fresh nightmare come to join the lasting one which the
overheard words had brought. *       *       *       *       *

With the morning sunshine came a lessening of the tension. What happens
in the night when one is tired often reaches the consciousness in
distorted forms, and Georgina could see that her brain must have given
strange color to scraps of common medical conversation. To suppose her
brother--only son of the gentle Frances Schuyler Clarendon--guilty of
savage sacrifices in the name of science would be to do an injustice
to their blood, and she decided to omit all mention of her trip
downstairs, lest Alfred ridicule her fantastic notions. When she reached the breakfast table she found that Clarendon was
already gone, and regretted that not even this second morning had
given her a chance to congratulate him on his revived activity. Quietly taking the breakfast served by stone-deaf old Margarita, the
Mexican cook, she read the morning paper and seated herself with some
needlework by the sitting-room window overlooking the great yard. All
was silent out there, and she could see that the last of the animal
cages had been emptied. Science was served, and the lime pit held all
that was left of the once pretty and lively little creatures. This
slaughter had always grieved her, but she had never complained, since
she knew it was all for humanity. Being a scientist's sister, she used
to say to herself, was like being the sister of a soldier who kills to
save his countrymen from their foes. After luncheon Georgina resumed her post by the window, and had been
busily sewing for some time when the sound of a pistol shot from the
yard caused her to look out in alarm. There, not far from the clinic,
she saw the ghastly form of Surama, a revolver in his hand, and his
skull-face twisted into a strange expression as he chuckled at a
cowering figure robed in black silk and carrying a long Tibetan knife. It was the servant Tsanpo, and as she recognized the shriveled face,
Georgina remembered horribly what she had overheard the night before. The sun flashed on the polished blade, and suddenly Surama's revolver
spat once more. This time the knife flew from the Mongol's hand, and
Surama glanced greedily at his shaking and bewildered prey. Then Tsanpo, glancing quickly at his unhurt hand and at the fallen
knife, sprang nimbly away from the stealthily approaching clinic-man
and made a dash for the house. Surama, however, was too swift for
him, and caught him in a single leap, seizing his shoulder and almost
crushing him. For a moment the Tibetan tried to struggle, but Surama
lifted him like an animal by the scruff of the neck and bore him off
toward the clinic.