Try it if you
like.”

He took me over to a table on which was standing an electric battery
connected with a round steel globe, out of the side of which sprang a
gramophone trumpet of curious construction. He adjusted the battery,
and directed me to click my fingers quite gently opposite an aperture
in the globe, and the noise, ordinarily scarcely audible, resounded
through the room like a thunderclap. “Something of that sort might permit us to hear the record on a brain,”
he said. *       *       *       *       *

After this night my visits to Horton became far more common than they
had hitherto been. Having once admitted me into the region of his
strange explorations, he seemed to welcome me there. Partly, as he had
said, it clarified his own thought to put it into simple language,
partly, as he subsequently admitted, he was beginning to penetrate
into such lonely fields of knowledge by paths so utterly untrodden,
that even he, the most aloof and independent of mankind, wanted some
human presence near him. Despite his utter indifference to the issues
of the war--for, in his regard, issues far more crucial demanded his
energies--he offered himself as surgeon to a London hospital for
operations on the brain, and his services, naturally, were welcomed,
for none brought knowledge or skill like his to such work. Occupied
all day, he performed miracles of healing, with bold and dexterous
excisions which none but he would have dared to attempt. He would
operate, often successfully, for lesions that seemed certainly fatal,
and all the time he was learning. He refused to accept any salary;
he only asked, in cases where he had removed pieces of brain matter,
to take these away, in order by further examination and dissection,
to add to the knowledge and manipulative skill which he devoted to
the wounded. He wrapped these morsels in sterilised lint, and took
them back to the Terrace in a box, electrically heated to maintain
the normal temperature of a man’s blood. His fragment might then, so
he reasoned, keep some sort of independent life of its own, even as
the severed heart of a frog had continued to beat for hours without
connection with the rest of the body. Then for half the night he would
continue to work on these sundered pieces of tissue scarcely dead,
which his operations during the day had given him. Simultaneously, he
was busy over the needle that must be of such infinite delicacy. One evening, fatigued with a long day’s work, I had just heard with a
certain tremor of uneasy anticipation the whistles of warning which
heralded an air-raid, when my telephone bell rang. My servants,
according to custom, had already betaken themselves to the cellar,
and I went to see what the summons was, determined in any case not to
go out into the streets. I recognised Horton’s voice. “I want you at
once,” he said. “But the warning whistles have gone,” said I, “And I don’t like
showers of shrapnel.”

“Oh, never mind that,” said he. “You must come. I’m so excited that I
distrust the evidence of my own ears. I want a witness. Just come.”

He did not pause for my reply, for I heard the click of his receiver
going back into its place. Clearly he assumed that I was coming, and
that I suppose had the effect of suggestion on my mind. I told myself
that I would not go, but in a couple of minutes his certainty that I
was coming, coupled with the prospect of being interested in something
else than air-raids, made me fidget in my chair and eventually go to
the street door and look out. The moon was brilliantly bright, the
square quite empty, and far away the coughings of very distant guns. Next moment, almost against my will, I was running down the deserted
pavements of Newsome Terrace. My ring at his bell was answered by
Horton, before Mrs. Gabriel could come to the door, and he positively
dragged me in. “I shan’t tell you a word of what I am doing,” he said. “I want you to
tell me what you hear. Come into the laboratory.”

The remote guns were silent again as I sat myself, as directed, in a
chair close to the gramophone trumpet, but suddenly through the wall I
heard the familiar mutter of Mrs. Gabriel’s voice. Horton, already busy
with his battery, sprang to his feet. “That won’t do,” he said. “I want absolute silence.”

He went out of the room, and I heard him calling to her. While he was
gone I observed more closely what was on the table. Battery, round
steel globe, and gramophone trumpet were there, and some sort of a
needle on a spiral steel spring linked up with the battery and the
glass vessel, in which I had seen the frog’s heart beat. In it now
there lay a fragment of grey matter. Horton came back in a minute or two, and stood in the middle of the
room listening. “That’s better,” he said. “Now I want you to listen at the mouth of the
trumpet. I’ll answer any questions afterwards.”

With my ear turned to the trumpet, I could see nothing of what he was
doing, and I listened till the silence became a rustling in my ears. Then suddenly that rustling ceased, for it was overscored by a whisper
which undoubtedly came from the aperture on which my aural attention
was fixed. It was no more than the faintest murmur, and though no words
were audible, it had the timbre of a human voice. “Well, do you hear anything?” asked Horton. “Yes, something very faint, scarcely audible.”

“Describe it,” said he. “Somebody whispering.”

“I’ll try a fresh place,” said he. The silence descended again; the mutter of the distant guns was still
mute, and some slight creaking from my shirt front, as I breathed,
alone broke it. And then the whispering from the gramophone trumpet
began again, this time much louder than it had been before--it was
as if the speaker (still whispering) had advanced a dozen yards--but
still blurred and indistinct. More unmistakable, too, was it that the
whisper was that of a human voice, and every now and then, whether
fancifully or not, I thought I caught a word or two. For a moment it
was silent altogether, and then with a sudden inkling of what I was
listening to I heard something begin to sing. Though the words were
still inaudible there was melody, and the tune was “Tipperary.” From
that convolvulus-shaped trumpet there came two bars of it. “And what do you hear now?” cried Horton with a crack of exultation in
his voice. “Singing, singing! That’s the tune they all sang. Fine music
that from a dead man. Encore! you say? Yes, wait a second, and he’ll
sing it again for you. Confound it, I can’t get on to the place. Ah! I’ve got it: listen again.”

Surely that was the strangest manner of song ever yet heard on the
earth, this melody from the brain of the dead. Horror and fascination
strove within me, and I suppose the first for the moment prevailed, for
with a shudder I jumped up. “Stop it!” I said. “It’s terrible.”

His face, thin and eager, gleamed in the strong ray of the lamp which
he had placed close to him.