




                               Cool Air

                          By H. P. LOVECRAFT

               _A tale of dark science, and the ghastly
              mystery that enveloped the Spanish doctor's
                attempts at artificial refrigeration._

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                      Weird Tales September 1939. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] You ask me to explain why I am afraid of a draft of cool air; why I
shiver more than others upon entering a cold room, and seem nauseated
and repelled when the chill of evening creeps through the heat of a
mild autumn day. There are those who say I respond to cold as others do
to a bad odor, and I am the last to deny the impression. What I will
do is to relate the most horrible circumstance I ever encountered,
and leave it to you to judge whether or not this forms a suitable
explanation of my peculiarity. It is a mistake to fancy that horror is associated inextricably
with darkness, silence, and solitude. I found it in the glare of
midafternoon, in the clangor of a metropolis, and in the teeming midst
of a shabby and commonplace rooming-house with a prosaic landlady
and two stalwart men by my side. In the spring of 1923 I had secured
some dreary and unprofitable magazine work in the city of New York;
and being unable to pay any substantial rent, began drifting from one
cheap boarding establishment to another in search of a room which might
combine the qualities of decent cleanliness, endurable furnishings,
and very reasonable price. It soon developed that I had only a choice
between different evils, but after a time I came upon a house in West
Fourteenth Street which disgusted me much less than the others I had
sampled. The place was a four-story mansion of brownstone, dating apparently
from the late forties, and fitted with woodwork and marble whose
stained and sullied splendor argued a descent from high levels of
tasteful opulence. In the rooms, large and lofty, and decorated with
impossible paper and ridiculously ornate stucco cornices, there
lingered a depressing mustiness and hint of obscure cookery; but the
floors were clean, the linen tolerably regular, and the hot water not
too often cold or turned off; so that I came to regard it as at least
a bearable place to hibernate until one might really live again. The
landlady, a slatternly, almost bearded Spanish woman named Herrero,
did not annoy me with gossip or with criticisms of the late-burning
electric light in my third floor front hall room; and my fellow-lodgers
were as quiet and uncommunicative as one might desire, being mostly
Spaniards a little above the coarsest and crudest grade. Only the din
of street-cars in the thoroughfare below proved a serious annoyance. I had been there about three weeks when the first odd incident
occurred. One evening at about eight I heard a spattering on the floor
and became suddenly aware that I had been smelling the pungent odor of
ammonia for some time. Looking about, I saw that the ceiling was wet
and dripping; the soaking apparently proceeding from a corner on the
side toward the street. Anxious to stop the matter at its source, I
hastened to the basement to tell the landlady, and was assured by her
that the trouble would quickly be set right. "Doctair Muñoz," she cried as she rushed upstairs ahead of me, "he have
speel hees chemicals. He ees too seeck for doctair heemself--seecker
and seecker all the time--but he weel not have no othair for help. He
ees vairy queer in hees seeckness--all day he take funnee-smelling
baths, and he cannot get excite or warm. All hees own housework he
do--hees leetle room are full of bottles and machines and he do not
work as doctair. But he was great once--my fathair in Barcelona have
hear of heem--and only joost now he feex a arm of the plumber that get
hurt of sudden. He nevair go out, only on roof, and my boy Esteban he
breeng heem hees food and laundry and mediceens and chemicals. My God,
the sal-ammoniac that man use for to keep heem cool!" Mrs. Herrero disappeared up the staircase to the fourth floor, and I
returned to my room. The ammonia ceased to drip, and as I cleaned up
what had spilled and opened the window for air, I heard the landlady's
heavy footsteps above me. Doctor Muñoz I had never heard, save for
certain sounds as of some gasoline-driven mechanism; since his step was
soft and gentle. I wondered for a moment what the strange affliction
of this man might be, and whether his obstinate refusal of outside
aid were not the result of a rather baseless eccentricity. There is,
I reflected tritely, an infinite deal of pathos in the state of an
eminent person who has come down in the world. *       *       *       *       *

I might never have known Doctor Muñoz had it not been for the heart
attack that suddenly seized me one forenoon as I sat writing in my
room. Physicians had told me of the danger of those spells, and I knew
there was no time to be lost; so, remembering what the landlady had
said about the invalid's help of the injured workman, I dragged myself
upstairs and knocked feebly at the door above mine. My knock was answered in good English by a curious voice some distance
to the right, asking my name and business; and these things being
stated, there came an opening of the door next to the one I had sought. A rush of cool air greeted me; and though the day was one of the
hottest of late June, I shivered as I crossed the threshold into a
large apartment whose rich and tasteful decoration surprized me in
this nest of squalor and seediness. A folding couch now filled its
diurnal rôle of sofa, and the mahogany furniture, sumptuous hangings,
old paintings, and mellow bookshelves all bespoke a gentleman's study
rather than a boarding-house bedroom. I now saw that the hall room
above mine--the "leetle room" of bottles and machines which Mrs.
Herrero had mentioned--was merely the laboratory of the doctor; and
that his main living-quarters lay in the spacious adjoining room whose
convenient alcoves and large contiguous bathroom permitted him to hide
all dressers and obtrusively utilitarian devices. Doctor Muñoz, most
certainly, was a man of birth, cultivation, and discrimination. The figure before me was short but exquisitely proportioned, and clad
in somewhat formal dress of perfect fit and cut. A high-bred face
of masterful though not arrogant expression was adorned by a short
iron-gray full beard, and an old-fashioned pince-nez shielded the full,
dark eyes and surmounted an aquiline nose which gave a Moorish touch to
a physiognomy otherwise dominantly Celt-Iberian. Thick, well-trimmed
hair that argued the punctual calls of a barber was parted gracefully
above a high forehead; and the whole picture was one of striking
intelligence and superior blood and breeding.