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GLADIATOR
Philip Wylie
[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
Once upon a time in Colorado lived a man named Abednego Danner and hiswife, Matilda. Abednego Danner was a professor of biology in a smallcollege in the town of Indian Creek. He was a spindling wisp of a man,with a nature drawn well into itself by the assaults of the world andparticularly of the grim Mrs. Danner, who understood nothing andundertook all. Nevertheless these two lived modestly in a frame house onthe hem of Indian Creek and they appeared to be a settled and peacefulcouple.
The chief obstacle to Mrs. Danner's placid dominion of her hearth wasProfessor Danner's laboratory, which occupied a room on the first floorof the house. It was the one impregnable redoubt in her domesticstronghold. Neither threat nor entreaty would drive him and what shetermed his "stinking, unchristian, unhealthy dinguses" from that room.After he had lectured vaguely to his classes on the structure of the_Paramecium caudatum_ and the law discovered by Mendel, he would shutthe door behind himself, and all the fury of the stalwart, black-hairedwoman could not drive him out until his own obscure ends were served.
It never occurred to Professor Danner that he was a great man or agenius. His alarm at such a notion would have been pathetic. He was sofascinated by the trend of his thoughts and experiments, in fact, thathe scarcely realized by what degrees he had outstripped a world thatwore picture hats, hobble skirts, and straps beneath its trouser legs.However, as the century turned and the fashions changed, he was carriedfurther from them, which was just as well.
On a certain Sunday he sat beside his wife in church, singing snatchesof the hymns in a doleful and untrue voice and meditating, during thelong sermon, on the structure of chromosomes. She, bolt upright andovershadowing him, like a coffin in the pew, rigid lest her black silkrustle, thrilled in some corner of her mind at the picture of hell andsalvation.
Mr. Danner's thoughts turned to Professor Mudge, whose barren pateshowed above the congregation a few rows ahead of him. There, he said tohimself, sat a stubborn and unenlightened man. And so, when the weeklytyranny of church was ended, he asked Mudge to dinner. That heaccomplished by an argument with his wife, audible the length of theaisle.
They walked to the Danner residence. Mrs. Danner changed her clotheshurriedly, basted the roast, made milk sauce for the string beans, andset three places. They went into the dining-room. Danner carved, thehome-made mint jelly was passed, the bread, the butter, the gravy; andMrs. Danner dropped out of the conversation, after guying her husband onhis lack of skill at his task of carving.
Mudge opened with the usual comment. "Well, Abednego, how are theblood-stream radicals progressing?"
His host chuckled. "Excellently, thanks. Some day I'll be ready to joltyou hidebound biologists into your senses."
Mudge's left eyebrow lifted. "So? Still the same thing, I take it? Stillbelieve that chemistry controls human destiny?"
"Almost ready to demonstrate it," Danner replied.
"Along what lines?"
"Muscular strength and the nervous discharge of energy."
Mudge slapped his thigh. "Ho ho! Nervous discharge of energy. You assumethe human body to be a voltaic pile, eh? That's good. I'll have to tellGropper. He'll enjoy it."
Danner, in some embarrassment, gulped a huge mouthful of meat. "Whynot?" he said. "Look at the insects--the ants. Strength a hundred timesour own. An ant can carry a large spider--yet an ant is tissue andfiber, like a man. If a man could be given the same sinews--he couldwalk off with his own house."
"Ha ha! There's a good one. Maybe you'll do it, Abednego."
"Possibly, possibly."
"And you would make a splendid piano-mover."
"Pianos! Pooh! Consider the grasshoppers. Make a man as strong as agrasshopper--and he'll be able to leap over a church. I tell you, thereis something that determines the quality of every muscle and nerve. Findit--transplant it--and you have the solution."
Mirth overtook Professor Mudge in a series of paroxysms from which heemerged rubicund and witty. "Probably your grasshopper man will looklike a grasshopper--more insect than man. At least, Danner, you haveimagination."
"Few people have," Danner said, and considered that he had acquittedhimself.
His wife interrupted at that point. "I think this nonsense has gone farenough. It is wicked to tamper with God's creatures. It is wicked todiscuss such matters--especially on the Sabbath. Abednego, I wish youwould give up your work in the laboratory."
Danner's cranium was overlarge and his neck small; but he stiffened itto hold himself in a posture of dignity. "Never."
His wife gazed from the defiant pose to the locked door visible throughthe parlour. She stirred angrily in her clothes and speared a morsel offood. "You'll be punished for it."
Later in the day Mudge and Gropper laughed heartily at the expense ofthe former's erstwhile host. Danner read restively. He was forbidden towork on the Sabbath. It was his only compromise. Matilda Danner turnedthe leaves of the Bible and meditated in a partial vacuum of day-dreams.
On Monday Danner hastened home from his classes. During the night he hadhad a new idea. And a new idea was a rare thing after fourteen years ofgroping investigation. "Alkaline radicals," he murmured as he crossedhis lawn. He considered a group of ultra-microscopic bodies. He had noname for them. They were the "determinants" of which he had talked. Helocked the laboratory door behind himself and bent over the microscopehe had designed. "Huh!" he said. An hour later, while he stirred asolution in a beaker, he said: "Huh!" again. He repeated it when hiswife called him to dinner. The room was a maze of test tubes, bottles,burners, retorts, instruments. During the meal he did not speak.Afterwards he resumed work. At twelve he prepared six tadpole eggs andput them to hatch. It would be his three hundred and sixty-firstseparate tadpole hatching.
Then, one day in June, Danner crossed the campus with unusual haste.Birds were singing, a gentle wind eddied over the town from the slopesof the Rocky Mountains, flowers bloomed. The professor did not heed thereburgeoning of nature. A strange thing had happened to him thatmorning. He had peeped into his workroom before leaving for the collegeand had come suddenly upon a phenomenon.
One of the tadpoles had hatched in its aquarium. He observed it eagerly,first because it embodied his new idea, and second because it swam witha rare activity. As he looked, the tadpole rushed at the side of itsdomicile. There was a tinkle and a splash. It had swum through the plateglass! For an instant it lay on the floor. Then, with a flick of itstail, it flew into the air and hit the ceiling of the room.
"Good Lord!" Danner said. Old years of work were at an end. New years ofexcitement lay ahead. He snatched the creature and it wriggled from hisgrasp. He caught it again. His fist was not sufficiently strong to holdit. He left it, flopping in eight-foot leaps, and went to class withconsiderable suppressed agitation and some reluctance. The determinantwas known. He had made a living creature abnormally strong.
When he reached his house and unlocked the door of the laboratory, hefound that four tadpoles, in all, had hatched. Before they expired inthe unfamiliar element of air, they had demolished a quantity ofapparatus.
Mrs. Danner knocked on the door. "What's been going on in there?"
"Nothing," her husband answered.
"Nothing! It sounded like nothing! What have you got there? A cat?"
"No--yes."
"Well--I won't have such goings on, and that's all there is to it."
Danner collected the debris. He buried the tadpoles. One was
dissectedfirst. Then he wrote for a long time in his notebook. After that he wentout and, with some difficulty, secured a pregnant cat. A week later hechloroformed the tabby and inoculated her. Then he waited. He had beenpatient for a long time. It was difficult to be patient now.
When the kittens were born into this dark and dreary world, Mr. Dannerassisted as sole obstetrician. In their first hours nothing marked themas unique. The professor selected one and drowned the remainder. Heremembered the tadpoles and made a simple calculation.
When the kitten was two weeks old and its eyes opened, it was dieting onall its mother's milk and more besides. The professor considered thatfact significant. Then one day it committed matricide.
Probably the playful blow of its front paw was intended in the bestspirit. Certainly the old tabby, receiving it, was not prepared for suchviolence from its offspring. Danner gasped. The kitten had unseamed itsmother in a swift and horrid manner. He put the cat out of its miseryand tended the kitten with trepidation. It grew. It ate--beefsteaks andchops, bone and all.
When it reached three weeks, it began to jump alarmingly. The laboratorywas not large enough. The professor brought it its food with theexpression of a man offering a wax sausage to a hungry panther.
On a peaceful Friday evening Danner built a fire to stave off therigours of a cold snap. He and Mrs. Danner sat beside the friendlyblaze. Her sewing was in her lap, and in his was a book to which he paidscant attention. The kitten, behind its locked door, thumped and mewed.
"It's hungry," Mrs. Danner said. "If you must keep a cat, why don't youfeed it?"
"I do," he answered. He refrained, for politic reasons, from mentioningwhat and how much he fed it. The kitten mewed again.
"Well," she repeated, "it sounds hungry."
Danner fidgeted. The laboratory was unheated and consequently chilly.From its gloomy interior the kitten peered beneath the door and saw thefire. It sensed warmth. The feline affinity for hearths drew it. One pawscratched tentatively on the door.
"It's cold," Mrs. Danner said. "Why don't you bring it here? No, I don'twant it here. Take it a cover."
"It--it has a cover." Danner did not wish to go into that dark room.
The kitten scratched again and then it became earnest. There was asplitting, rending sound. The bottom panel of the door was torn away andit emerged nonchalantly, crossing the room and curling up by the fire.
For five minutes Mrs. Danner sat motionless. Her eyes at length movedfrom the kitten to her husband's quivering face and then to the brokendoor. On his part, he made no move. The kitten was a scant six inchesfrom his foot. Mrs. Danner rose. She went to the door and studied theorifice, prying at it with her fingers as if to measure the kitten'sstrength by her own. Then she turned the key and peered into the gloom.That required either consummate nerve or great curiosity. After herinspection she sat down again.
Ten minutes passed. Danner cleared his throat. Then she spoke. "So.You've done it?"
"Done what?" he asked innocently.
"You've made all this rubbish you've been talking about strength--happento that kitten."
"It wasn't rubbish."
"Evidently."
At that crisis Mr. Danner's toe trembled and the kitten, believing it anew toy, curled its paws over the shoe. There was a sound of tearingleather, and the shoe came apart. Fortunately the foot inside it was nothurt severely. Danner did not dare to budge. He heard his wife'sstartled inhalation.
Mrs. Danner did not resume her sewing. She breathed heavily and slowfire crept into her cheeks. The enormity of the crime overcame her. Andshe perceived that the hateful laboratory had invaded her portion ofthe house. Moreover, her sturdy religion had been desecrated. Dannerread her thoughts.
"Don't be angry," he said. Beads of perspiration gathered on his brow.
"Angry!" The kitten stirred at the sound of her voice. "Angry! And whynot? Here you defied God and man--and made that creature of the devil.You've overrun my house. You're a wicked, wicked man. And as for thatcat, I won't have it. I won't stand for it."
"What are you going to do?"
Her voice rose to a scream. "Do! Do! Plenty--and right here and now."She ran to the kitchen and came back with a broom. She flung the frontdoor wide. Her blazing eyes rested for a moment on the kitten. To her ithad become merely an obnoxious little animal. "Scat! You little demon!"The broom came down on the cat's back with a jarring thud.
After that, chaos. A ball of fur lashed through the air. What-not, birdcage, bookcase, morris chair flew asunder. Then the light went out. Inthe darkness a comet, a hurricane, ricochetted through the room. Thenthere was a crash mightier than the others, followed by silence.
When Danner was able, he picked himself up and lighted the lamp. Hiswife lay on the floor in a dead faint. He revived her. She sat up andwept silently over the wreck of her parlour. Danner paled. A roundhole--a hole that could have been made by nothing but a solid cannonshot--showed where the kitten had left the room through the wall.
Mrs. Danner's eyes were red-rimmed. Her breath came jerkily. Withincredulous little gestures she picked herself up and gazed at the hole.A draught blew through it. Mr. Danner stuffed it with a rug.
"What are we going to do?" she said.
"If it comes back--we'll call it Samson."
And--as soon as Samson felt the gnawing of appetite, he returned to hisrightful premises. Mrs. Danner fed him. Her face was pale and her handstrembled. Horror and fascination fought with each other in her soul asshe offered the food. Her husband was in his classroom, nervously tryingto fix his wits on the subject of the day.
"Kitty, kitty, poor little kitty," she said.
Samson purred and drank a quart of milk. She concealed her astonishmentfrom herself. Mrs. Danner's universe was undergoing a transformation.
At three in the afternoon the kitten scratched away the screen door onthe back porch and entered the house. Mrs. Danner fed it the suppermeat.
Danner saw it when he returned. It was chasing flies in the yard. Hestood in awe. The cat could spring twenty or thirty feet with ease. Thenthe sharp spur of dread entered him. Suppose someone saw and askedquestions. He might be arrested, taken to prison. Something wouldhappen. He tried to analyze and solve the problem. Night came. The catwas allowed to go out unmolested. In the morning the town of IndianCreek rose to find that six large dogs had been slain during the darkhours. A panther had come down from the mountains, they said. And Dannerlectured with a dry tongue and errant mind.
It was Will Hoag, farmer of the fifth generation, resident of theenvirons of Indian Creek, church-goer, and hard-cider addict, who benthimself most mercilessly on the capture of the alleged panther. Hischicken-house suffered thrice and then his sheep-fold. After four suchdepredations he cleaned his rifle and undertook a vigil from a spotbehind the barn. An old moon rose late and illuminated his pastures witha blue glow. He drank occasionally from a jug to ward off the evileffects of the night air.
Some time after twelve his attention was distracted from the jug bystealthy sounds. He moved toward them. A hundred yards away his cowswere huddled together--a heap of dun shadows. He saw a form which hemistook for a weasel creeping toward the cows. As he watched, heperceived that the small animal behaved singularly unlike a weasel. Itslid across the earth on taut limbs, as if it was going to attack thecows. Will Hoag repressed a guffaw.
Then the farmer's short hair bristled. The cat sprang and landed on theneck of the nearest cow and clung there. Its paw descended. There was ahorrid sound of ripping flesh, a moan, the thrashing of hoofs, a blotof dribbling blood, and the cat began to gorge on its prey.
Hoag believed that he was intoxicated, that delirium tremens hadovertaken him. He stood rooted to the spot. The marauder ignored him.Slowly, unbelievingly, he raised his rifle and fired. The bullet knockedthe cat from its perch. Mr. Hoag went forward and picked it up.
"God Almighty," he whispered. The bullet had not penetrated the cat'sskin. And, suddenly, it wriggled in his hand. He dropped it. A fl
ash offur in the moonlight, and he was alone with the corpse of his Holstein.
He contemplated profanity, he considered kneeling in prayer. His jointsturned to water. He called faintly for his family. He fell unconscious.
When Danner heard of that exploit--it was relayed by jeering tongues whosaid the farmer was drunk and a panther had killed the cow--his lips setin a line of resolve. Samson was taking too great liberties. It mightattack a person, in which case he, Danner, would be guilty of murder.That day he did not attend his classes. Instead, he prepared arelentless poison in his laboratory and fed it to the kitten in a braceof meaty chops. The dying agonies of Samson, aged seven weeks, wereHomeric.
After that, Danner did nothing for some days. He wondered if his formulaeand processes should be given to the world. But, being primarily a manof vast imagination, he foresaw hundreds of rash experiments. Suppose,he thought, that his discovery was tried on a lion, or an elephant! Sucha creature would be invincible. The tadpoles were dead. The kitten hadbeen buried. He sighed wearily and turned his life into its usualcourses.