The Monster Men, Edgar Rice Burroughs [best free ebook reader .TXT] 📗

“In the campong next to yours there are a dozen others,” replied von Horn, “nor would it be easy to say which is the most hideous and repulsive. They are grotesque caricatures of humanity—without soul and almost without brain.”

“God!” murmured the girl, burying her face in her hands, “he has gone mad; he has gone mad.”

“I truly believe that he is mad,” said von Horn, “nor could you doubt it for a moment were I to tell you the worst.”

“The worst!” exclaimed the girl. “What could be worse than that which you already have divulged? Oh, how could you have permitted it?”

“There is much worse than I have told you, Virginia. So much worse that I can scarce force my lips to frame the words, but you must be told. I would be more criminally liable than your father were I to keep it from you, for my brain, at least, is not crazed. Virginia, you have in your mind a picture of the hideous thing that carried you off into the jungle?”

“Yes,” and as the girl replied a convulsive shudder racked her frame.

Von Horn grasped her arm gently as he went on, as though to support and protect her during the shock that he was about to administer.

“Virginia,” he said in a very low voice, “it is your father’s intention to wed you to one of his creatures.”

The girl broke from him with an angry cry.

“It is not true!” she exclaimed. “It is not true. Oh, Dr. von Horn how could you tell me such a cruel and terrible untruth.”

“As God is my judge, Virginia,” and the man reverently uncovered as he spoke, “it is the truth. Your father told me it in so many words when I asked his permission to pay court to you myself—you are to marry Number Thirteen when his education is complete.”

“I shall die first!” she cried.

“Why not accept me instead?” suggested the man.

For a moment Virginia looked straight into his eyes as though to read his inmost soul.

“Let me have time to consider it, Doctor,” she replied. “I do not know that I care for you in that way at all.”

“Think of Number Thirteen,” he suggested. “It should not be difficult to decide.”

“I could not marry you simply to escape a worse fate,” replied the girl. “I am not that cowardly—but let me think it over. There can be no immediate danger, I am sure.”

“One can never tell,” replied von Horn, “what strange, new vagaries may enter a crazed mind to dictate this moment’s action or the next.”

“Where could we wed?” asked Virginia.

“The Ithaca would bear us to Singapore, and when we returned you would be under my legal protection and safe.”

“I shall think about it from every angle,” she answered sadly, “and now good night, my dear friend,” and with a wan smile she entered her quarters.

For the next month Professor Maxon was busy educating Number Thirteen. He found the young man intelligent far beyond his most sanguine hopes, so that the progress made was little short of uncanny.

Von Horn during this time continued to urge upon Virginia the necessity for a prompt and favorable decision in the matter of his proposal; but when it came time to face the issue squarely the girl found it impossible to accede to his request—she thought that she loved him, but somehow she dared not say the word that would make her his for life.

Bududreen, the Malay mate was equally harassed by conflicting desires, though of a different nature, or he had his eye upon the main chance that was represented to him by the great chest, and also upon the lesser reward which awaited him upon delivery of the girl to Rajah Muda Saffir. The fact that he could find no safe means for accomplishing both these ends simultaneously was all that had protected either from his machinations.

The presence of the uncanny creatures of the court of mystery had become known to the Malay and he used this knowledge as an argument to foment discord and mutiny in the ignorant and superstitious crew under his command. By boring a hole in the partition wall separating their campong from the inner one he had disclosed to the horrified view of his men the fearsome brutes harbored so close to them. The mate, of course, had no suspicion of the true origin of these monsters, but his knowledge of the fact that they had not been upon the island when the Ithaca arrived and that it would have been impossible for them to have landed and reached the camp without having been seen by himself or some member of his company, was sufficient evidence to warrant him in attributing their presence to some supernatural and malignant power.

This explanation the crew embraced willingly, and with it Bududreen’s suggestion that Professor Maxon had power to transform them all into similar atrocities. The ball once started gained size and momentum as it progressed. The professor’s ofttimes strange expression was attributed to an evil eye, and every ailment suffered by any member of the crew was blamed upon their employer’s Satanic influence. There was but one escape from the horrors of such a curse—the death of its author; and when Bududreen discovered that they had reached this point, and were even discussing the method of procedure, he added all that was needed to the dangerously smouldering embers of bloody mutiny by explaining that should anything happen to the white men he would become sole owner of their belongings, including the heavy chest, and that the reward of each member of the crew would be generous.

Von Horn was really the only stumbling block in Bududreen’s path. With the natural cowardice of the Malay he feared this masterful American who never moved without a brace of guns slung about his hips; and it was at just this psychological moment that the doctor played into the hands of his subordinate, much to the latter’s inward elation.

Von Horn had finally despaired of winning Virginia by peaceful court, and had about decided to resort to force when he was precipitately confirmed in his decision by a conversation with the girl’s father.

He and the professor were talking in the workshop of the remarkable progress of Number Thirteen toward a complete mastery of English and the ways and manners of society, in which von Horn had been assisting his employer to train the young giant. The breach between the latter and von Horn had been patched over by Professor Maxon’s explanations to Number Thirteen as soon as the young man was able to comprehend—in the meantime it had been necessary to keep von Horn out of the workshop except when the giant was confined in his own room off the larger one.

Von Horn had been particularly anxious, for the furtherance of certain plans he had in mind, to effect a reconciliation with Number Thirteen, to reach a basis of friendship with the young man, and had left no stone unturned to accomplish this result. To this end he had spent considerable time with Number Thirteen, coaching him in English and in the ethics of human association.

“He is progressing splendidly, Doctor,” Professor Maxon had said. “It will be but a matter of a day or so when I can introduce him to Virginia, but we must be careful that she has no inkling of his origin until mutual affection has gained a sure foothold between them.”

“And if that should not occur?” questioned von Horn.

“I should prefer that they mated voluntarily,” replied the professor, the strange gleam leaping to his eyes at the suggestion of possible antagonism to his cherished plan, “but if not, then they shall be compelled by the force of my authority—they both belong to me, body and soul.”

“You will wait for the final consummation of your desires until you return with them to civilization, I presume,” said von Horn.

“And why?” returned the professor. “I can wed them here myself—it would be the surer way—yes, that is what I shall do.”

It was this determination on the part of Professor Maxon that decided von Horn to act at once. Further, it lent a reasonable justification for his purposed act.

Shortly after their talk the older man left the workshop, and von Horn took the opportunity to inaugurate the second move of his campaign. Number Thirteen was sitting near a window which let upon the inner court, busy with the rudiments of written English. Von Horn approached him.

“You are getting along nicely, Jack,” he said kindly, looking over the other’s shoulder and using the name which had been adopted at his suggestion to lend a more human tone to their relations with the nameless man.

“Yes,” replied the other, looking up with a smile. “Professor Maxon says that in another day or two I may come and live in his own house, and again meet his beautiful daughter. It seems almost too good to be true that I shall actually live under the same roof with her and see her every day—sit at the same table with her—and walk with her among the beautiful trees and flowers that witnessed our first meeting. I wonder if she will remember me. I wonder if she will be as glad to see me again as I shall be to see her.”

“Jack,” said von Horn, sadly, “I am afraid there is a terrible and disappointing awakening for you. It grieves me that it should be so, but it seems only fair to tell you, what Professor Maxon either does not know or has forgotten, that his daughter will not look with pleasure upon you when she learns your origin.

“You are not as other men. You are but the accident of a laboratory experiment. You have no soul, and the soul is all that raises man above the beasts. Jack, poor boy, you are not a human being—you are not even a beast. The world, and Miss Maxon is of the world, will look upon you as a terrible creature to be shunned— a horrible monstrosity far lower in the scale of creation than the lowest order of brutes.

“Look,” and the man pointed through the window toward the group of hideous things that wandered aimlessly about the court of mystery. “You are of the same breed as those, you differ from them only in the symmetry of your face and features, and the superior development of your brain. There is no place in the world for them, nor for you.

“I am sorry that it is so. I am sorry that I should have to be the one to tell you; but it is better that you know it now from a friend than that you meet the bitter truth when you least expected it, and possibly from the lips of one like Miss Maxon for whom you might have formed a hopeless affection.”

As von Horn spoke the expression on the young man’s face became more and more hopeless, and when he had ceased he dropped his head into his open palms, sitting quiet and motionless as a carven statue. No sob shook his great frame, there was no outward indication of the terrible grief that racked him inwardly—only in the pose was utter dejection and hopelessness.

The older man could not repress a cold smile—it had had more effect than he had hoped.

“Don’t take it too hard, my boy,” he continued. “The world is wide. It would be easy to find a thousand places where your antecedents would be neither known nor questioned. You might be very happy elsewhere and there a hundred thousand girls as beautiful and sweet as Virginia Maxon—remember that you have never seen another, so you can scarcely judge.”

“Why did he ever bring me into